Taiwanese Literature Reading Club and a Fiction Called “Kill the Husband”

By MSN messenger Mermaid told me that she will get married in September and invited me to join her wedding ceremony in Taiwan. By the same instant communication tool, Cherry told me that in subway train in Taipei she ran into Crimson, who still studies in North Carolina for his politics doctorial degree, and he told her that he was going to visit Beijing next day. I will not return to Taiwan until next Chinese New Year festival, and there is no contact information for me to call Crimson, who I have not seen for many years, to figure out a way to meet up in Beijing. These people are all my old classmates in university, who are the members of Taiwanese Literature Reading Club, an organization that I founded with other four friends in our sophomore year.

Cherry said she have collected all contact information of all members of Taiwanese Literature Reading Club. I, therefore, joked that we should hold once again a reading activity and asked each one to read a book beforehand and to bring the book to join the reunion. This sounds exciting, because I could provide everybody’s speech in our book discussion of many years ago, a reminiscence of the prime of our life.

The time of joining Taiwanese Literature Reading Club is certainly one of my unforgettable and beautiful memories in my life. In addition to getting along with many good friends, I also get inspired by one fiction called “Kill the Husband” (殺夫) written by Li Ang (李昂), a famous Taiwanese writer who has ever been awarded Order of Arts and Letters (Ordre des Arts et des Lettres) by French government. The topic of the book was all about a bad-luck story happened on a wife who had been tortured by his uncouth husband, who made a living as a slaughter. The difficult situation that she confronted with made her eventually choose to kill her husband, a miserable story based on a real social event happened in Shanghai. I learned from this prominent novel that one could always have other choices when facing desperate situations, if one has the courage to forsake what one currently owns and to leave one’s surroundings for a totally brand new place. I think this book somehow affects my life philosophy and a number of decisions in my life afterwards.