The Stolen Bicycle
《單車失竊記》
Wu Ming-Yi is certainly having a moment in Taiwan. The popular author garnered national attention when The Stolen Bicycle was long listed for the 2018 Booker International Prize. The selection committee listed Wu’s nationality as “Taiwan” and ensuing backlash from China ignited controversy after Beijing insisted that Wu is a citizen of “Taiwan, China.”
Mann Group, a sponsor of the arts and charitable initiatives, awards the leading literary prize in the English speaking world to a body of work in any language; provided that work is widely available in English. However, as reported in the Taiwan Sentinel, Mann Group launched a US$103.5 billion dollar hedge fund targeting wealthy Chinese investors in 2012.
Mann’s AHL quantitative trading unit in Shanghai wasn’t too pleased by the supposed nod to Taiwanese independence since they consider Taiwan a “Province of China.” Essentially, in refusing to acknowledge the “One China Policy,” which stipulates that the de facto independent island nation is an inseparable part of China, Mann Group faced exclusion from the lucrative Chinese market.
While the People’s Republic of China has no legitimate authority over Taiwan, the Party often places undue financial pressures on organizations, business interests, or governments that do not accept the “One China Policy.” The sad truth is that the lure of the Chinese Yuan can tempt almost anyone to overlook important contributions from Taiwan.
Thankfully, Wu protested that listing his nationality as “Taiwan, China” did not reflect his personal position. The selection committee later changed his nationality back to Taiwan in a reversal believed to “affirm the will of literature is based on honesty and freedom.”
Protests surrounding Taiwanese nationality were particularly salient while reading this account of contemporary Taiwan. It’d be nearly impossible to attribute any of these characters to Communist China. The Stolen Bicycle is a homegrown narrative written for and about the island of Taiwan.
Large sections of the book are written in a local Taiwanese Minnan dialect of Hokkien. Pasuya, an Indigenous Taiwanese man from the Tsou tribe, recounts his participation in the Burma campaigns as a colonial subject conscripted to fight for Imperial Japan. The eventual Retrocession of Taiwan in 1949 may feature prominently in Old Tsou’s recollections of Nationalist soldiers hailing from the Republic of China; but these men share no connection to the PRC.
Taiwanese consciousness greatly contributes to the success of Wu Ming-Yi.
The Magician on the Skywalk a drama series adapted from his novel of the same name was recently billed as “the most profound series of the decade” (十年一見神劇) by leading Taiwanese media outlets. With the exception of Lady Butterfly of Formosa 《傀儡花》by Chen Yaochang, it’s hard to imagine another author who has so clearly captured the current Taiwanese zeitgeist. I really enjoyed his bicycle ride through Taiwanese history.
The bicycle collectors are characterized by the Taiwanese concept of put-tsuân or incompleteness. Our protagonist, Ch’eng, shares how his old bicycle collector friends, “mention what sort of incompleteness they love in a certain bike, which is also a way at hinting at what parts they need to ‘complete’ the beloved bike (Bicycle Notes VI). Although even as they fear incompleteness, they are plagued by contradiction in that they do not want things to be too perfect either.
Lasting memories and nostalgia associated with antique bicycles are a driving force for Che’ng and his friends despite the fact that the bicycles break down, get tossed out, or fade away. As Uncle Luck says at the Wan Hwa markets, “Whatever happened to something stayed with it, somewhere inside it, ‘just like a seed.’ The point ain’t that everything will break sooner or later. The point ain’t that everything’s empty neither (330–331).”
A hallmark of Wu’s work is that the seed of enduring history grows into strong emotional attachments to treasured keepsakes in our lives — an idea he echoes in the tag line of The Magician on the Skywalk —「原來消失，才是真正的存在。」“You never appreciate what you have until it is gone.”
This sentiment made me think about my own attachment to bicycles. I’m a “CP kid,” born with Cerebral Palsy, who didn’t learn to walk until age two. I also couldn’t ride a two-wheeler until I was almost ten. There were many summers spent screaming at my family that “I’m never going to ride that stupid bike!” My parents, un-phased by these repeated outbursts, kept insisting, “Just ride the damn bike!” So, I did.
Today, bicycles represent any major struggle in my life. “Ride the damn bike!” has likewise become my personal mantra when channeling intense determination and fierce grit. The prospect of learning Chinese, moving to Taiwan, working in an entirely Taiwanese office, or even earning a PhD; are each considered a long journey to be conquered one pedal at a time. Both the struggle and reward are just like riding a bike — something I’ll never forget.
Anyway, back to Ch’eng and his family history of stolen bicycles….
There is a quiet consensus among scholars, academics, and polyglots in Taiwan that “language is a tool” (語言就是一個工具). Wu Ming-Yi conceives of language as much more than a tool. The author observes that the responsibility of language is to express not only the meaning but also the poetic nature (詩意) of words. He embraces this poetic license to expertly weave the Taiwanese, Tsou, Chinese and Japanese languages spoken by several generations into a single text. The usage and phonology of bicycle synonyms in particular permeates a central vocabulary of identity in the novel that spoke to my equally strong connection with bicycles in Taiwanese culture.
I remember that “iron horse” or Thieh-bé, the Minnan word for “bicycle,” was quite literally the barometer used to test my grasp of Taiwanese slang. A close American friend working for a Taiwanese cardiologist once quipped, “Dr. Su asked if you’re so smart then what’s an ‘iron horse?’”
“A bicycle, duh!” seemed to grant entry into an exclusive club. I was even more surprised when my Taiwanese teacher decided to spend our first class explaining that Khóng-bîng-tshia or “Kung-Ming vehicle” was a local Taiwanese vernacular that linked bicycles to famed Three Kingdoms statesman, Zhu-ge Liang. Both “iron horse” and “Kung-Ming vehicle” were quite distinct from the word chiao-t’a-che, “foot-pedaled vehicle,” that I learned from Chinese speakers. Who knew a shared passion for bicycles would serve as my gateway into this wonderful work?
Ming-Yi uses the playful dichotomy between poetic license and actual events to continuously challenge readers. He writes:
The truth of a novel does not depend on facts. That’s something any novelist understands. But a novel’s overarching structure is sometimes supported by what might be called ‘pillars of truth’ (47).
Ch’eng starts his search after a fan inquires about the Lucky Bicycle his father abandoned at Zhongshan Hall. When Ch’eng admits that he made up parts of his novel, we’re suddenly caught between two alternate timelines: a fiction where the son of an appliance store owner discovers his dad abandoned a bike at Zhongshan Hall; and reality where the son of a tailor finds that dad and his bicycle have disappeared without a trace. Oh, and both sons are dating the same girl. She’s called either Alice or Theresa depending on who you ask (48).
I’ve had the privilege of discussing magical realism in depth. The genre most closely associated with Latin American authors depicts the real world with an undercurrent of magic or fantasy. An historical narrative like Stolen Bicycle is reminiscent of 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez; especially in an English press eager to contextualize Taiwan within World Literature. However, as many passionate Latin scholars have shared with me, “Alternate realities are not magical realism. They’re speculative fiction!” This book is certainly rife with magical realism; but the interplay between fact and speculative fiction adds another brilliant layer to Ming-Yi’s tale.
Abbas is one of Taiwan’s few war photojournalists. He and Che’ng work together to transcribe taped conversations with Pasuya about his Silverwheel days in the Burma campaign. The old man says that war photographers are defined by their need to go somewhere in order to take photographs. Photographic art is shaped by their first hand experiences. Although someone who does not know the pain of war can still write as if they do. Abbas later observes:
Some poets really do seem to feel the pain of war, but many are faking it. They’re using poetry to transform manufactured pity into something that sounds authentic. Most people can’t tell the difference (153).
He casts doubt on all of Pasuya’s comments. Readers are left to wonder if his fears were born deep within the forests of Burma or if they were conceived by an imaginative author. I liked that even as we are caught up in a meticulous level of detail, the speculative nature of Abbas’ observations makes it very difficult to trust the validity of a single ‘pillar of truth’.
Magical realism in The Stolen Bicycle is synonymous with the natural world.
A-hûn has never told anyone that “she could smell a male butterfly’s odor (107).” It’s a secret power that titillates her work at the butterfly handicrafts factory.
Taiwan is affectionately known as the “butterfly kingdom.” The island once boasted the greatest variety of butterfly species in the world. That is until most species were hunted to extinction in support of the butterfly handicraft industry that flourished from the Post-war Era into the late 1970s. A-hûn represents many young girls who made a living by creating collages from butterfly wings. ‘Butterfly mosaics’ like those pictured above were prized by Japanese and American tourists alike. An even greater number of exported butterfly specimens soon turned Taiwan into a paradise for natural scientists.
A-hûn’s appreciation for the scent of a butterfly gives her a magical connection to Taiwan. She shares quite a bit about this curious local industry; especially when she reminds us that “They killed so many butterflies, just so people would look at their work and exclaim, ‘Oh, it’s so beautiful! To say a girl was beautiful was one thing, A-hûn thought, but a collage of dead butterflies was quite another (106).”
The contrast between such beautiful butterflies and the consequences of ecological devastation has an almost haunting appeal. The duality of beauty and beast is embodied by several creatures in this book like the butterflies, Mr. Ichiro the orangutan, and most importantly the elephant transport teams. A masterful retelling of the Burma campaign first from the perspective of Pasuya and then the elephant herds themselves is nothing short of extraordinary.
Pasuya finds himself among the ranks of Japanese soldiers alongside K’nyaw, an Indonesian mahout charged with caring for the elephants. He’s a young boy set apart by his ability to command elephants using sounds made with throat and abdomen that can’t be heard by ordinary human ears. Pasuya describes meeting the elephants as follows:
The first time I saw an elephant I was literally scared stiff. To think there could be a living creature as hard as a rock and as strong as a river, a creature whose nose was so nimble it could pick up nuts and yet powerful enough to whack over great trees. I could not help feeling the greatest respect for these massive creatures (211).
Elephants always seemed to me like gentle giants. We celebrate the animals who “never forget” as harbingers of profound wisdom. Pasuya showed me how elephants possess brute strength. They’re beasts of burden who can carry crates of artillery across villages, whack over trees, and even crush a man under their immense weight. His descriptions of an elephant raging onto the battlefield really struck me. At the same time, K’nyaw also teaches Pasuya how each herd is deeply spiritual in nature. Since elephants make and hear sounds that people can’t hear, they are acute judges of character who dislike liars and bond only with the pure of heart (214).
There is such beauty in elephant spirituality. As soon as he’s finished on the battlefield, Ming-Yi settles into the magic of these majestic creatures. Che’ng is suddenly standing, as if by chance, in the dimly lit basement market of an abandoned Wan Hwa bank where Uncle Luck offers him an elephant footstool to take you “anywhere the elephant went (294).”
Anyone who has been to Taiwan can tell you that Wan Hwa is the only place you’d find these treasures. It seems completely random but magical realism with Taiwanese characteristics totally works. Soon enough we’re in Limbo with war elephants mourning the loss of their matriarch:
When the matriarch collapsed, the other elephants all stopped in their tracks and gathered round. They stroked each other’s backs with their trunks, humming with incredible tenderness. The temperature reversed at night, forming an acoustic layer of cool air close to the ground that conveyed the elephant hum to distant mountain valleys and returned it to the camp as a tremendous echo. The magnified, multi-layered echo sounded to the soldiers both mournful and warm (301).
How incredible to witness these elephants in their grief. Nature is alive. Elephants clearly have a capacity to express both tenderness and warmth that surpasses human understanding. Even then the herd still makes space for these men to grieve their lost brothers in arms, distant families, and ailing bodies. It’s amazing how exploring the same timeline from a different vantage point can provide new perspectives.
The Stolen Bicycle truly captured vivid snapshots from each period of Taiwanese history. I loved retracing my steps across the island after having lived here for so long. The book definitely has a distinctly Taiwanese flavor. That said, the narratives weren’t always connected. They felt more like individual stops on a tour. Each section was enjoyable in its own right; but it was sometimes hard to find a common thread that tied these vignettes together.
You won’t regret this award winning read. It’s just that you might not appreciate it until it’s done…
