palacio de don Juan de Zúñiga en Zalamea de

Fear o f bodily decay is the first effect o f city life that we shall discuss. W e have only to look at the affluent W est to see how ephem eral m aterialistic control over life is underm ined by the fear o f death and decay, and the lengths that people w ill go to stave it off. In the same way, Chu T 'ien-w en d escrib ed the sensual and aesthetic pleasures available through the new freedom o f Taipei society while at the same time conveying the inevitable individual tragedy that is the decay o f the hum an body. The city, on the other hand, seems to get younger as old buildings are replaced by new, and the younger generation moves in. City dw ellers see th eir environm ent changing around th em an d b eco m e m ore conscious o f the passing o f time and its physical effects. T here is no lack o f characters suffering from the fear o f ageing in th ese sto ries. In "C arnal Bodhisattva" the protagonist is a thirty year old, hom osexual artist, Hsiao-T'ung who feels that he is too old for his teenage friends, and polishes his body as though m aintaining "his calf leather briefcase."5 He would like to believe th at his y outh can be preserved by constant sexual indulgence. In "Splendour o f the End o f the Century," the young fashion model, M i-ya, who is tw enty-five years

5. "Jou-shen p'u-sa" (Carnal Bodhisattva), SCMTHL, p. 58.

old and feels that life is catching up on her, tries to extend the life o f cut flowers by drying them, as an allegory for preserving her own beauty.

The m ost detailed treatm ent o f this theme by Chu is in the stoiy about Ch'i-kung M aster Ch'ai. An immigrant horn the m ainland forty years ago, he has finally settled in Taipei, and is a widower living with his son's family. Having acquired something o f a reputation amongst w hite-collar city w orkers for curing ills associated with high pressure business life, he is alone with thoughts o f his lost youth and his pipedream o f retiring to China. The story begins w hen one day, at his disciple's house, he meets a young girl who is allergic to the air of Taipei. He is attracted to her and volunteers to treat her. The story then describes how the old master's interest in the girl grows deeper each time the girl comes to see him, and that on the sixth occasion, the old m ainlander finds out that the girl has a skin problem, while on the seventh, he persuades her to take some immortal w ater home. The scene illustrates the physical tension betw een M aster Ch'ai and the young girl, using sentences in which objects can be read as symbols o f the M aster's old body:

Over the stove is a pot o f hot water, M aster Ch'ai pours some into a steel cup, then goes to the front o f the B uddhist shrine. U sing his hand, he draws a charm in the w ater and comes back to pour som e into a (Coca- Cola) bottle, the girl too then takes over the procedure. The w ater is too hot, and the shape o f the bottle becom es distorted, m o st o f the w aist collapses, and the bottle leans crookedly against the w all. (T he girl) empties the plastic bag o f smoked sausage, and puts the bottle in it, then (she) leaves.6

The episode that follow s describes the m aster's attraction to the girl's body, while simultaneously making a connection with the m em ory o f his arrival in Taiwan: "As his hand reaches under (the girl's) clothes and touches her soft cold breasts, he suddenly remembers the spring o f 1948, when he had ju s t arrived at rainy Keelung city, seeing for the first time an ornamental cherry tree com ing out from the stone wall o f a tall gate, abundant blossom falling in the sooty cold rain. O nly later did he learn that P a -ch ’im g y in g 7 had b een a b ro th el ow ned by Japanese people, and was changed to be a city governm ent hostel after Taiwan was liberated (from the Japanese)."8 M aster Ch’ai's desire to regain his youth has m etam orphosed into a desire to possess the girl. A t the ninth session, as he examines the girl's eyes, attempting to cure her short-sight, he can n o t help but lose control and kisses her forehead. A lthough she takes her leave o f him deferentially, after this she never returns.

The story describes M aster Ch'ai's feelings as he w aits fo r the girl to come. As he recalls the tranquillity o f his youth, he feels the absurdity o f his position. As he waits for the young girl to arrive, not know ing w hether she will come, he appears like a robot, driven only by his sensuality in his futile attem pt to regain his youth. W hile the story shows the sensual w orlds o f the characters in considerable detail, there is less a sense o f pleasure th an o f indulgence in order to escape, or at least have the illusion o f escaping from a depressing state o f bodily decline.

The im age o f righteous and w ell-educated m ainlanders o f C hu's early stories is dim inished in this volume. W e see a m ore private, m ore realistic portrayal o f the living conditions o f the immigrants, people who cannot content th em selv es w ith lo y alty to classical m oral standards, b u t have th eir ow n

7. Pct-ch'tmg ying, i.e. Double-flowering cherry tree (Yaezakura). 8 Ibid,, p. 24.

yearnings and desires for their lives, which all too often in the new society are illusory.

The village in C hina or the small tow ns in T aiw an, w hich are the protagonist's hom etown in the film stories, has disappeared from this collection. People o f different ages and ethnic groups have lost their connection with their native lands, and with it the basis o f their moral stability. The M aster's memory o f his m ainland Chinese friends and his memories o f K aoshiung and K eelung m ay serve as a focal point for his sense o f belonging. Yet, reading "M aster Ch'ai" we feel that time is frozen. The old man's early m em ories concentrate on visual im pact and sensual refinement, as in his eyes, the red Taiw anese phoenix flowers, the first thing he saw when he arrived on the island becom e configured with the red Chinese cherry plant that now he waters every day in Taipei. In fact the flowers serve as symbols o f Taiwan and China, while at the same time, to him, they are visually evocative o f the "wild" and "prim itive" in his sense o f lost y o u th .

W hat occupies his m ind are not so m uch the positive aspects o f his life, but rather his despondency in his present environment, he feels that he has been m altreated by fate. He has spent years in Keelung port, but his m em ories o f that time are only o f trivial financial matters, such as how he started to m ake a living by doing coolie work in the docks, lacking any special feelings for his m ainlander customers, except that it was easier for him to make m ore m oney out o f them. N ext, he owns a m odest restaurant, is engaged for a w hile in sm uggling, and finally, he lost all his money: "Every day, he seems to see a pile o f heavy (gold) in g o ts9 disclosed in golden light at the bottom o f the deep blue ocean. . . ,"10

9. A piece of silver or gold (ingot) weighing about fifty-five ounces used in old China.

M aster Ch'ai's obsession with the material life shows that the problem o f survival from day to day is more important to him than worrying about his cultural and political identity. He does not feel like going back to China, know ing that, o f his friends who had visited China, m ost had decided to come back to Taiwan. He feels that he should stay in Taiwan, a sexually exciting place, w here he can at least w atch suggestive Taiwanese talk shows on T. V.

His son runs an M TV centre, a business involving copying obscene video tapes, and his grandchildren are unavoidably contam inated by the commercial atmosphere, watching too many adult programs, neglecting their studies. But he cannot do anything to change the situation, as they com m unicate in Taiwanese and treat him like an outsider. His sense o f isolation is not only reinforced by his children's indifference to his feelings, but by the physical ugliness o f the city, the flying dust from the everlasting construction, and th e ste n ch o f th e ever increasing rubbish on the streets, all o f w hich is depicted in contrast to his idealised memory o f the welcoming warmth o f Kunming and the old Taiwan. The story provides a moving picture o f the master's loneliness and isolation:

Every day he stands on the chair taking sticks o f incense b etw een his fin g ers and d ilig en tly dusts the an cestral tab le (m akes o b eisan ce). Sometimes his daughter-in-law climbs up the chair to change (old) fruit for fresh. D uring the night he usually gets up tw ice, p assin g diagonally across the living room , w here the w hole fam ily is w atching a porno program, to go to the toilet. He scolds his grandchildren, there is school tom orrow, it's so late now, why have you still not gone to bed! A -W an says, the sum m er holiday has already begun. The air co nditioning runs

buzzing, his small room has never needed an electric fan, the world which is moving ahead has left him far behind.11

The fading m ainlander society, which first appeared in "A Time to Live and A Time to Die" also features in her stories in this collection. However, the significance o f M aster Ch'ai is that it is the first time that Chu uses the images o f the anxiety o f sexual desire, and the weakening o f the physical body to highlight the alienation o f a mainlander from his environment. The story was review ed and held in high esteem by critics such as Chan Hung-chih and David Der-wei Wang, both o f w hom considered it and the title story to be the b est w orks in the Splendour o f the E nd o f the Century.12