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Author | Chang Chih-hsin

  • Date:2025-01-23
Author-Chang Chih-hsin

Chinese Name: 張郅忻

Born: 1982

Birthplace: Hsinchu County (Northern Taiwan)

 

Did You Know That…?

Chang Chih-hsin was born in a Hakka village in Hukou Township (湖口鄉), Hsinchu County, in 1982. Although she comes from a Hakka family, her relatives have diverse cultural backgrounds, including two aunts from Southeast Asia, a half-sister of Amis descent, and a South African brother-in-law.

 

 

In 2013, Chang published her debut prose work, “Away from Home and Back: My United Family (我家是聯合國),” which explores topics of family, ethnicity, and gender. The book tells the bittersweet story of her multiracial family in contemporary Taiwan, reflecting on global migration and the integration of different ethnic groups resulting from cross-cultural marriages. Through her writing, the author depicts the everyday lives of her family members while contemplating on her own sense of identity.

 

Chang’s interaction with her foreign aunts prompts her to pay constant attention to female immigrants in her writing. Her prose collection, “The Ocean I Carry (我的肚腹裡有一片海洋),” focuses on immigrant women who crossed the sea to Taiwan from Southeast Asia. By telling their life stories, the author intends to challenge stereotypes about these women, fostering greater understanding among readers of the experience of female migrants in Taiwan.

 

Driven by a curiosity about her family history, Chang decided to seek out her roots. She has produced the “Hakka Road Trip Trilogy (客途三部曲)”: “Weaving (織),” “Mirage (海市),” and “Mountain Mirror (山鏡).” The three novels are based on her family members’ life experiences. Through field research, the author retraced the journeys of her loved ones, rekindling her childhood memories.

 

Nominated for the Taiwan Literature Awards in 2018, “Weaving” follows Chang’s grandfather, who worked in a textile factory in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s amidst the Vietnam War. Apart from the history of her family and the textile industry, the writer also hopes to present the traces of immigration by piecing together the past of a contemporary Taiwanese family. As a fictionalized account, “Weaving” was fabricated with oral history and collected archives from textile factories in Taiwan and Vietnam, revolving around topics of fabric business, family, and memories.

 

“Mirage” unfolds a tale of a young Hakka woman who left her hometown to pursue her dreams in Taipei City during the 1970s and 1980s. Written with realism, the novel chronicles the woman’s life alongside urban development. Chang vividly depicts the glorious moments in the bustling Ximending (西門町) area as well as Taipei’s social transformation, the incoming Internet age, and the economic impact on small and medium-sized enterprises. 

 

Winner of the Taiwan Literature Awards in 2024, “Mountain Mirror” narrates the historical development of mountain recreation businesses, from forest resorts to campsites, revealing the conflicts, compromises, and collaboration between Indigenous and Han people in conserving natural resources.

 

Chang once said that everyone is unique and sees the world differently, adding that a good piece of writing allows different readers to connect with different elements based on their own experiences. All an author can do, she explained, is share what they observe.