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Social Critic | Bo Yang

  • Date:2015-07-22
Social Critic | Bo Yang




  • Chinese Pen Name: 柏楊

  • Birth Name: Kuo Ting-sheng (郭定生)

  • Born: March 7, 1920

  • Died: April 29, 2008

  • Place of Birth: Kaifeng, Henan Province

  • Did You Know That ... ?

  • His pen name 'Bo Yang' was taken from the name of an aboriginal village called Kuboyang (古柏楊) nearby the Central Cross-Island Highway in centralTaiwan.







Bo Yang, one of the most influential writers and human rights activists in Taiwan, was best known for his straightforward style and critical commentary of political and social issues. His sarcastic humor and criticism of social phenomena, as well as the interesting phrasing he constructed to criticize people, made him a household name.



"The Ugly Chinaman (醜陋的中國人),” a series of his critiques that unreservedly pointed out the ugliness and deep-rooted weaknesses in Taiwanese and ethnic Chinese cultures, aroused a fierce controversy in Chinese society when it was published in the late 1980s.



As a vigorous human rights and democracy activist,Bo Yang wasone of the founding members of Amnesty International's Taiwan branch and the Human Rights Education Foundation.



The first five decades of Bo Yang's life in Taiwan, between 1949 and the early 1990s, were divided equally into periods of fiction writing, essays, imprisonment, historical writing and commitment to human rights.



In the early 1950s, Bo Yang wrote novels that mostly contained anti-Communist ideas. He also published several romances and realistic works of fiction, before writing a political commentary column for the Independent Evening News (自立晚報) in 1960.



In 1968, Bo Yang was sentenced to prison for 12 years because his translation of an American comic strip "Popeye the Sailor Man (大力水手)” was considered libelous to then-President Chiang Kai-shek (蔣中正) and his son Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國) Bo Yang, then in his late 40s, was imprisoned for nine years and 26 days before being released in 1977.



While in jail, Bo Yang completed the manuscript for three historical books. Later, he spent a decade focusing on a modern colloquial Chinese translation of "Comprehensive Mirror to Aid in Governance (資治通鑑),” China's first chronological history (originally written by Sima Guang (司馬光) inthe 11thcentury), as well as writing commentary for this work. The 72-book series is widely regarded as one of his major publications.



For his contributions to Taiwan's literature, history, and human rights advancements, Bo Yang was named winner ofthe National Cultural Award in 2002. He also received a posthumous presidential citation after his death in 2008 at the age of 88.