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174 CHAPTER 7 Chen Yuhui and Chen Guofu Envisioning Democracy in The Personals In the overall context of the book,my final two artists ChenYuhui (b.1957) and Chen Guofu (b.1958) stand out for the ways they reconfigure autobiography , democratization, and gender politics.They investigate the fragmented subjectivity of postmodern professional women and mix such narrative genres as documentary, drama, anthropological field study, diary, fiction, and poetry. Their deconstructive confessions quietly criticize the utopian collectivism envisioned in the neorealist nativist tales of Hou and Zhu. Unlike the more established artists discussed in this book, the two Chens are not as well known either inside or outside of Taiwan. In fact, few anticipated that the literary and cinematic versions of The Personals would become two of the most popular narratives in the island’s domestic market in the past decade.1 In 1992 ChenYuhui composed The Personals: Forty-two Men and I as an autobiographical novel about a thirty-something woman’s ambivalent search for a husband through a marriage ad. She based her story on personal ads that she herself had placed inTaiwanese newspapers between 1989 and 1990 and the subsequent conversations she had with 42 men (out of 108 contacts) from all walks of life in Taipei. From a physician and a musician to a factory worker and a pimp, from newspaper ad to essay to fiction, Chen included a wide range of viewpoints and narrative genres on the changing meanings of relationships and marriage in Taiwan’s pluralistic society. Chen’s antiestablishment, self-conflicting spirit proved attractive to Chen Guofu, perhaps because he had been sensitive to the autocratic rule of fear during Taiwan’s Martial Law period. He, too, was looking for artistic ways to articulate the equitable coexistence of multiple subjects in a democratic society, and in 1998 he adapted her novel into a box-office cinematic hit.To understand the complex,uniquelyTaiwanese mixtures of class,gender, Chen Yuhui and Chen Guofu: The Personals 175 and ethnicity involved in this example of adaptation, it is necessary to begin with an overview of cultural politics inTaiwan at the turn of the twenty-first century. Visitors to Taipei are often impressed by the city’s clean, sleek, and comfortable metro system (Municipal RapidTransit or MRT),whose major arteries connect different corners of the sprawling metropolis. In addition to being efficient and convenient, the MRT is also unique in that it openly communicates Taiwan’s democratic cultural politics: each destination is broadcast in four languages: Mandarin,Taiwanese, Hakka, and English.The constellation of these different tongues in a postmodern civic setting proclaims a commitment to the diversity and internationalization of a city-state that tends to equate the kind of monolingual rule it has twice endured— once during the Japanese colonial period (1895–1945) and again during the Martial Law period of the Kuomintang (KMT) (1948–1987)—with political oppression and cultural exploitation. Taiwan’s vision of multilingual inclusiveness reflects its search for a democratic equilibrium. In its continual struggle with China on issues of reunification and independence since the end of the civil war in 1949,Taiwan has steadily embraced different political voices and transformed itself from a one-party monopoly into a state with four major parties.2 On its way to democratization, however, the island has also improvised with controversial policies. Residents wonder, for example, how much textbooks should reflect the shift of political, historical, cultural, and geographical emphases from China to Taiwan under the rule of different political parties. Should state-owned companies like the postal service or the oil companies substitute “Taiwan” for “China” to highlight the Democratic Progressive Party’s political stewardship? How should Taiwan reconfigure the political evaluation of Chiang Kai-shek in the post-KMT era?3 These and other unresolved disputes have sparked arguments and energized the political theatrics in the last two LegislativeYuans and on the streets.4 Thus Taiwan’s ubiquitous manifestations of democraticity reveal both its diversification and its fractured self-visions. On the one hand, the polyglot MRT can be understood to reflect a globalist, centrifugal image that validates the coexistence of different cultures, but on the other, such public multilingualism can be seen as paying only lip service to “diversity” as a common ground for building a nationalist, centripetal island identity.5 Reading Taiwan as a democratic state that wants to be a nation helps us understand the island’s ambition to ensure a balance of powers through the simultaneous validation of different cultures...

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