Chimera Literary Salon| Fin-de-Siècle Portraits of Beauty Indulged: Europe's Influence in Wang Da-Hong's Du Lian Kui

‍Event Content

Da-Hong Wang, Taiwan’s first-generation postwar architect, spent a decade transposing Oscar Wilde’s classic novel The Picture of Dorian Gray from Victorian London to Taipei in the 1960s and 1970s, rewriting it as Du Lian-Kui for his own era. Through this temporal displacement, Wang not only presents a universal allegory of human nature but also embeds his aesthetic reflections and observations of Taipei within the novel’s narrative. In 2021, this work was published through a collaborative effort between the Winsing Arts Foundation and the Society for Research and Preservation of Wang Da-hong's Architecture.

For this lecture series, the Foundation specially invited Chia-Hsien Yang (writer and Associate Professor, Department of Chinese Literature, National Tsing Hua University) to curate the program. Analyzing from a literary perspective, she introduces Du Lian-Kui to contemporary Taiwan and discusses the significance of reading classic works for modern readers. Simultaneously, by examining Wang’s reflections on his era revealed in the work, she guides participants to “approach Da-Hong Wang” from perspectives beyond architecture.

The third lecture will feature Shih-Long Lo (Associate Professor, Department of Chinese Literature, National Tsing Hua University) and Shou-Wen Chen (Associate Professor, Department of Chinese Literature, National Chengchi University), who will discuss exoticism and cultural translation in the novel Du Lian-Kui. Both speakers are experts on how European culture was transmitted to Taiwan and China, with a particular focus on how exoticism drives and constructs new literary horizons. What European elements permeate Du Lian-Kui? What image of Europe does it present to Taiwanese readers? How does Da-Hong Wang’s preoccupation with beauty connect to his writing and translation?