Chimera Literary Salon| Classical Europe, Cosmic Wandering—The Utopian Vision in Phantasmagoria

‍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 lecture series is drawing to a close, with the final session featuring a dialogue between Kuo-Wei Chen (Associate Professor, Graduate Institute of Taiwan Literature and Transnational Cultural Studies, National Chung Hsing University) and Hsin-Hui Lin (sci-fi writer). Apart from Du Lian-Kui, the discussion will also focus on Da-Hong Wang’s science fiction novel Phantasmagoria. Wang began writing this work in the 1940s, setting it aside in 2000. It was only through an invitation from architect Ching-Yueh Roan at his 94th birthday banquet, and the translation by Chiu-Hwa Wang, that this 60-year-spanning work finally saw the light of day.

From 1970s Shanghai and Taipei to outer space a thousand years in the future, this work invites readers to explore science fiction writing and utopian imagination in Taiwanese literature.