Chimera Literary Salon| Eastern Taipei vs. Western Taipei: The Cultural Battleground of Du Lian Kui, Edward Yang, and the Cult of Youthful Beauty

‍Event Content

Wang Daizhi, the first generation of Taiwanese architect after the war, presented Wilde's classic novel “The Portrait of Gray” with ten years of light (The Picture of Dorian Gray) The scene was moved from Victorian London to Taipei in the 1970s and translated into Dulienqui, which belongs to his era. Through the transformation of time, Wang Daei not only allows us to see a common fable about humanity, but also buried its aesthetic thoughts and observations of Taipei in the plot of the novel. In 2021, a new production was produced by the Wen Shin Art Foundation, curated by the Wen Shin Art Foundation, in collaboration with the Wang Daishi Architectural Research and Preservation Society.

This series of lectures was specially invited by Yang Jia-han (Associate Professor/Writer in the Department of Chinese Literature, National Tsinghua University) to analyze from a literary perspective, introduce Du Lianqui to present Taiwan, and discuss the meaning of reading classics for modern readers; while exhibiting in the works MR. WANG DAICHI'S REFLECTION ON THE TIMES OF THE PLACE AND BROUGHT EVERYONE “CLOSER TO WANG DAICHI” FROM THE VIEWPOINT OF THE BUILDING.

The fourth lecture invited Chen Ying-yin (Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture, National Taipei University of Science and Technology) and Chen Pak Ching (a young novelist) to talk about the descriptions of the East and West districts of Taipei in the book “Du Lien Qui”. Extending to Yang Tak Cheong's films—Terrorist and Chumma Chukah—are the Western notions conveyed in Taiwanese gay literature (an echo of “The Grey Mei Youth”).

FROM THE WEST TO THE EAST, FROM LONDON TO TAIPEI, DU LIENQUI TRANSPLANTS THE LIFE EXPERIENCES AND FEELINGS OF OTHERS THROUGH REWRITING. WANG DAICHI ALSO REVISITED THE CULTURAL PECULIARITIES OF “CHINESE-WEST MERGER” TO AVOID ISSUES SUCH AS CULTURAL IDENTITY, IDENTITY, BELONGING, DIVERGENCE AND COMPETITION IN THE CONFLICT BETWEEN SELF AND OTHERS. I hope that readers will be able to understand the depth of each of them by reading Dulinqui in the correspondence of different cultures.