Premier Cho stated that literature has an incredible power to touch people’s hearts and awaken sentiments long submerged in our hearts. In recent years, the government has actively implemented the Reading Promotion Project and backed the facility renovation and collection expansion of libraries in Hakka libraries across Taiwan, so that residents can cultivate a reading habit since a young age and fall in love with literature.
Gu Show-faye, Minister of the Hakka Affairs Council (HAC), extended her gratitude to Feng Te-ping, Chief Editor of the magazine Wenhsun, and the editing team led by author Mo Yu. She also specially thanked the Zhan family for their selfless assistance in providing manuscripts and works by Zhan Bing, which made possible the extraordinary compilation at present. HAC is also devoting effort to translate literary works, including picture books, comics, animation, and TV shows, in the hope that this will bring the works closer to children and youth so they grow fond and try to read them in their original language.
Complete Works of Zhan Bing—a collaboration between HAC and the Taiwan Literature Development Foundation—took two years to compile and includes all of Zhan Bing’s 13 published works from 1938 to 2004, as well as uncollected and unpublished works, including modern poetry, children’s poetry, reversible poems, prose works, novels, dramas, translations, and artistic creations. The complete set of 10 volumes puts on full display the immense creativity and profound love for his homeland that pervades his trans-epoch oeuvre. The reader is guided through text and images to enter a Taiwanese literary world that transcends language, land, and academic discipline.
The editing team carefully uncovered 806 unpublished poems, 125 prose works, 20 novels, eight plays, and more. Correspondence between Zhan Bing and musician Kuo Chih-yuan, writers Tân Tshian-bú and Li Kuei-hsien, and other major figures is made available for the first time. Together, the editing team breaks down his poems, prose works, novels, plays, translations, and other creative works to complete this important achievement across time, space, and areas of expertise.