The Chinese Department of TKU held the 9th International Symposium on Literature and Aesthetics on June 4th and 5th at the National Library in Taipei. The theme of the event was exclusively devoted to a legendary writer, Ku Lung, who specialized in a genre, known as Chinese Chivalry Kung-Fu novels that is only found in Chinese-speaking world.

Ku Lung, who passed away some years ago, was called Hsiung Yao-hwa at birth and was a student at TKU as a Foreign Languages major. He enjoyed reading, especially European and American literature and used elements of Western literary theory to construct his Chinese novels. He later dropped out of college so he could concentrate full-time on his writing.

For the Symposium, the organizer invited 16 scholars in this particular field from US, Mainland China and Taiwan. One of them, Yeh Hong-sheng, spent five years to write an over 400,000 word book of an epic scale on the history of Chinese Chivalry Kung-fu novels in Taiwan. It has become a must-cited reference for anyone who is conducting research in this field. Topics at the symposium ranged from romanticism and feminism in Ku Lung’s work to aesthetics of the movies based on his books. (~ Ying-hsueh Hu )