Born in 1958 to an army writer in Kaohsiung, Chu T’ien-hsin was born in a very different time in Taiwan’s history, after her family had fled mainland China at the end of the Chinese civil war. Chu is known as a popular author in Taiwan, having multitudes of her work translated into English for Western audiences. Raised in a family of writers, she began creating her own short stories whilst she was still in high school.
After graduating from National Taiwan University, one of the country’s most esteemed institutions, Chu began writing articles for the China Times, whilst still publishing her own works. She married her husband in 1984 and they had a daughter in 1986.
Chu’s background meant that she grew up in a traditional Chinese family in a rapidly changing Taiwan, giving her a unique identity that has influenced the topics she writes on. Her work often examines the challenges of re-establishing and maintaining cultural identity.
Credit: Columbia University Press
Chu’s most renowned piece of work is The Old Capital, which published in the late 1990s, consisting of four stories and a novella. The book describes the Taiwan of that era from different, meandering perspectives, whilst paying homage to previous literary works such as “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and “Death in Venice”. The stories, though wrapped in a modern context, provide reflections on each narrator’s origins and background, merging to create a meditation on where they were and where they are now. The book received an English translation a decade after its publication, as the fourteenth book in Columbia’s Modern Chinese Literature from Taiwan series.
Chu T’en-hsin’s activities, particularly in the exploration of identity, have no stopped at her literature, however. Chu is a member of The Alliance for Ethnic Equality, an advocacy group opposing the exploitation of ethnic politics and has lobbied for creation of an independent agency for animal protection.