Wild Kids

Two Novels About Growing Up

Ta-chun Chang, Michael Berry

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2000
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9780231500050
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

These two searingly funny and unsettling portraits of teenagers beyond the control and largely beneath the notice of adults in 1980s Taiwan are the first English translations of works by Taiwan's most famous and best-selling literary cult figure. Chang Ta-chun's intricate narrative and keen, ironic sense of humor poignantly and piercingly convey the disillusionment and cynicism of modern Taiwanese youth.

Interweaving the events between the birth of the narrator's younger sister and her abortion at the age of nineteen, the first novel, My Kid Sister, evokes the complex emotional impressions of youth and the often bizarre social dilemmas of adolescence. Combining discussions of fate, existentialism, sexual awakening, and everyday "absurdities" in a typically dysfunctional household, it documents the loss of innocence and the deconstruction of a family.

In Wild Child, fourteen-year-old Hou Shichun drops out of school, runs away from home, and descends into the Taiwanese underworld, where he encounters an oddball assortment of similarly lost adolescents in desperate circumstances. This novel will inevitably invite comparisons with the classic The Catcher in the Rye, but unlike Holden Caulfield, Hou isn't given any second chances. With characteristic frankness and irony, Chang's teenagers bear witness to a new form of cultural and spiritual bankruptcy.

wild child

A Drifting Preface

On the streets I met a gang leader who told me: “The longer you drift the more you will learn. What you learn affects the kind of person you end up turning into.” That gang leader once had a wish. He wanted to weasel his way into a position where he could take care of things at a harbor port; that way, every day he could help take in all kinds of gang brothers, and of course, he would have to see some off as well. But in the end, because his weaseling didn’t cut it, he never made it to any port; rather he became the one that the others take in. Only later did I realize that that is what it is like trying to make it in the streets—either you end up docking at some filthy port, or you forever float, drifting around some unknown place like a ghostly apparition.

Big Head Spring

Junkyard Notice

All that is left in this world are gang leaders, good-for-nothings, and dead people. Teenagers are already a thing of the past.

FRIENDS

Later, I made many friends. Among them are a few whom I will never see again: Zeng Ahzhi is just one. One of his eyes was bigger than the other; the white part of that eye was also notably larger—he usually used this eye to see ghosts, then later he would tell us what he saw. Like the time when he saw Tarō at the junkyard behind the sheet-iron bathroom door, he told us, “Tarō said he was really cold.” None of us saw any of this, but we all remembered that Tarō used to always be afraid of the cold. Wearing that ridiculously strange paper hat, he escaped from the slaughterhouse, and the night he first met us, he kept saying, “It’s so cold! So cold!” That is also what Tarō said the afternoon he died. Much, much later, there would also come a time when I would never again lay eyes on Hoop and Apricot—they’re probably still locked up in a tiny room within that huge hotel being straddled by a bunch of fat, fishy-smelling men. Just as Hoop and Apricot are screaming, a horde of bats flies out through the hole in the window screen and then flies back in. But this already has nothing to do with me; even supposing that I should later meet another woman as terrified of cockroaches, spiders, bats, and Horsefly as those two, there is no way I’m having anything to do with them. Perhaps I’ll still run into Horsefly, and maybe I’ll even put two bullets in his stomach—but that would just be for fun. After getting shot in the stomach, Horsefly would spring to his feet with a forward somersault and say, “Fuck! Is that all you got?” That would really be kind of funny to see. But besides this, I would be willing to bet that if you were to run into Horsefly, Little Five, and Ah Dibo, you wouldn’t be laughing. Little Five can break a beer bottle with a pocketknife, and Ah Dibo has the habit of riding around in stolen RZR motorcycles in search of police cars to go head-on with. They rarely leave Horsefly’s side; even when they are sent out to buy cigarettes, betel nuts, or Prince Instant Noodles, you can sense that their imposing, dark shadows somehow remain with him. One time Old Bull stepped on Ah Dibo’s shadow. “Did you step on my shadow?” asked Ah Dibo. Old Bull lowered his head to glance at his shoes and said, “I’ve got it! Those tea leaves…” Ah Dibo, throwing one fist forward, knocked Old Bull straight down, just like a bowling pin. Ever since then, Old Bull would always manage to think of some event or person at the most improper of times. Little Horse said that his brain was fried, completely fucked, and I think he’s right. But I’m always reminiscing about Old Bull. Besides Little Horse and Little Xinjiang, I think Old Bull is my best friend—my third-best friend. If you were to ask me who my first-best friend is, I would say Little Horse; that’s because Uncle Xu is too old, he only counts as an elder, not as a real friend. Annie is also a bit too old, plus she’s a girl. That time in the truck, Little Horse asked me, “By the time we’re twenty, how old will Annie be?”

“Thirty,” I responded.

“By then she’ll already be an old lady. Do you think you’ll still want to do her?”

“Probably.”

“Really?”

“Uh huh.”

“Now I understand.”

But twenty was so very far away. Just thinking about it makes me want to cry.

THE BEGINNING

Everything began with the sudden disappearance of my father. This same kind of thing had happened in my dreams when I was a small child. In one dream, my mom, wearing a short, green-and-black checkered skirt, called me out from my first-grade class. She had done herself up, so her lips were a bright red. In the hallway she picked me up and declared ecstatically, “Your dad’s missing! Let’s go!”

I can’t remember what happened next in the dream. All I know is that it was one happy dream, so happy that I wasn’t even myself. Even Mom turned into someone else—that’s how happy it was. Later when I thought of that dream, I would always wonder where that short, green-and-black checkered skirt came from. As far as I can remember, Mom never once wore a skirt like that. This incident led me to develop a strong interest in where these things called “dreams” come from. A few times I asked Mom, “Did you ever wear a short, green-and-black checkered skirt?” If my mom’s answer wasn’t: “I hate green,” it would be: “You asked me that before.” The reason I could never remember whether I had asked her this question or not was that she never explained just where that dream, that oh so happy dream, came from.

But then one day my dad really did disappear. That afternoon I was in the principal’s office, forced to stand in the corner as a form of punishment. Mr. He, whom we all referred to as “Mr. Hippo,” knocked the top of my head like he was beating a drum and said, “A piece of work like you, even if you wiggled your way into some gang, you’d still be nothing but a petty thief! You get my point?” Then he hit me another three times in the same spot, which was already really sore. He probably wanted to get in a few more cheap shots, but the phone rang. He answered it, yawned, and then suddenly his eyes shot over to me. He sucked in his fat gut, adjusted his tie, and said loudly, “Mr. Hou, what a coincidence! We were just about to call you. Hou Shichun is here with me. Do you know what he’s done?… Hello? Uh, I said, do you know what he’s gone and done?… It is very loud where you are, I can’t hear that—that’s right—I can’t hear that clearly.… What? Hello?… Yes, of course it’s all right. Hold on one moment.” Mr. Hippo handed me the phone, saying, “Your father has something important that he wants to talk to you about. When you finish, I want to talk to him.”

“Hello?”

“Hello? Big Head?” It was my dad all right. But the noise was really loud and I could hear two old women discussing renting wedding gowns in the background. One woman was saying that the gown with the veil was too expensive, while the other was babbling that the gown looked too vulgar without it. The first woman argued that it was ridiculous to pay an extra 2,000 NT* for the veil, while the second maintained that that they had better see what Sue thought, after all Sue was the one getting married, not her. The second woman also felt that Sue would like the one with the veil because it looked more like the kind worn by Audrey Hepburn. The first woman then asked who Audrey Hepburn was. It was during the occasional breaks in their rambling that I heard my father say, “I have to go somewhere far, far away. Hello?—I’ll be gone for a while.”

If you have watched soap operas before, then you know that as soon as an adult tells a child that somebody has to go far, far away, it means that this somebody is going to die. As my father told me this, I thought, can’t you wait a while before you die? This incident of the super-loser Mr. Hippo falsely accusing me of burning the class geography exams hadn’t even been resolved yet! But after that my father didn’t say a word; it was just like after you put in your last coin and the machine suddenly shuts down and only the words GAME OVER appear on the screen. Afterward all I heard through the receiver was the sound of those two women continuing their argument. Mr. Hippo took the phone from me to listen and cursed, “What the hell is this?” He then knocked me upside the head again. “Great,” he said. “Your own father doesn’t even give a damn about you! Just—great!”

It was at this moment that I violently rammed my head into Mr. Hippo’s stomach. He was still holding on to the receiver, which he hadn’t had time to hang up, so when Mr. Hippo went down, the teacup, pencil holder, coffee cup, blue and red folders, and a steaming hot lunchbox, which got caught up in the phone cord, all landed on top of him. His back crushed the wooden newspaper rack, and perhaps the newspaper rack busted something else, but I didn’t pay any attention because my head was really aching. I wondered if I had knocked my head on Mr. Hippo’s tie clip.

This was my last moment in that pathetic middle school. As I scrambled out of the principal’s office, I announced to Mr. Hippo, who was sprawled out on the floor with a piece of roast pork on his chest: “I’m not the one who burned the exams! So fuck your mother!”

As for who burned the exams, how they did it, and why, I knew absolutely nothing. All I knew was that after this, that pathetic middle school would never want me back; moreover, I didn’t want that damn school either. I left my backpack at school, with my Chinese, English, math, geography, and science textbooks, plus my gym clothes, inside. Sitting on my desk was my lunchbox, and inside were probably the dumplings my grandma had made. And in my desk drawer were three Batman stickers, a set of toy handcuffs, and an old shell that had been vacated by a hermit crab—the top of the shell was sharp and pointy just like a clump of shit.

For pretty much the better half of the afternoon, I just aimlessly wandered around those super-boring streets near my school, endlessly pondering just what else I had left behind. And then some stories began to flash through my mind. I saw Mr. Hippo barging into my classroom with that piece of roast pork still stuck to his chest. He told all the students in the class to stand up and line up beside their desks. Then he went over and confiscated my backpack, lunchbox, and everything in my desk drawer. As Mr. Hippo turned around, I even saw my classmate Huang Munan give him the finger—I hoped he wouldn’t get caught. I also saw Dai Wanqing, Li Ahji, and Chen Xiaohao giggling to themselves like a bunch of cute little kids. And then it began to rain.

The rain was really out of control—you could say it was just as violent as our teacher’s pointer. I was drenched from head to toe; even my socks were soaked. The area between my toes and the bottom of my socks was even steeping in swishy swashy rainwater. Coughing, I began to run home: cough, cough, cough, swish swash swish, cough, cough, swish swash swish, cough, cough, swish swash swish.

What happened next, you can blame on the rain. If it hadn’t been for that rainstorm, or even if it had only been a little drizzle, I would have never run all the way home. If I hadn’t sprinted directly home, I never would have gotten that damn phone call. If I hadn’t received that phone call, I naturally wouldn’t have said all those nasty things over the phone. If I’d never opened my big mouth on the telephone, in all probability, my life would be very different.

I had just taken off my pants and the rest of my clothes—which were soaked so thoroughly that they were as heavy as a cotton blanket—and was drinking a bowl of the mung-bean soup my uncle had left over from the day before. The soup had already begun to go sour. I choked for a second and began to cough again. Then the phone rang.

“Hello? Are either of Hou Shichun’s parents home?” It was Mr. Hippo. “This is Mr. He from Minzu Middle School.”

“……”

“Hello, whom am I speaking with?”

“……”

“Hello?”

“I’m the uncle.” My throat was hoarse anyway.

“Who?”

“I’m Hou Shichun’s uncle,” I said in an even lower tone.

“Oh, hello, hello! Excuse me, but has Hou Shichun come home yet?”

“He’s at school.”

“Well, let me tell you what happened! This morning in the principal’s office we had a bit of an incident…” Mr. Hippo then went on to repeat the whole story about the geography exams and how this afternoon in the principal’s office I “refused to submit to discipline and hit a teacher.” These incidents were of a most serious nature, too serious, and he hoped that my parents could come down to the school at their earliest possible convenience to deal with them.

“That’s not possible,” I said.

“What? I can’t hear you that clearly.”

“Hou Shichun’s father has passed away. We are extremely busy, call back in another two days.”

I hung up the phone.

By the time it stopped raining, I had already changed into a set of dry clothes. I put on a Chicago Bulls T-shirt, on the front of which was the number 23—of course you know who that is. Not long afterward I began to be referred to as “Bull-man,” “that little Bull-boy,” “Bull,” “Bull-tail,” and other related names, and it was all owing to this T-shi...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Half title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents 
• Translator’s Introduction
• My Kid Sister
• Wild Child