Lung Ying-tai () is a writer, cultural critic, and public intellectual. With more than 30 books to her credit, she not only has a large number of readers in her native Taiwan, but her works also have an impact in Chinese-language communities in Hong Kong, China, Singapore, Malaysia, and North America. Lung became widely known for her criticism on the Kuomintang party's martial law regime and has since become a critic of Mainland China's increasing restrictions on press freedom and civil liberties. Her critical essays on cultural and political issues contributed to the democratization of Taiwan.
Lung Ying-tai served as Taipei's first Cultural Bureau Chief (1999–2003) and Taiwan's first Minister of Culture (2012–2014). She established the Lung Ying-tai Cultural Foundation in 2005. She is currently engaged in full-time writing, residing in eastern Taiwan by the Pacific Ocean.
Early life
Lung Ying-tai was born in 1952 in Daliao, Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Her father, Lung Huai-sheng () left his home in Hunan and joined the Kuomintang army at the age of 15. Her parents fled mainland China after the KMT lost the Chinese Civil War in 1949. In Taiwan, Lung did not grow up in the villages built to house military families (juancun, 眷村) but was raised among the local population in several fishing and farming villages in central and southern Taiwan.
Like most mainlander refugees who migrated to Taiwan around 1949, with "no agricultural heritage to rely on, no family network to seek help from, no ancestral background or social status to lean on, and no local language and knowledge to navigate with," Lung's parents made a determined investment in the education of the next generation." Despite the financial difficulties in raising four children, Lung's mother, Ying Meijun (應美君) insisted that Lung, her only daughter, get a college education.
After attending Tainan Girls' Senior High School, Lung earned her bachelor's degree in Foreign Languages and Literature from the National Cheng Kung University and a PhD in English and American Literature from Kansas State University.
Early career, 1983-1999
Taiwan was under Kuomingtang's one-party rule when Lung Ying-tai returned to Taiwan in 1983. She started an op-ed column in the China Times, delivering reflections and critiques of contemporary Taiwan society. These essays were published collectively in 1985 as a compilation titled Ye Huo Ji (野火集, The Wild Fire Collection). The book went through 24 reprints in 21 days, garnering so much attention that poet Yu Kwang-chung referred to its impact as that of a "tornado" (the phrase in Chinese, Longjuanfeng, was a pun on Lung's name). It became "the best-selling and most-talked-about book of the decade in Taiwan," and was regarded as influential in the island's democratization process.
Lung moved to Europe with her husband in 1986. During her time in Europe, she remained prolific, authoring the following books: Ren Zai Ouzhou (人在歐洲, 1988, The Mundane and the Lofty—Journey through Europe), Xie Gei Taiwan de Xin (寫給台灣的信, 1992, Letters to Home), Kan Shiji Mo Xiang Ni Zou Lai (看世紀末向你走來, 1994, Living in a "Fin de siècle"), Haizi Ni Manman Lai (孩子你慢慢來, 1994, Take Your Time, My Children), Mei Li De Quan Li (美麗的權利, 1994, The Right to Seduce), Zai Heidebao Zhui Ru Qing Wang (在海德堡墜入情網, 1995, In the Shadows of Heidelberg: A Tale of Love and Fate), Gan Bei Ba Tuomasiman (乾杯吧托馬斯曼, 1996, Cheers, Thomas Mann), Wo De Bu An (我的不安, 1997, Our Age of Uncertainty), Ah! Shanghai Nan Ren (啊！上海男人, 1998, Shanghai Men), and Bainian Sisuo (百年思索, 1999, Reflections of this Century).
Lung writes in more than one language and for more than one audience. "It is not unusual for her to publish an essay simultaneously in Taipei's China Times and Shanghai's Wen Hui Bao, with the German version appearing in the Frankfurter Allgemein, and the English version on the BBC's European service." Her work has appeared in mainland Chinese newspapers since the early 1990s. In 1994, she criticized the Singaporean government's restrictions on personal freedom in 1994 in an article titled, "Thank God I Am Not Singaporean" (幸好我不是新加坡人).