Summary: | 碩士 === 國立中正大學 === 台灣文學研究所 === 101 === Abstract
This article studies female writer Zheng Hua-Juan who was awarded the Mark Twain Travel Journalism Award, exploring the two decades of writing done in foreign land before and after her marriage.
Zheng married a German, a marriage leading me to think that for her their are two foreign countries: one that is her living “home,” another being her travels. Both are filled with the delight of cross-cultural translation. She calls her husband Old Fritz, a term of endearment. Through her life with Old Fritz, German neighbors, her parents-in-law, the family, the interaction between different cultures, customs and social behaviour, she travels in and out of a cultural space that constantly challenges her with differences as well as similarities. However, when she leaves her home in Germany, and enters into another home in foreign land, the cultural differences are revealed in her writing. Her writing shows her reflection on nature and human landscape. Either “at home” or on travels, the two foreign experiences and homes provide her with abundant material that produces in her works a sense of delight and pleasure shared by both readers and author alike
Due to the multi-genre nature of her work, the analysis in this article includes Ci and Qu (Chinese poetic forms), prose, novel, journal and deals with her point of balance in adjusting to German lifestyle and culture and her travel writing as part of Taiwanese literature. The article centers on her feminine travel writing coming from a Taiwanese woman married into a German culture, and her home-themed travel literature. Overall, Zheng’s travel writing shows positive thinking and strikes a balance between native and foreign cultures. Through her works, we can get a glimpse of German culture in terms of cultural behavior and also gains insight into the casual European lifestyle, which all make Zheng’s light prose authentic and realistic.
Keywords: travel writing, home travel, customs, cultural differences, family value
|