What is Love?
Remembering Chiung Yao (琼瑶), a Taiwan-based novelist.
What is love? This was a question that started to intrigue me when I was in high school, a time when I was beginning to navigate the complexities of human emotions.
It was the late 1980s. China was still a relatively cultural desert, struggling to shake off the harmful effects of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). During that time, the Chinese Communist Party ruthlessly erased foreign and traditional Chinese cultural elements, including books, songs, and films, from Chinese society. The Chinese people were shut off from the outside world, both culturally and physically. During this dark age, the Chinese people were only allowed to read books written by the dictator, Chairman Mao, and the eight revolution-themed operas produced by Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, were the only entertainment for the masses. The acting and movements in those operas were exaggerated to a point almost comical, and the dialogues were terrible: actors were reciting slogans rather than talking like normal people.
Only after Mao’s death did his successors end the nation’s self-imposed isolation, implement limited economic reform, and open up out of the desire to keep the party in power. People were eager to return to normalcy after a long national nightmare. However, the damage the Cultural Revolution had done to Chinese society and its scars on people’s psyche ran so deep that in the 1980s, almost a decade after reform and opening up, most people were still unsure what an everyday life meant.
The economic reform produced many upsides, including the influx of cultural imports, including TV dramas from Taiwan and Hong Kong. This was when the Chinese people first learned about Chiung Yao (琼瑶), a Taiwan-based romance writer, through drama series adapted from Yao’s novels. These dramas felt familiar and strange simultaneously: the cast spoke Mandarin like the rest of us but with an unfamiliar accent. The leading men, including villains, were handsome, and the women were beautiful. At the time, most mainland women wore short hair, a style populated by female Red Guards, who complimented their looks with green military caps. But in Yao’s drama series, most female characters wore their hair long and dressed in figure-hugging outfits.
None of the actors shouted slogans or made exaggerated movements. Their dialogue sounded like everyday conversations regular people would have. Most shockingly, men and women in the shows openly expressed feelings to one another, and often, they were unwilling to sacrifice their individual feelings for anything else, something Mainland Chinese regarded as almost scandalous. Still, people fell in love with those drama series because they offered a fresh break from the political rhetoric that dominated our lives. Yao TV dramas celebrating human emotions, individual experiences, and beauty were the fresh air people craved.
It’s no wonder that Chiung Yao’s dramas and romance novels became an instant hit in China. The love stories she weaved, whether on the pages of her books, on the small screen, or in cinemas, held a unique charm that resonated with a spiritually hungry nation, especially my generation, the adolescents of that time.
Under the weight of strict societal norms, love was a forbidden subject for adolescents in that era. High school romance was a taboo, believed to be a distraction from studies. Any hint of violation would lead to severe reprimands, and some unfortunate souls might have to change schools or even drop out.
At home, we rarely heard our parents talk about love either. Their generation was exhausted from endless political movements and suffered extreme economic hardship. Survival had always been their top concern. Thinking and talking about love was a luxury they couldn’t afford. When it came to parenting, my parents’ generation firmly believed that it was one of parents’ fundamental duties to help children focus on practical matters such as getting good grades and good jobs rather than talking to children about love and romance.
Since our parents wouldn’t discuss love with us, Chiung Yao’s romance dramas and books became my generation’s default life coach on love and relationships. School officials and parents forbade us from watching Yao’s TV dramas or reading her books, worrying her love stories would poison young minds with “wrong” thoughts and ideas. But like all youths, the more the adults tried to stop us from doing something, the more we sought it out. While there was not much we could do about fighting our parents for more TV time, sneaking Yao’s novels to school was much more manageable. Thus, secretly passing Yao’s novels in classrooms and reading them under the cover of textbooks became a rite of passage for my generation. All the girls started wearing long hair, too, a daring fashion statement, and a symbol of our defiance.
Yao's writing was deeply influenced by classic Chinese literature. Her book titles often derived from classic Chinese poems, and her sentences flowed like spring water. In her books, Yao elevated love as the essential element in a person’s life, and she seemed to believe that true love, a love that transcends material wealth and societal expectations, was worth sacrificing everything for. This perspective on love, as a pure and selfless emotion, influenced many young women who then became obsessed with finding such a love. But Yao never told us what happened after finding your true love since she rarely wrote about marriage.
After reading a few of Yao’s books, I began to feel that her books were like honey: the first spoonful was delicious and sweet. But a few spoons later, the sweetest became overwhelming and less delightful. I never wanted love to become all-consuming in my life.
As I matured, I gradually distanced myself from Chiung Yao’s influence. However, I never ceased to be grateful to her. Her books, like a beacon of light, not only underscored the significance of love but also shaped our understanding of it. They liberated many young souls, encouraging them to pursue their own paths to happiness. The fact that young people are more captivated by love than revolution is a sign of a healthier society.
This week, I learned that Chiung Yao committed suicide. She was 86. Some speculated that she couldn’t endure the loneliness after losing her husband five years ago. I am not interested in speculating or gossiping. I only want to write a few words to commemorate this woman, an influential writer and a cultural icon, who lived a long and fruitful life, and left behind 60 books, more than 100 TV series and films adapted from her books, and an entire generation learned about what love is from her.