the orphan of asia

According to its preface and some of the researches, the Orphan of Asia was first written in Japanese between 1943 and 1945 during the Pacific war and first published in 1946. Its Chinese translation was first published ten years later in the year of 1956. Only after the Chinese translation had been published, the novel could be widely read and recognized on the island, the hometown of the protagonist Hu Taiming. The writing and translation of the Orphan of Asia itself became a journey of wandering, exiling and expatriating, even though the protagonist was never forced to leave his hometown. And the process of translation became traumatized in the society of Taiwan after the Second World War. People are not able to understand and retrospect their past without the agency of translation. If the works are not translated into Chinese, they would be inaccessible to most of the people on the island. While the people have to retrospect their past experience through the selective perspectives of translation agency, the identity they formed through the works would be dubious.