英文摘要
Lien Heng（1878-1936）, author of The General History of Taiwan, is remembered by the postbellum generations in this island as a patriotic historian, a national poet, a scholar of integrity, and other kinds of honorable person.
But the prewar generations had a different memory. Some might say by euphemisms that Lien was a precious historiographer although he was also an opium addict; he used to stand by his people but later catered to the colonizer authorities. Another would satirize Lien for frequently taking a noncommittal stance. The other would rebuke him as but a colony government hack. But the most stunning vituperation is that Lien was a traitor. In the last case, Lien was depicted as being servile to the Government-General of Taiwan and stymying the anti-Japanese movements launched by his countryfellows. He was ostracized from the Taiwanese circles to the extent that "even a dog or a pig would spurn him." As a result, he had to move to mainland China in 1933 to seek new recourse where he died three years later.
However, people in China appreciate him after reading his works. They, of course, had hardly chance to check his behaviors in homeland in dealing with the Japanese colonizers and Taiwanese collaborators. After the Nationalist government was jeopardized by the Communists and found nowhere to go but withdraw to Taiwan in 1949, the unsettled government needed the islanders ’ supports. One of its expedients to ensure local underpinning is to give public praise of Lien Heng, for the sake that Lien was deemed by the mainlanders as a has-been with native origin and, the most important, an ethnic loyalist to the Chinese. By doing so, the Nationalist authorities expected that it would conduce to appeal for the so-called "Taiwan spirit" in backing the task of recovering the lost mainland.
Lien Heng was acclaimed by all means, including a public tribute from the president, meetings, speeches of eulogy, poems and hymn composition, exhibitions, biographies and memento books compiling, sweepingly reporting, memorial buildings, statues making, commemorative foundation and scholarship, collection and frequent reprints of his writings, seminars, conferences, namesakes in public resorts, selected readings of his works and commendation in high school texts, and etc.
Students of teacher ’s training schools were required by the authorities to sit in for speeches instilling the ideas that Lien Heng was "the greatest Taiwanese" and a single copy of The General History of Taiwan was more powerful than the strength combination of the Japanese Army, Navy and Air Force. The teachers-to-be were also urged to take Lien Heng as an optimal model.
Through the aforementioned process, all pernicious records of Lien Heng were eliminated, diluted or sanitized, while many of his praiseworthy credits were exaggerated, to the extent that historical facts were audaciously twisted. In the long run, a sacrosanct Lien Heng was forged. Almost no virtue, merit and doctrine he had not fulfilled
In this process, both the "protection effect" and "patent-transferring effect" were witnessed between Lien Heng and his son Lien Chen-tung, Lien Heng and his grandson Lien Chan, Lien family and Chang Ch ’i-yün, the most important promoter of the stature of Lien Heng, Lien Heng and the Nationalist government, or even Lien Heng and whoever used Lien ’s icon.
Nonetheless, the construction of "the collective memory of Lien Heng" is next to perfectness. Some old ill memories about him still exist in private literature. They would any time expose and threaten the credibility of current remembrance.