The Stolen Bicycle

Miles Of Memories

Taiwanese author Wu Ming-Yi’s The Stolen Bicycle, which was on the longlist for the Man Booker International Prize for 2018, is a well-researched, deeply-felt, beautifully illustrated (by the author himself) and evocative history of Taiwan through its bicycles.

The narrator is a writer, Cheng, the younger of two sons in the large family of a poor tailor—like in India, a Taiwanese couple keeps having kids till they beget a son!  The family’s memories are dominated by stolen bicycles, that devastated them when the thefts took place, because of the expense and dependence on the mobility they provided.  Cheng’s father had disappeared with his beloved cycle and when a reader sends him a query about what happened to his father’s bike in a novel that he had written, Cheng sets out to find that and other Lucky brand bicycles—that were once the backbone of a developing country, and known in the local parlance as “iron horses.”

Not only did businessmen, professionals and government employees covet these two-wheelers—till cars became more popular—soldiers were sent out to battle on cycles during World War II.  Cheng starts collecting and restoring bicycles and joins the small community of men and women, equally enamoured of old bicycles. There’s Abbas, a war photographer, whose story is woven into the narrative, along with that of—among others-- Old Tsou, Little Hsia and A-Hun, a woman who makes butterfly collages that became such a thriving industry during the 1960s and 70s that “the butterflies themselves, once ubiquitous in the hills and fields, gradually took their leave of the era and the wild, never to return again”.

Like little tributaries to a long, raging river, there are chronicles of the War, elephants and animals in the zoo; the novel takes the reader to Burma, Thailand and Malaysia, and into the minds and memories of bicycle fanatics, who who form a strange and magical network. Through the history and design evolution of the bicycle, twentieth-century Taiwan is revealed to the reader.

The Stolen Bicyle is a blend of fiction, philosophy, memoir, nostalgia that makes for a fascinating read.  Wu Ming-Yi, who is a prominent Taiwanese writer, is also an artist, designer, photographer, professor, butterfly scholar, environmental activist, traveller and blogger; this is only his second novel to be translated into English (by Darryl Sterk). Now readers will undoubtedly look out for more from this very promising author.

The Stolen Bicycle

By Wu Ming-Yi
Translated by Darryl Sterk
Published by Text Publishing

Pages: 396