Yu-chin Chen

2022 Taiwan Ministry of Culture Fellow

Chen Yu-chin

Yu-Chin Chen is a Taiwanese novelist, born in New Taipei City, Taiwan. Her father is from China and her mother is a Chinese Indonesian. At the age of 27, Chen was the youngest person ever to be featured on the cover of the magazine “INK Literary Monthly” with his novel “Miss Kublai Khan”. Her works are light and fast-paced. “Happy Death Day” explores the issues of life and death and the digital age, and was nominated for the Taiwan Literary Award. The novel begins with two elderly people escaping from a hospital, which is like a road novel of death. The narrative is direct, and the reading has a sense of continuous progress.

The title of the non-fiction work of “Taipei People to Be” seems to be a small joke on Hsien-Yung Pai’s “Taipei People”, but there is a strange overlap between Chen’s growth and Pai’s generation. Chen is perhaps the youngest of the “second generation of foreigners”. Her father came to Taiwan from mainland China at the age of 21 and set out on a path of no return. Her mother, an Indonesian Chinese, experienced the Suharto coup in 1965 and left her homeland in search of a stable life, betting her future on Taiwan. “The Survival Guide for a Novice Writer” is a straightforward look at the situation of today’s freelance writers. “All About My Mother” is an essay about the relationship between a Hakka immigrant mother and daughter, as well as the various aspects of life seen from youth to adulthood.