Journal paper

Issue No.	No. 66
Title	Development, Continuity, Regime Change: Taiwan as Depicted in the Diary of Wu Xin-rong (1933-1967)
Author	Lin, Ting-kuo
Page	129-174
Abstract	The well-known author and doctor Wu Xin-Rong was born in 1907, in what is now the Jiangjun district of Tainan city, Taiwan. After graduating from medical school in Tokyo in 1932, he returned to Taiwan to practice medicine at Chiali village in Beimen county. There he worked for the remainder of his life at Chiali Hospital, which had been founded by his uncle Wu Ping-Ting. When he was not busy practicing medicine, Wu also wrote, engaged in business, and participated in various political and social activities. He was a long-standing member of the Medical Association, for instance; he was also a Senator representing Tainan county. In 1952, he became chief editor of the Tainan Documentation Committee, a position that he would hold for eight years, and that resulted in the ten-volume work The Tainan County Chronicles. He died suddenly from a heart attack in 1967. 　　From 1933 to 1967, Wu Xin-Rong kept a diary chronicling not only events at the hospital but also daily life in Taiwan during those years. Through his diary, which has recently been published in eleven volumes as the Wu Xin-Rong Diary Series, we catch a glimpse of Taiwan, as seen through the eyes of a small-town doctor. Indeed, his diary is a microcosm of life in Taiwan for more than three decades. As Wu vividly recorded many unforgettable details in his journal, and as he lived successively through two different regimes—first the Japanese colonial government, whose rule over the island ended in 1945, and then the Kuomintang government, which took over Taiwan at the end of the Second World War—his diary is also an invaluable historical document. This study probes Wu’s diary to see how he participated in political and social activities; it also looks at how the two political systems that he lived under changed and defined his career and life experiences.
Keyword	Wu Xin-Rong, medical business, political participation, public affairs
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