Wang Tuo

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Wang Tuoh (Chinese: 王拓; pinyin: Wáng Tuo; born 1944) is a Taiwanese writer, intellectual, literary critic and politician. He was born in Badouzi 八斗子 , then a small fishing village near the northern port city of Keelung. His name was originally Wang Hong Jiu 王紘久.

Wang Tuoh published his first short story, The Hanging Tree in 1970, and went on to write a series of stories set in his home village of Badouzi that drew heavily on his own experiences in a small, insular village where everyone is part of a larger family that has been there for five generations. The most well-known of these stories is the novella Auntie Jinshui（金水嬸）(published September 1976) which describes the story of the eponymous Auntie Jinshui. Auntie Jinshui is a street peddlar who has successfully raised and educated six sons, but falls upon especially hard times after being swindled by a priest introduced to her by one of her sons. She then falls behind on her payments to her Hui （會), an informal village credit network, and finds herself gradually ostracized from her friends and family. This novella was also later made into a movie.

His novels are The Story of Cowbelly Harbour,(牛肚港的故事 )(1982) and Taipei, Taipei!,(台北，台北!) (1983), both written while he was in jail as a political prisoner.

After being freed from prison in 1984, he joined the political opposition to the ruling Kuomintang and in 1991 was elected to Taiwan's Legislative Yuan as a Democratic Progressive Party member for Keelung City. He still holds this seat today.