Influenced by the wave of socialism after the Russian Revolution of 1917, after establishing the Taiwan Cultural Association, Chiang Wei-shui and Lien Wen-ching subsequently organized the New Taiwan Alliance and the Social Problem Research Society to invite proletariat youths in Taipei to form a reading group. In 1927, Lien led a group of proletariat youths and gained the leadership of the Taiwan Cultural Association. The next year, Lin Mu-shun, who was expelled due to the student protests at the Taipei Normal School, went to Shanghai, where he and Hsieh Hsueh-hung, a modern woman inspired by the Taiwan Cultural Association, established the Taiwanese Communist Party. After returning to Taiwan, they dominated the development of the Taiwan Farmers’ Association. Lai Ho, who wrote “On the way to Meeting,” had always had a critical self-awareness regarding the Taiwan Cultural Association’s compromise with the landocracy. His poem “Sacrificed in the Awakening” expressed his sympathy and encouragement to the sugarcane farmers in the Erlin Incident. “Advancing,” written after the split of the Taiwan Cultural Association, is a prose published on the inaugural issue of the New Taiwan Cultural Association’s New Taiwan People Times, where Lai served as its supervisor and reporter. The prose symbolizes people’s difficult journey of searching for illuminating light in the colonial darkness. “An Elegy (of Taiwan)” on the other hand, is Lai’s accusation of the Musha Incident.
When Chen Cheng-po was studying in Tokyo, he had already been influenced by the Proletariat Arts Movement and had not only collected related postcards but also painted A Crowd, included the book On Proletarian Painting in his painting My Family, and created various sketch drawings of laboring scenes. These can all be viewed as ways of expressing his self-aspiration. After 1939, Hung Rui-lin began painting works featuring miners and their labor. After WWII, works such as Lee Shih-chiao’s Market Entrance and Li Mei-shu’s At Dusk conveyed a self-awareness informed by social critique. Since its beginning, the Taiwan Cultural Association had already prescribed cultural plays and motion pictures as means to enlighten people. Anarchist Chang Wei-hsien also organized the drama groups, Sing-kong Society for Theater Research and Bîn-hong Society for Theater Research, whereas the New Taiwan Cultural Association organized the Culture Theatre Troupe in Tainan and published The Equator to engage in subjects such as “arts and society." In 1923, after its headquarter was moved to Tainan, a motion picture team was formed; and afterwards, Tsai Pei-huo invited Lu Ping-ing and Lin Chiu-wu to be benshi (motion picture orators) in the screening tour of the Mei-tai Group. Throughout the year of 1927, there had been 94 motion picture screenings (katsudo shashin) attended by more than 35,000 people. Later, motion pictures also became “cultural movies” screened during labor strikes. (Chiang Po-shin)
