Abstract
To understand the literary fields of Taiwan and Hong Kong in the 1950s respectively, it is inevitable to investigate the literary exchanges between these two regions. This paper attempts to investigate one aspect of such exchanges through ”The Opinion Poll for the Most Favorite Literary Works by One Hundred Thousand of Youths” held in 1955 by The Chinese Youth Association for Creative Writing. The resulted list of the most favorite books includes four works published by Hong Kong publishers and among these works, the publication of Eileen Chang's The Rice-spout Song and Zhao Zi-Fan's Halfway-Down Society suggests Hong Kong as a mediating space in the political and military system of the Cold War and the crucial role Hong Kong played in constructing and shaping Taiwan's literary field. This paper thus wishes to articulate the relationships between canonization and readership as well as between canonical works and cultural milieu, especially the constitution of the canon and the global structure of the Cold War. Besides examining the subjectivities of and local experiences represented in Taiwan and Hong Kong literatures from a comparative standpoint, this paper also discusses the characteristics of the literary fields of Taiwan and Hong Kong in the 1950s and compares their historical experiences and trajectories that these two places has fellowed.