He was eventually deported (or in his words, half-coerced and half-tricked by the authorities into smuggling himself) back to Taiwan. Hou Dejian was one of the “four gentlemen” who led a hunger strike at this monument at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. The 1978 Descendents of the Dragon (龍的傳人), which expressed pride in being Chinese, was a huge hit in both Taiwan and later China. Hou writes that he was struggling financially at that time as he was notoriously difficult to work with. “I didn’t have the courage to directly refuse them, but I decided to temporarily leave Taiwan,” he writes.
