Career
Raised in Japanese-language schools, he went to the Japanese mainland, where he experienced both persecution and acceptance, especially by Japanese communists. Under these influences he became a proletarian novelist. His most famous work is The Newspaper Manitoba, first written in Japanese as『新聞配達夫』(Shimbun Haitatsu Fu) and re-written in Chinese by Yang after his imprisonment, as 送報夫.
Written in Japanese, it is the story of a young Taiwanese student struggling to make money as a newspaper delivery boy.