Before serving in the army, he had no intention of writing, but then he read Gong and Sayonara, Good-Bye by the "native soil" writer Huang Chun-ming, and discovered how it was possible to make moving descriptions of the people one comes across in everyday life.
當兵之前，他沒有提筆的念頭，一直到看過鄉土作家黃春明的書《鑼》和《沙喲哪啦．再見》，才知道小說可以把生活周遭的人寫得如此生動。