Reading Summation 8 –Jin dai Taiwan can shi dang an by Qiu, Guozhen

This book is about the tragic history in Taiwan which including about 290 cases that were happened in the past. Through these cases, the audiences can understand the absurdity of the times, how the rulers of Taiwan treated Taiwanese which give us a lot of heartbreaking reflection. Although many Taiwanese people do not care about the past, but they also ignore the significance of inherent. For me, there were some similar stories that happened on my family, but I will never know why if I have not read this book. One of the similar was happened during the White Terror in Taiwan (40s to 90s) for my grandmother. In the time of period, government officers and soldiers forcibly plundered property because the excuse for seeking bandits, so my grandmother hidden the property in the bamboo of the fences. Fortunately, no one got arrested or missing in the events, and the property was not snatched. 

In fact, many activists were vilified as rebels in the Taiwan history, and the one of the example was Cheng Nan-Jung who was a Taiwanese publisher and a pro-democracy activist. He is most known internationally for setting himself on fire in support of Taiwanese independence, and he believed the freedom of speech and died for it. Because of Cheng’s published works that were all about Taiwanese independence, Taiwanese government framed him for printing a proposal for a constitution of the Republic of Taiwan and tried to attest him. However, he committed suicide by self- immolation in his office before the riot police came, but more and more conjectures point out that he was kill by petrol bombs that used by the riot polices in 1987. I am sad that he died that the year I had fire years old.

Through this book, I reveal a scar which is about self-ignorance and the truth in history. I feel shamed because before I started my thesis, I didn’t know who Cheng Nan-Jung was, and I naive the think that under Kuomintang rule in Taiwan is a country full of freedom of speech. Of course, even in the recent days, the government party people domination and persecution still exists but change another type of form. There are still many people fight for Taiwan right, and the form of activism is changing. I hope my thesis can have some effects for it.