“What 228 deprived was not just the lives of a generation’s elites; it deprived the various beautiful possibilities those people could have brought to Taiwan if they were still alive.”
These words are from a press conference held on February 27, 2014, by the “I am a student, I oppose Want-Want China, Anti-Media Monopoly Youth Alliance,” advocating for renaming “228 Peace Memorial Park” to “228 Taiwan Suffering Memorial Park.” The speaker mentioned this was a quote from the Republic of China’s historian, Chou Wan-yao.
Since then, many people have used such flowery rhetoric filled with beautiful imagination to shift the responsibility for “all the problems Taiwan has today in politics, economics, education, language, art, and culture” entirely… entirely… entirely onto the countless “beautiful possibilities” destroyed by the Republic of China government when it killed Taiwanese people on February 28, 1947.
Look, another piece of absolute bullshit has been released by a 🦠 brain—
And it’s quite a hilarious piece of bullshit…
It’s truly laughable that some people, who usually love to talk about “servility” and “intellectual scum,” so deeply worship those elites of the Japanese occupation era whom they have never even met.
What’s even more humorous is that many Taiwanese people barely know any of the elites cultivated during the Japanese occupation. About the only one they can name is perhaps Chen Cheng-po.
However, the reason Chen Cheng-po is famous is that he was a very talented painter. But few people know (or rather, it has been excessively downplayed and glorified by the DPP’s education authorities) the reason why he was involved in the February 28 incident and even shot.
👨💼 Chen Cheng-po’s identity was not ‘Painter,’ but ‘Politician’
In the 228 Incident, Chen Cheng-po’s identity was not that of a painter, but a Taiwan area council representative; he was a political figure.
Chen Cheng-po came forward to protest the use of excessive force by the Nationalist Army during the process of stopping the 228 riots that broke out all over Taiwan (it has now been proven that a Large number of communist elements took the opportunity to organize Large-scale armed resistance). As a result, after he stepped forward to intervene, he ended up in the same predicament as others.
In that chaotic time and space, just imagine what would happen if Wang Shih-chien rushed into the Sunflower Student Movement and loudly opposed the storming of the Executive Yuan.
It’s fine to say so now when media is developed, but back then, shortly after the end of the chaotic World War II, how many people had the ability to specifically recognize the face of a political figure under the chaos and rioting of various information?
Brains are meant for thinking, not for releasing bullshit…
If we’re talking about the “beautiful possibilities” killed by 228, the “Taiwanese” under the narrow definition of Taiwan independence advocates (including modern Kōmin/Imperial subjects) didn’t kill any fewer Mainlanders or “their own people” indiscriminately during the rioting and chaos.
🤷♂️ The Beautiful Imagination of Japanese-Era Elites?
Those great Taiwanese elites of the Japanese occupation era mentioned by the Taiwan independence advocates did not stop the comfort women who were deceived and kidnapped by the Japanese army, did not stop the Japanese army’s plan to eliminate the Chinese culture of their ancestors through high-pressure Imperialization (Kōminka) education, and did not stop the Japanese army from throwing Taiwanese youth into a war that did not belong to them.
Are you sure these generation elites have the face to meet their descendants when designated as such? Do you even expect them to bring much “beautiful imagination” to Taiwan??
After Nazi Germany’s defeat, those elites who supported or did not oppose Hitler during those years mostly chose to go into hiding or obscurity, because they still understood the word “Dignity”…
If they were truly elites cultivated during the Japanese occupation era, they could have gone back to the Japanese home islands with the Japanese after Japan’s defeat; the East China Sea isn’t covered.
Just admit it: the so-called “Republic of China aesthetics,” “Republic of China education,” Confucianism, morality, and culture are all part of the indelible national history and Chinese culture deeply rooted in your hearts.