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By Shen Yan 沈言
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I often get the sense that I stand with a view of several events of historical significance.
When my grandfather balanced the books in his shop, he recited the multiplication table in Japanese. The ledger pages flipped quickly as he kept count while murmuring, “three sixes are 18, three sevens are 21.”
It was a habit from the Japanese colonial period. My grandfather had studied at Chang Jung Senior High School; my grandmother at Chang Jung Girl’s Senior High School. In those days, not many had the opportunity to attend high school, and Japanese education left a profound influence.
The changes that took place after the war left behind very different memories within my family. The family members on my father’s side originally owned land. After the passage of the 37.5 Percent Arable Rent Reduction Act (耕地三七五減租條例) in 1951 — which capped the maximum arable land rent to 37.5 percent of crop yield — the tenant farming system changed and their income rapidly declined. They fell into financial difficulty, and their land was auctioned off by the court.
However, my mother’s side experienced the opposite. They had originally been tenant farmers under the 37.5 percent rent system, but after many years of effort, they were able to purchase the land they had been cultivating from the landlord. The same policy left two families with completely different impressions.
My parents also often spoke about the atmosphere in schools during their time as students. For their generation, the political order after the 228 Incident — a series of violent crackdowns on protesters in the weeks and months following the brutal beating of a tobacco vendor in Taipei by government agents on Feb. 27, 1947 — was closely tied to the power structures on campus.
Most of their teachers were from China, and local students who spoke Taiwanese would be corrected — sometimes even mocked — and were often reprimanded publicly. Language, accents and power formed a clear boundary within the campus environment.
My father-in-law came from a different chapter of history. He was not a local, but a student in exile who had moved to Taiwan from China. As a child, he experienced the 713 Penghu Incident (七一三澎湖事件), a violent event that broke out on July 13, 1949, during the White Terror, when the Republic of China suppressed protesting refugees, mostly students and teachers, from China’s Shandong Province.
That group of students lived under long-term military control, with their daily lives, and often their futures, dictated by the armed forces. At the time, some students and teachers were executed for refusing to comply. Later, the government arranged for some of the students to enter the teacher training system. National Yuanlin Normal School, a special school for the displaced Chinese students in Changhua County’s Yuanlin City (員林), set up special classes to allow them to complete their studies and become teachers.
My father-in-law taught Chinese literature, although his strong Shandong accent made it difficult for his students to understand him at first.
Thus, within the same family, a peculiar scene emerged. On one side was my grandfather calculating accounts in Japanese, and on the other was a teacher speaking Mandarin with a strong Shandong accent. Two languages, two histories, coexisted simultaneously at the same dining room table.
The era in which I grew up marked yet another turning point. The 2014 Sunflower movement, a multi-day protest by students and civil groups opposing a cross-strait service trade agreement with China, gave many young people in my generation their first direct encounter with politics and prompted a re-evaluation of the historical memories left by the previous generation. Stories that had once existed only in conversations with our elders suddenly connected with contemporary political realities.
It was after looking back that I came to understand the position I occupy. My grandparents’ experiences during the Japanese colonial era, my parents’ lives after the 228 Incident and the changes brought to their families by land reform, my father-in-law’s encounter with the Penghu 713 Incident and my generation’s involvement in the Sunflower movement — these once separate histories ultimately converged to form a single family.
I stand at a time when several notable events shape who we are. The political experiences of my grandparents, parents, father-in-law and my generation might seem to come from completely different eras, yet they all ultimately point to the same chapter in history — the political trajectory of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), extending from the authoritarian era to the present.
And within our family, this sign has always served as a reminder that we must eventually part ways with the KMT.
Shen Yan is a political commentator.
Translated by Kyra Gustavsen
