The Sunflower Movement as an Event Text

As someone who has participated in the Sunflower Movement, it is a somewhat challenging task to reflect on and define the movement as an event text, since memories can be fickle, and the emotional repercussions have become a part of who I am since then. I didn't join the movement from the beginning, partly because I have been raised to stay as far away from politics as possible. My parents grew up during the White Terror Era, which refers to 38 years of martial law enforcement that enabled the authoritarian regime led by the Kuomintang (KMT, the Chinese Nationalist Party) to suppress and execute dissidents. Although I was born after Martial Law was lifted, growing up I have constantly been warned that politics is something dangerous and corrupted, and as a subservient daughter I simply followed what my parents told me to do, that is, to be a good student and avoid getting involved in any form of political activism. I began to closely follow the movement since it broke out in March 18, 2014, but it was not until after March 24 that I decided to bring myself to the streets, to be a tiny part of the peaceful sit-in protests. What accounted for the change was the incident that happened on the night of March 24. After the protesters broke into the Executive Yuan (the highest administrative organ of Taiwan), some 1,000 riot police rushed to the scene, equipped with water canons and batons, and they evicted protesters forcefully, without exempting even those peaceful protesters on the streets. Around 150 people were injured, including journalists, and some suffered from severe head injuries. At the sight of the violent eviction, protesters took photos and streamed live videos on Facebook, Instagram, and PTT (the largest terminal-based bulletin board system based in Taiwan). Graphic images of students getting beaten up flooded different media outlets, including students from my university, who were friends with my friends on Facebook.
That night I couldn't fall asleep. I remembered curling up in the small bunk bed in my dorm room, staring at my iPhone screen with my earphones on, and keeping a close eye on the updates sent out from those fighting at the frontline. I couldn't believe what I saw: riot police striking the unarmed students as if they were their arch nemeses; blood streaking down the protesters' foreheads and dripping down to the ground; protesters being forced down on their knees like defeated animals. Something in me died a little. I thought the democratization of Taiwan was something that happened in the past. I thought Taiwan was already a free, democratic nation. We were living in an era so comfortable and liberal that we forgot democracy was something hard earned. I forgot that my island was still haunted by its trauma-ridden past, as it had witnessed multiple shifts of foreign powers and undergone various forms of colonization. I forgot that democracy did not come without a price.

In the following days I went to the streets whenever I did not have class. When I went to school, almost all of my professors were completely cool with students missing classes for the protests. Some of them urged us to join the protests, saying that we would learn more in the streets than in the classroom. One of my professors who taught English literature brought a guitar and joined the students outside the parliament. I remembered how he played Bob Dylan's Blowin' in the Wind to the crowd who hadn't left the site for days. I saw some familiar faces in the crowd--some of them were students who went to the same university as I did. In addition, I talked to random strangers, hoping to make more sense of what was happening at the moment. Most of them were college students like me, and some of them were still in high school. I recalled meeting a 17-year-old girl who told me that she lived in another city and took a train there to support the movement. What connected us all as a public (or counterpublic in Michael Warner's sense) was a shared concern for the future of Taiwan, as we were all worried that the Cross-Strait Services Trade Agreement would lead to Chinese dominance of Taiwan's economy, and would therefore allow China to control Taiwan politically, eroding our democracy and freedom, which are values we hold so dearly.

I was there to witness the March 30 rally. It was organized by a coalition of student leaders and civic groups, including Lin Fei-fan and the Black Island Youth Front. Just like the other protesters, I was dressed in black. People were wearing yellow banners and holding sunflowers, which by then had become a symbol of the movement to suggest that we would not give up our hope even when we were shrouded by sheer darkness. On the banners wrote: "Save democracy; don't sell our country." The organizers estimated that 350,000 to 500,000 people massed in the streets near the Presidential Office and the parliament building, while police put the figure at 116,000. Regardless of the accurate number, I could hardly recall seeing such a massive amount of protesters ever in Taiwan, not even on TV. Unlike the past few days, when most protesters I encountered were students, this time the crowd consisted of people from all walks of life. Some were office workers; some were high school teachers; some young couples even brought their toddlers there in strollers. It was a hot and humid Sunday, and the presence of so many people intensified the heat even more. But no one was complaining about the weather; people were asking each other if they needed water or tissue paper. Makeshift podiums or stands were stationed for protesters to step up and express their opinions. At some point the crowd started to sing Island's Sunrise---a song written by the independent Taiwanese rock band Fire EX. The song emerged from a furious three-day writing-and-recording session as a response to the violent eviction by the police forces, and it was quickly adopted as the anthem of the movement. As a Hakka, I couldn't fully understand the Taiwanese lyrics, yet the emotional effect of singing along with tens of thousands of people was penetrating. At that time I knew nothing about affect theory, but looking back now I realized that it was a beautiful moment when ideology collided with collective affect, when an anonymous crowd metamorphized into an affective public.

In this experimental project, I attempt to circumscribe the Sunflower Movement as an event text from the perspective of someone who was a tiny drop in the immense ocean of protesters that were collectively concerned about the future of Taiwan. In addition to my personal account, I would also like to see how the movement was recorded in other venues, as well as the repercussions of the event. This was actually the first time for me to dig deeply into what I saw and experienced in March 2014. Since it was so close to life, I have been consciously and subconsciously avoided diving into that part of memory. Perhaps I was afraid that my direct involvement would prevent me from looking at the movement objectively. Perhaps until now I still feel unsure about whether the movement was successful or not, and what it has achieved, especially in light of what is currently happening in Hong Kong. After the Legislative Speaker Wang Jing-pyng promised to postpone review of the trade pact until legislation monitoring of all cross-strait agreements is passed, the protesters vacated the parliament on April 10, cleaning up the traces of occupation inside and outside the legislative building. Technically speaking the movement ended when the protesters dissipated and returned back to their normal lives. However, for me the Sunflower Movement did not end there. It lived on and had a lasting impact on me. Since then I have been thinking about the intersections between art and politics. It wasn't until after the movement that I began to reflect on what it means to be a Taiwanese, as Taiwan is a small island that dwells in the liminal space of ambiguities and conflicts. What does it mean to belong to a country when 90% of the countries in the world don't recognize Taiwan as an independent nation? With these doubts in mind, I decided to come to the United States to pursue a postgraduate degree in Asian Studies, hoping to maintain a critical distance and gain more clarity on the issues that have troubled me for years. To this day I still don't have clear answers to these questions, but I guess I'm making baby steps by pushing myself to confront and reflect upon this fragment of memory. A line from one of my favorite Taiwanese indie films Blue Gate Crossing goes like this: "We passed the summer without doing anything in particular, but I assume we must have left something with us. With the different things left in our lives, we grow into different adults." In a sense, the Sunflower Movement is an ongoing event text, and its ripple effects continue to shape the way I come to understand myself and the world around me.

