Gong Sheng Music Commemoration: Remembering the 228 Massacre

‘None of us heard the gunshot on the 28th of February, but it still rings in our ears.’

Gong Sheng Music Commemoration

Every year on 28 February, a group of youth gathers outside of the Presidential Office Building on Ketagalan Boulevard in Taipei City to remember the 228 Massacre.

Beginning in 2013, Gong Sheng Music Commemoration (共生音樂節), held by Taiwanese youth who dedicate their passion to the realisation of transitional justice for the island’s chequered past, aims to pass on knowledge regarding the 228 Massacre to society. Gong Sheng allows complex historical memory to re-enter the Taiwanese community through performances from musical artists supporting cultural diversity and collective memory, as well as exhibitions, speeches from the victims and scholars, markets of vendors appealing to human rights and guided tours around negative heritage related to the Massacre.

Perpetually conversing with the present, the past never stays in the past. The aftermath of the 228 Massacre still persists, and our efforts do not end after the commemoration. Over the years, the Taiwan Youth Association for Transitional Justice and Kiōng-Seng (台灣共生青年協會), the organiser behind Gong Sheng, has been providing society with various ways to learn about the Massacre, such as walking tours, student camps, literature workshops, seminars and photography exhibitions.

Gong Sheng speaks candidly in a manner approachable to all communities and invites people to learn about our memory once erased, in which they may pinpoint themselves. On the path towards justice, one will no longer be a stranger to one’s own history. We want society to stop acting as an onlooker, but rather a participant in the bringing of justice. One shall realise the inseparability of oneself and the past of their community, and discover their agency.

Gong Sheng Music Commemoration does not serve to celebrate, nor is to call for the abolishment of any memory, but aims to gently navigate our history with public reflection and sincere confrontation with the past, so as to live with the once tainted memory.

The 228 Massacre

In Taiwan, Peace Memorial Day on 28 February is a holiday. But what happened on this day that was so important it became a national holiday?

With the price of household goods skyrocketing due to resources in Taiwan being deliberately sent to China to support the KMT (the Kuomintang, or the Nationalist Party of the Republic of China) in the Chinese Civil War, serious cultural barriers between the Taiwanese and Chinese and corruption in the KMT government, 1947 was a terrible year for Taiwan. The coup de grâce destroying Taiwanese society’s faith in the Chinese and the KMT government was an incident on 27 February involving the confiscation of black market cigarettes in Taipei.

At the time, the selling of cigarettes was controlled by the Monopoly Bureau. Despite being illegal, smuggled foreign cigarettes were popular on the market for their better quality. In late February 1947, authorities received intelligence suggesting that the transaction of black market cigarettes would be carried out around the Tua-tiu-tiann (大稻埕) area in Taipei. On 27 February, officers from the Monopoly Bureau arrested cigarette seller Lin Chiang-Mai (林江邁) outside the coffee shop Thinn-Be-Te-Pang (天馬茶房), which was frequented by social elites and educated urbanites. The officers took away Lin’s cigarettes and earnings, and one officer hit her with his gun whilst Lin quarrelled with him, which attracted an angry crowd. The officers were surrounded by the Taiwanese who could not take any more of the Chinese immigrants’ abuses over the islanders, and one officer fired a warning shot into the air so as to get himself out. But the shot accidentally killed a Taiwanese passerby. The officers fled from the scene, and the crowd marched to government authorities to seek justice for the murder.

The next day, Taiwanese people gathered in the Taipei city centre to protest against what happened. Upon their arrival at the Office of the Governor-General of Taiwan Province, many were gunned down by military police, which triggered all out rage from the Taiwanese against the Chinese, a rage that had accumulated since the Republic of China’s occupation of Taiwan in 1945. It all started on this day. 28 February 1947.

Within days, the situation in Taipei was broadcasted all over Taiwan on the radio. Some infuriated Taiwanese went out onto the streets to protest and destroy government property, and some assembled armed groups to fight against the KMT’s abuses. To maintain stability, social elites established Settlement Committees, which also served as a bridge between the Taiwanese and the KMT. After days of communication and negotiation between the committees and the KMT, the Office of the Governor-General of Taiwan Province promised that systematic restructuring would be carried out.

Sadly, what came after was not the reform pledged, but two months of the KMT’s suppression and slaughter, followed by 40 years of silencing Taiwanese society.

For decades, 28 February was a blank page on Taiwanese calendars, representing a never-healing wound within Taiwan’s cultural and historical consciousness. However, with movements to redress injustice for the 228 Massacre in motion and the gradual realisation of Taiwanese democratisation, the blurred and scattered memories of 228 were finally pieced together and slowly returned to society.

Victims of the 228 Massacre

Here we would like to share with you the stories of two women who lost their husbands in the Massacre.

• Chen Yueh-O (陳月娥)

‘I’m a woman who has had a harsh life,’ said Chen Yueh-O.

Chen Yueh-O’s first husband, Su Sung-Yuan (蘇嵩源), died in the 228 Massacre. And the universe didn’t treat her kindly afterwards. Her second husband, Chang Tien-Ting (張添丁), sadly died during the White Terror era. One can find scars from all the atrocities of postwar Taiwan throughout her life.

Chen Yueh-O never forgot the day when her husband, Su Sung-Yuan, was abducted. It was Sunday, the twentieth day after their wedding day. People gathered around a temple nearby Su and Chen’s residence in Taipei to witness a bizarre phenomenon that had occurred during a poe divination (擲筊黏筊), which was seen by soldiers at the military base across from the temple. Fearing that the Taiwanese people were gathering in a show of hostility against the KMT, the soldiers then sent troops out in trucks to shoot down all people in the streets, and strip searched every single household in the area. Despite knowing what happened outside, Su Sung-Yuan and a cousin of Chen Yueh-O still decided to go out, as they thought they were safe, having done nothing wrong. They were abducted by soldiers right outside the house.

Chen was not informed by the authorities of her husband’s death, but was told of it the next day by her friends, who saw Su Sung-Yuan shot dead under a bridge around the Gongguan (公館) area to the south of the Taipei city centre. When she went to collect his body, she found that her husband’s suit and gold ring had been stripped off. What was left were only his underwear and the wounds all over his body.

Chen Yueh-O did not register as family of a victim of the 228 Massacre, as she and Su Sung-Yuan had not completed the legal marriage process at the time Su was murdered. Legally speaking, they were not associated with each other, but she still wished to redress the injustice for him.

‘It’s been over 40 years. Yes, if there is a chance to seek justice, I would want that, so as to attain some peace for my heart before I die.’

• Lin Su-Liang (林溯涼)

‘On the day that I registered as a family member of a victim of the 228 Massacre, I told the clerk who processed my application that I know people who could testify for my case and I have the evidence. I could show him my late husband’s skull. The bullet hole was still there,’ Lin Su-Liang said.

Lin Su-Liang’s late husband, Lin Ching-Chuan (林清泉), was a victim of the 228 Massacre in Keelung City. They were a wealthy family, but after the passing of her husband, Lin Su-Liang could only raise her four-year-old and six-month-old children alone by selling shaved ice.

Lin Ching-Chuan was abducted on 9 March 1947. One week later, his body was found in the harbour behind Keelung’s East 3 Pier. His hands were tied behind him, his mouth was stuffed with cotton and his diamond ring, watch and money had all been stolen.

Lin Su-Liang did not know what happened to her husband. She only knew that the day when Lin Ching-Chuan was abducted was very cold. At one moment, he had been chatting with mates by the furnace, and in the next, soldiers broke in. They tried to flee, but were still caught and abducted.

‘There is no honour in dying in the 228 Massacre. What is honourable about one’s husband being abducted and murdered? What is honourable about one’s family being destroyed? Why would I want any monument?!’

‘We should not hate all the Chinese refugees and their descendants. What I hate is the country who murdered my husband for no reason.’

‘How should I be compensated? How could my agony in all these 47 years ever be compensated?!’

Any of the Republic of China’s official compensation and consolation for victims of the 228 Massacre is undoubtedly ironic to Lin Su-Liang, as the Massacre took away her husband and ruined her family.

Neither monetary compensation nor monuments can turn back time.

Translator: Chris Lynd (林持一)

Editor: Alison Sharpless (夏意軒)

Writers: Wang Yu-Hsiang (王有庠), Chang Nian-Cun (張念存), Hsu Tzu-Chieh (徐子捷)

Original published on the official Medium page of Gong Sheng Music Commemoration on 16 February 2023.