Recollections:

An era of relaxed restrictions

Speaking about Taiwan in the 1990s, Huang says that this was an era when all of society was undergoing transformation. Even today, he often searches YouTube for videos from Chen Shui-­bian’s 1994 campaign for mayor of Taipei. The grainy images show rudimentary podiums and surging crowds with flags. 

“To put it in vulgar terms, it was really ‘badass.’” A society that had been repressed for nearly 50 years had finally found a lawful way for citizens to express themselves.

Taiwan’s elections are deeply woven into everyday life, reflecting a high level of civic engagement. Many supporters bring their own placards and spontaneously cheer on their favorite candidates, with a raw, direct grassroots energy. (MOFA file photos)

Taiwan in search of itself

That energy extended to the realms of culture and urban life. In 1998 Huang and four high-school classmates collectively wrote Taipei 100 (Chinese title: “100 Reasons to Live in Taipei”), describing Taipei from a youthful perspective. The book has remained in print through multiple editions and is considered a key text for “Taipei studies.”

In the same period, there was a rapid rise in Taiwanese-­language creative work, local culture, and subcultures. Huang notes that it was around 2000 that Wu Bai sparked the fad for Taiwanese-­language rock and popularized the Taike (“Tai guy”) phenomenon—a rehabilitation of earthy working-­class Taiwanese aesthetics. At Wu’s concerts audiences would go wild, reflecting the intensity of the collective mood of the era.

Announcers at large events grew accustomed to declaring in Taiwanese how many thousands of people were attending. The use of a language and rhythms with which people had a visceral emotional connection carried the power of Taiwan’s election campaign rally culture into society at large. “Elections had by then already become part of daily life for Taiwanese.”

Looking back at the 1990s after more than 20 years, he suggests that it was not only an era of political reform. “In those days the areas of culture, the arts, and all creative fields in Taiwan, though not necessarily directly connected to politics, all were aimed at the same thing: giving Taiwan its own sense of identity.”

Huang Wei Jung and four of his high-school classmates collectively wrote the book Taipei 100. Between the lines are traces of Taiwan’s search for identity.

Taiwan’s present was not inevitable

“When I was in high school, I knew about the Kaohsiung Incident [a crackdown on pro-­democracy protestors in Kaohsiung in December 1979], though I have forgotten how I learned about it.” Huang relates. Growing up at the tail end of the martial law period, a lot of things were hidden from the public and couldn’t be openly discussed.

His family was also baselessly caught up in government repression, as his grandfather spent ten years as a political prisoner on Green Island (Lüdao). However, like many Minnan and Hakka people, the older generation never talked about such things.

“Even though we lived through that era, in fact we did not know all the relevant history,” admits Huang. However, this year all of Taiwanese society has had the chance to hear Control Yuan member Tien Chiu-chin speak about the murders of family members of then opposition leader Lin Yi-hsiung in early 1980, while thanks to the 2025 documentary When the Spring Rain Falls, the attempted assassination of Chiang Ching-kuo in 1970 is also being discussed again. Such sources are enabling younger people to learn more about a lot of history that is unfamiliar to them.

Huang emphasizes: “Taiwan did not get to its present state as an inevitable matter of course.”

As for which presidential election has left the deepest impression on him, he points to the one in 2000. “Something that we had thought to be impossible really happened.” He is referring to Taiwan’s first peaceful transfer of power in that year.

For the generation that had lived under the authoritarian regime, that was more than an election: It was proof that political power could really change hands, and that every individual’s vote could help bring change.

This reprint (red cover) of the first issue of Formosa magazine (founded in 1979 by pro-democracy advocates and shut down by the authorities), and a 40-year retrospective of the Kaohsiung Incident (purple cover) were collected by Huang Wei Jung many years later. In his youth, many aspects of Taiwan’s history were hidden from the public and could not be openly discussed.

A-bian (Chen Shui-bian) dolls were more than mere campaign swag—they symbolized a new mass-oriented approach to democracy. Politics was no longer just about campaign rallies and debates, but involved the use of design, symbols, and emotional connections to draw more people into involvement in public affairs. (MOFA file photo)