Tainan’s Human Rights Landscape —

Li Wen-hsiung, second-generation proprietor of the Lily Fruit Store, has been active in efforts to preserve Tang Te-chang’s former residence. In 2017, on the 70th anniversary of Tang’s martyrdom, he said that perhaps 98% of Taiwan’s population did not know who he was. Even today, he tells us, perhaps 90% still don’t know.

Who was Tang Te-chang?

In 1947 the 228 Incident, an anti-government uprising starting on February 28 that was violently suppressed by the Kuomintang regime, swept across Taiwan. Tang Te-chang was then head of the Public Order Section of the Tainan Branch of the 228 Incident Settlement Committee, and in that role he stepped forward. However, he was arrested by the military and brutally tortured. Just before his arrest he burned a list of committee members, including Tainan young people and intellectuals, thus sacrificing his own life to protect many of the city’s local elites.

He was shot dead on March 13, which the Tainan City Government eventually designated as Tainan City Justice and Courage Day.

Saving Tang’s former residence

Starting in 1999, aiming to add depth to Lily Fruit, the monthly periodical he had founded, Li Wen-­hsiung began to introduce Tainan’s local culture and famous historic sites. In order to write Tang Te-chang’s story, he spent seven or eight years tracking down Tang’s adopted son Tang Tsung-mo, ultimately ­meeting with him only after a Japanese writer named Ryusho Kadota acted as a go-­between.

Li says that by then Taiwan had already achieved two peaceful transfers of power through democratic elections, and in general people were living freely. However, hard as it was for him to imagine, there were still many surviving family members of February 28 Incident victims who didn’t dare speak about the past, and who even warned their children and grandchildren to remain silent, trying to bury the names of the victims and living in silence and fear as they had done for so long.

After Tang’s former residence was successfully saved from demolition, the property was registered as belonging to the Tang Te-chang Memorial Association, which manages and operates it like a trust.

The desk Tang used in life is on display at his former residence.

The defaced nameplate outside Tang Te-chang’s former residence bears witness to the impact of the White Terror.

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As a Christian, Li quotes the Bible to say that a lamp should not be hidden, but must be placed upon a table to illuminate everything around it, and only through the light of justice can people emerge from darkness.

This light was fully ignited when Tang’s former residence faced the threat of demolition. This happened twice—first when the city government wanted to tear it down to widen a road, and then when the owner, who was in debt, wanted to sell it to a hospital that would have turned the site into a parking lot. Then-mayor Lai Ching-te instructed the Tainan Cultural Affairs Bureau to use its powers under municipal legislation to postpone the demolition. Activists then worked to save the building, and through a crowdfunding site amassed donations from more than 8,000 people in just one month, successfully raising NT$20 million to purchase and preserve the structure.

Li Wen-hsiung, motivated by a desire to add substance to his self-founded periodical, began to take part in actions to preserve Tang’s former residence.

Li Wen-hsiung, proprietor of the Lily Fruit Store and an activist in the preservation of Tang’s former residence, suggests: “History not only cannot be forgotten, one must have the courage to move forward out of historical tragedies, using truth and reason as the foundations of democracy. Only in this way can one avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.”

The Japanese connection

“The people of Taiwan remain concerned about the issue and value of transitional justice,” notes Huang Chien-lung, chairman of the Tang Te-chang Memorial Association. The association not only took on the heavy responsibility of renovating the old house, they have gone further and transformed it into a platform for education about democracy and human rights.

This respect for history has had the unexpected side effect of deepening the friendship between Taiwan and Japan. Huang notes that Tang’s father was a Japanese policeman, while his mother was Taiwanese. The father’s ancestral home was in Uto City in Japan’s Kumamoto Prefecture, and for the past three years the mayor of Uto has come to Tainan to attend the annual Tang Te-Chang commemoration. As a result, Tainan and Uto have signed a friendship agreement.

A painful historical memory has been transformed into transnational friendship and mutual understanding. Today many Japanese travelers to Tainan not only stop at the Hayashi Department Store, but also specially visit Tang’s former residence.

The Tang Te-chang Memorial Association has produced an illustrated biography of Tang as well as the book Seeing Tang Te-chang.

Huang Chien-lung, chairman of the Tang Te-chang Memorial Association, avers that Taiwanese are in the midst of a trend toward revisiting the importance of democracy, with many parents taking their children to visit Tang’s former residence and schools bringing students there on field trips.

Tang’s former residence also serves multiple cultural values. It currently features a special exhibition marking the 100th anniversary of Taiwan’s farmers’ movement, and is also a base for promoting Taiwanese language and literature.

Modern take on a historical tragedy

As a child, former Tainan mayor Chang Tsan-hung personally witnessed Tang’s public execution by firing squad. After taking office in 1997, he announced on the eve of 228 Peace Memorial Day in 1998 that Min Sheng Green Park would be renamed Tang Te-chang Memorial Park, turning this hero’s name into a symbol of the city.

Tainan has more than just excellent food and historic sites. Huang Chien-lung says that the historic sites linked together by the Road of Justice and Courage constitute commemorative markers of an important historical tragedy. They enable domestic and foreign visitors to understand the harm that dictatorships cause and to treasure their own freedom and democracy. 

The Tang Te-chang Road of Justice and Courage