How could the living not speak?
“The dead are silent; how could the living not speak?” Three years ago, retired National Taiwan University professor Chi Pang-yuan completed her book Grand River at age 86. With it, she allows those of the previous generation who have lost their voices to be heard once again. At a book launch, she said that the great split of 1949 was not due to a lack of effort on the part of the previous generation, but it was the reason a homeland 35 times the size of Taiwan was cut off for so many. The last of the million castaways who came to Taiwan are gradually disappearing. As a cultural figure, Chi felt that she had to do what she could to put on paper what was in her and her father’s hearts.
“In his later years, my father would say that his whole life was determined by others and that he would fade away. It really unnerved me,” says Chi Pang-yuan of her father, Chi Shih-ying. Like Pai Chung-hsi, Chi Shih-ying was a legendary figure from the Republic’s early days who spent the latter half of his life in Taiwan and who encountered both glory and hardship.
In 1970, Kenneth Pai finished “State Funeral,” a short story based on his father as a main character. This was one of the stories in Pai’s Taipei People collection, of which Chi was very fond. Though Pai was only in his twenties at the time, he was able to portray the depth of frustrated sorrow of a fallen hero. For 30 years, Chi kept telling Pai, “You can’t just write about the disconsolation of the denouement—you have to write about the past glories as well.”
Pai Chung-hsi’s connection with Taiwan began with the February 28 Incident. At that time, Chiang Kai-shek sent Pai in his capacity as minister of national defense to Taiwan to calm the situation. After his arrival, Pai ordered provincial military and police units to stop the slaughter.
Though he was a high-ranking general when he relocated to Taiwan in 1949, he never held an important post again. He was even kept under watch by intelligence agents in his later years until his death.
Kenneth Pai was the eighth of 10 children. In the book, he describes his family life perceptively, mentioning that the greatest turning point in his life was when his mother, Ma Pei-chang, passed away in 1962. “I felt as if it were not just her body that was buried, but a part of my own life,” he says. After her funeral, he went to America to study. His father saw him off at the airport. His father, whose emotions were usually hard to read, wept openly. It would be the last time they saw each other.
Respect for history
Father and the Republic is being published in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China. As for Pai Chung-hsi as a historical figure, there is a difference in recognition on opposite sides of the Taiwan Strait.
Pai says that the public in Taiwan is very unclear about the name Pai Chung-hsi. As he is not mentioned in history textbooks, most Taiwanese only know him as Kenneth Pai’s father. On the mainland, however, Kenneth Pai is known as the son of Pai Chung-hsi.
“Could there really be no more questions about Republican history in Taiwan?” By writing on Republican history in his own literary style and opening a discussion, Pai has recovered the memory of his family and returned it to history. For Taiwan, it is a journey in search of national meaning.