Back in the 1970s, when the study of Taiwanese history was still forbidden, a young man named Huang Huang-hsiung, now a member of the Control Yuan, but then a nobody just turning 30, decided to go ahead despite the obstacles and write a biography of Chiang Wei-shui. A number of small incidents played an important part in propelling this work forward.

Huang recalls that when he brought Chiang Wei-shui's eldest son Chiang Sung-hui to meet Tu Tsung-ming, a close friend and comrade-in-arms of the father, the small and frail Tu was so moved that he rushed forward to embrace the much taller Chiang Sung-hui, much to the latter's surprise. And when Huang Huang-hsiung went with Chiang Sung-hui to visit Huang Shih-chiao, an old cadre of the Taiwan People's Party, the nearly 80-year-old Huang Shih-chiao's face lit up and he gave a big thumbs-up as he declared, "So this is the eldest son of the revolutionary martyr Chiang Wei-shui!"

What was it about Chiang Wei-shui's revolutionary spirit, Huang Huang-hsiung wondered, that caused these old men to be so excited about meeting his son, 40 years after their old comrade himself had left them? "Even today," says Huang Huang-hsiung, "these scenes are clearly imprinted on my brain." Such incidents made Huang Huang-hsiung determined to finish his biography no matter what: "I was working more than ten hours a day, but somehow I didn't feel tired."

These stories, which occurred decades after the death of Chiang Wei-shui, become even more significant when you set them next to way his friends treated him back in the 1920s and 1930s. For example, when his comrades found out that Chiang Wei-shui had fallen seriously ill, they took turns watching over him, but even those who were "off duty" remained so worried that they generally hung around the area of the hospital, even going entire nights without sleep. Or to take another example, as you can see from stories carried in the Taiwan Minpao about Chiang Wei-shui's public funeral, despite the gray and rainy weather of that day, people poured out of every back alley to express their grief. The powerful infectiousness of Chiang's character seems to travel through time and make itself felt just as much today.

Chiang and his second wife Chen Tien were very close, and Chiang gave her the nickname "Muse." Her spiritual and wise nature was "extremely beautiful" to Chiang, and the two were often seen together at public functions. (courtesy of Huang Huang-hsiung)

Real life super-hero

Chiang Wei-shui took injustice very personally. This was obvious even in his student days, with his plot to poison Yuan Shih-kai. During his imprisonment following the "Social Order and Police Incident," after reading a history of the Song Dynasty and discovering the story of the traitorous minister Qin Kui plotting to undermine the loyal general Yue Fei, Chiang Wei-shui was so angry that there was only one way, he said, that he could properly vent his feelings: If he ever got the chance to go to Yue Fei's tomb (located by West Lake in Hangzhou in mainland China), he would find the statue of Qin Kui that is situated near it, and urinate all over it! When in prison Chiang also wrote, "In general these days people flatter and play up to government officials, but I do not like to do it. It is not that it would be difficult for me to do, but because it is not justified and I do not deign to be greedy." This similarly reveals his powerful sense of justice and righteousness.

In an essay recording various thoughts, Chiang Wei-shui told the following revealing story: Once after a lecture he was hurrying to get back to the train station in Chiayi. Unfortunately the vehicle that was taking him there suffered a flat tire. The driver scurried off to Peikang to get assistance, leaving Chiang and another passenger, a young girl, waiting in the middle of nowhere. There suddenly came strange sounds through the darkness. It was only the sound of bamboo being chopped, but Chiang, who had spent all his life among books, nonetheless began to wonder what he would do if he and his companion were set upon by robbers who began to assault the young girl. Chiang wrote that at that moment he told himself: "I must certainly risk my life to protect her."

It was common knowledge that Chiang's Ta-an Clinic was a hotel and a cafeteria for his comrades. He showed incredible generosity, scattering his fortune on behalf of the revolution. It was perhaps the fact that his sincerity and passion extended equally to matters of historic importance and of trivial daily life that he was able to bring together people from all backgrounds, and to transmit his revolutionary enthusiasm to so many people.

Standing amidst the graves of the heroes of yesteryear buried on Mt. Fanglan in Mucha, Chiang Wei-shui's descendant Chiang Chao-ken calls on the young people of today to give due attention to the history of the anti-Japanese struggle in Taiwan. (photo by Jimmy Lin)

The root of the problem

Chien Chiung-jen, author of the book The Taiwan People's Party, says that the intellectuals in the anti-Japanese movement had one major difference from the great literati of feudal society. They mixed with the common people, and were concerned about the problems of ordinary citizens, and from this powerful programs and ideas emerged. Only in this way were they able to organize the masses and create serious problems for the authorities. Looking back at all the leaders of that era, Chiang Wei-shui could be said to be the one who was closest to the common man.

Why Chiang? Huang Huang-hsiung argues that Chiang Wei-shui naturally was the type to mix with the masses as a result of both his family background (his father and grandfather were fortune-tellers) and his role as a doctor. He also was of a naturally gregarious character, as is evident from his opening two restaurants when he was practicing medicine in the bustling Tataocheng area of Taipei, and he was not snobbish, accepting people regardless of their social status. Another factor is that when he was in prison, he came into daily contact with gangsters, opium addicts, and prostitutes, after which he showed even greater sympathy for the weak and disadvantaged.

The Taiwan Minpao carried many excerpts from the notebooks that Chiang kept in prison. From them we can see that he not only made friends with gangsters, but was quite interested in the culture and language of their world, and planned to produce a dictionary of gangster lingo after coming out of prison. At the same time, he was deeply pained by the way the gangsters wasted their courage on fighting against their guards, frequently being injured and growing weak and dispirited as a result. What he found even more tragic, he wrote, is that "I can feel that in the future there will be more and more wasted lives like this in Taiwan. Under the policies of the colonial regime, the poorer the Taiwanese become, the more lower class families will be disrupted, and the more children will grow up bereft of proper moral instruction."

On another occasion, following an incident in which the opium addict in his cell lost control of his bowels and defecated all over the cell, Chiang Wei-shui wrote: "The most despised and hated people in this prison are the opium addicts. When a man gets to this level, he has no pride or dignity left at all."

Once Chiang saw two child prostitutes who were also inmates sweeping up, and he found them not unlike Lin Daiyu of Dream of the Red Chamber fame. "If they had grown up in wealthy families [like Lin Daiyu], wouldn't they have become delicate and refined young ladies?" When the gangsters and ne'er-do-wells insulted the prostitutes, Chiang reminded them that they should be more sympathetic, for they all suffered from the same conditions of poverty and oppression. He urged them to wake up to the fact that they were all disadvantaged, and should unite together and struggle for the liberation of Taiwan.

This deep love for his homeland and his great sympathy for his fellow man were steeled by the era and the environment into a great sense of mission on behalf of his compatriots. This sense of mission in turn allowed him to inspire and organize people into political and social movements.

Today there are a number of different spins put on Chiang Wei-shui. Some consider him a pioneer Taiwanese nationalist, but others see him as identifying with Chinese nationalism. Some label him leftist while others say that he was no such thing. Leaving aside for a moment questions of left and right, Taiwan and China, how is it that people from all over the political spectrum so respect Chiang Wei-shui? Perhaps it is only by getting back to the question of character that one can really see the true face of this historic figure.