Figure 1 from left to right: Jay Chou, Shih Ming-te, Ye Fu and Yang Du
一
On the morning of January 15, 2024, I received news from my brother Yang Du in Taiwan, informing me that Mr. Shih Ming-te passed away today. And this moment was his 83rd birthday. Life and death are on this day, he is indeed a child of God, having gone through tribulations, he enjoyed his natural years and returned to the embrace of his father, no longer lingering in this turbid world for half a moment, it is truly a decisive decision.
Two days ago, he participated in the creation and once caused him heartache, and had already decided to withdraw from the political party, and narrowly won the election again. He was approaching his last moments, did he clap his hands and laugh or clench his fists and worry, I can’t imagine. But as a man who fought all his life, he at least witnessed most of the achievements of his youthful ideals, and it should be time to “leave after the matter is done”.
In the dry season of Chiang Mai, there are few cloudy and light rains, and the sky is like a weeping face, as if it were my mood for half a day. How a man can live his life bravely and proudly – this is a question that has long troubled me and made me excited. At the time of his long farewell, I re-examined the group photo we took together after drinking and chatting five years ago, and I vaguely saw the answer. He is a typical figure of righteousness and courage, a remnant of the assassins and knights, a rebel forever, and a man of deep thought who plans for the group to seek peace for all generations.
The ancients said that such a person – his actions can be a model, his wisdom is enough to resolve suspicion, his faith can keep the covenant, his integrity can make the distribution of wealth, his actions can be followed, his words can be spoken, he is a hero.
二
I only had a relationship with Mr. Shih over a cup of wine, but my longing and respect for him have almost sustained half of my life.
When he was a non-commissioned officer on Kinmen Island and planned an armed rebellion of the Independent Alliance, I was just born. After fifteen years in a deep prison, in the 1980s, when he once again talked and laughed in the “Beautiful Island Incident” court, disregarding life and death, I was already a young man on this side yearning for freedom and eager to move. His heroic deeds are all over the internet, and I don’t need to repeat them. I rarely want to deliberately climb up to associate with celebrities in my life, but for him, this true senior hero in my heart, a current strongman who influenced my life for half a lifetime, I have always had a longing.
In November 2018, at the invitation of the Long Yingtai Cultural Foundation, I went to Taiwan to conduct an independent research on the theme of “Transitional Justice”, and visited various terrifying sites of the martial law era, and also visited various big figures from the blue and green camps. In those prison cells and courts that I seemed to have seen before, in the empty and empty prison on Green Island, I felt my hair stand on end as I wandered alone between those iron doors and iron fences that were exactly the same on both sides of the strait, and almost everywhere I went, the name and shadow of Shih Ming-te were floating, and in those glances, I vaguely saw my own youth…
When I was about to bid farewell to Taiwan the next day, my brother Yang Du told me that the farewell dinner would be attended by Shih Ming-te and his wife, and also our common old friend, the elder of the Four Seas Gang, Zhou Dong. They are all participants and witnesses of Taiwan’s transition, and they have all experienced imprisonment like you. The topics you are concerned about are enough to communicate with them.
三
This was indeed a slightly strange gathering in Taipei that winter. At the famous Da Lai Xiaoguan, we, who arrived first, had just sat down when we heard the knowledgeable proprietress at the door exclaim – Wow, Chairman Shih, you are here too. We stood up to greet him. I saw him at the banquet tonight for the first time. He was wearing a black suit and trousers with a gray-blue suit, meticulously wearing a bow tie, a gray hat, and accompanied by his wife, Ms. Chen Jiajun. His solemn etiquette and innate leadership temperament made me ashamed.
Everyone exchanged greetings and sat down. He and Zhou Dong seemed to have not seen each other for many years. He formally and in a very Jianghu way bowed to Zhou Dong to thank him. Zhou Dong smiled and said it was not worth mentioning. I inquired about the reason, and the topic opened up. It turned out that in 2006, when he initiated the Million Red Shirt Army to gather in Taipei to carry out the “Down with Chen” movement, he needed to provide tea and lunch boxes for the righteous people who came from all directions. He gave Zhou Dong a phone call, and Zhou Dong brought two million Taiwan dollars to his fundraising station the next day. The volunteers at the station needed to record Zhou Dong’s name, and Zhou Dong waved his hand and smiled, saying that there was no need, just say it was a Jianghu brother.
I learned this anecdote for the first time. Of course, Mr. Shih already knew the origin of this huge sum of money. I was filled with respect for the high friendship between the two brothers. I admire that this is the charm that the Republic of China society and the ancient Jianghu should have.
What is a strange banquet? Zhou Dong of the Four Seas Gang, is an out-of-province youth who grew up in the military dependents’ village. The reason why they formed a gang in the first place was only to keep warm and deal with bullying by the local bullies. They are mostly children of the National Army, and can even be said to be the blood and backbone of today’s Blue Camp. And Mr. Shih is a true outstanding person from this province, resisting the foreign parties’ strong occupation of the local area, and even once had a clear-cut independent option, which was his lifelong pursuit of life and death. Similarly, Brother Yang Du is also a genuine intellectual from this province. During the martial law era, they were both young people who opposed dictatorship and authoritarianism, but when the ruling Democratic Progressive Party became corrupt, he once became a key member of Ma Ying-jeou’s writing team. Such three men with political stances and social identities that may be very different, a former chairman of the Democratic Progressive Party, a secretary-general of the Cultural Association during the Ma Ying-jeou era, and a deputy leader of the Four Seas Gang, are as close and respectful as brothers in life – this is exactly the original appearance of Taiwan’s ruling and opposition parties, regardless of the tradition and the legal system.
Gentlemen are harmonious but different, and their respective choices of paths and political propositions, in the deep sense, each have their own missions and destinies. Their first half of their lives were on different paths, challenging the power that cannot be voted for. Because of their basic personality and Jianghu temperament, they will inevitably go the same way on the road of anti-corruption and limiting power. Zero fall and late rest, a cup of wine, only I, this true foreign brother, was even more envious of the demeanor of the scholars of the Republic of China that night.
四
Twenty-six years in a deep prison, countless tortures and starvation, many times of medical rescue and forced feeding, only those who have truly experienced it know the bitterness and difficulty. Almost one-third of the effective life was spent under chains and shackles and prison windows. Without the ideals and will of a saint, I can’t imagine how the body should support it. Mr. Shih that night had been more than ten years after liver cancer surgery. At the age of seventy-eight, he was still standing upright as the non-commissioned officer who rebelled back then.
Although every ethnic group may have such ascetic people, although my friends still have such brave people who are sentenced to imprisonment one after another, but I know that in the lawless end times, it is not easy to sacrifice oneself for the Tao. The difficulty of a thousand years is only death. In fact, it is really difficult to seek death when trapped in a dark prison.
At the time of the Beautiful Island trial in 1980, even many of his comrades shirked the blame for the civil unrest. Only Shih Ming-te shouted that I am the commander-in-chief, please shoot me. At that time, Mr. Chiang Ching-kuo also had the intention to kill. Fortunately, his Christian family allowed a group of celebrities to attend the trial and summoned Shen Junshan to inquire about his impressions. Mr. Shen knew that the will of heaven was unpredictable, and he was trembling as if he were walking on thin ice, and he dared to advise the emperor – killing people affects international views; killing people will only cultivate martyrs; blood flows into the land and will never be recovered, and our descendants will still live on this land…
The court has such a university president, such a generation of scholars who still dare to speak out; the people have Shih Ming-te, a dead man who is eager to change and seek change. The Republic of China also has a president who took the initiative to relinquish power and open up the party ban. Shih Ming-te survived, and Chiang’s descendants truly survived, and the era of slaughtering the people and killing the scholars will never come again.
Achieving social transformation without a single shot is a miracle that the Chinese nation has never seen in a thousand years, far more smooth than the velvet of Eastern Europe later. The once blood-soaked land is reborn with weeds, and those dense and nameless tombstones are still crawling in the Liuzhangli cemetery. Taiwan was renewed after 1987. When the political prisoners were amnestied in 1990, all the old prisoners were happy to be released, but only Shih Ming-te regarded the prison as his home and refused to come out. Because – you are not qualified to pardon, you must declare me innocent before I am willing to take this step.
There are not many chivalrous bones in the Jianghu. This is the heroic spirit that only people with chivalrous spirit in their blood have. His persistence caused a public uproar during the Lee Teng-hui era, forcing the pace of transitional transition to speed up again, and the High Court of the Republic of China really declared him innocent. The Bodhisattva vowed – if hell is not empty, I will not become a Buddha. The Western proverb says – when a person is wronged and suffering, it is all people who are suffering. How fortunate we are that we have witnessed these legends that only exist in ancient books in the same era.
Facing his broken dentures, the hidden pain of being covered in scars, I raised my glass and asked – do you still hate? Each torture has specific executors, those who have names and surnames, most of them should still be alive like you, and still be low-key and silent like every kind old man, quietly walking through some vegetable markets and wine alleys, has anyone ever apologized to you personally?
五
I am not the kind of person who easily buries the axe and gives up hatred. I have always believed that the reason why our people have never lacked butchers and human-shaped beasts generation after generation is because there is no price for doing evil and committing crimes, or because they are forgiven by time and those who are indifferent to hatred. Social overall transformation, of course, needs reconciliation, and without reconciliation, there will be no future for the combined race. Shih Ming-te, who once bore a great shame, took the lead in proposing the concept of “great reconciliation” in the 1990s, which is the vision and measure that he, as the two-term party leader, should have, and it is also the compassion and benevolence in his family’s genes as a religious family.
However, how can we repay virtue with virtue?
Peaceful transition is indeed the good fortune of a nation, and it is also the rational compromise and retreat after those who hold the knife handle and are obsessed with power have exhausted their efforts and have no way to deal with it. The reason why the dictator can control the center is because there are still thousands of poisonous people who are poisoning the people. These dogs, who have always regarded life as grass, use obedience to the emperor’s edict as an excuse, and use supporting their families as an excuse, have lost their conscience and only know how to be loyal and loyal to their feeders. When their masters lay down their knives and make peace, they can wash their hands in a flash and laugh it off; from then on, they hide in the world of fireworks, and the cruelty of the past turns into a forgotten cloud, never being questioned and liquidated, and even not being recorded in history to make future generations alert and know shame – does such a transition really achieve justice?
Mr. Shih Ming-te looked at my staring eyes and said earnestly – we must face the true history. The truth of history is that we did not win through revolution and war. The resistance of the people and the criticism of the international community only created pressure. In fact, the ruling party in Taiwan did not completely lose the energy to maintain violence at that moment. When they were willing to open up the party ban and promised future elections, all of our comrades would only accept it. Everyone’s life is life, and the revolutionaries’ bloodshed is a means, not an end. Since we have accepted such an orderly transition and formed a party to compete, it means that we have admitted the legitimacy of the opposing party in advance, and it also indicates that the entire civil society has reached a prior forgiveness of the party’s past evils. We cannot, after taking office in the election, go back and investigate all the accomplices one by one. If that is the case, it will neither conform to the law nor be in good faith. The normal party strife in a democratic society will continue to degenerate into a bloody struggle for life, and the people will continue to be bound by the iron shackles of hatred…
Shih Ming-te and Ye Fu
六
That night, the coolness of early winter in Taipei was gone. He took off his suit and hat as if hanging up his armor, and his body after the illness was surprisingly able to raise a glass with us. Kinmen Kaoliang, the strong liquor that he began to drink in that small island when he was in his twenties, can still ignite his interest in talking. Perhaps it was after a certain drunkenness that this group of young soldiers with blood and gall began their conspiracy to change themselves and even change the fate of an island. That was really a mission of licking blood on the knife’s edge, and every crime was enough to be fatal in the era of military control and martial law. Failure after failure, no chance of winning, fighting for their lives, in the end, he was as he named in his final memoir – “Able to See Tomorrow’s Sun”.
This is the writing he had just completed at that time. It is conceivable how many publishers in Taiwan were eager to get such a manuscript. But he told us – I don’t need to publish it officially, I printed two hundred copies myself, each priced at 20,000. Those who are willing to spend such an expensive book fee to buy it are my true readers. This one is the only one given to you, because we once had similar fates.
He solemnly signed it for me at the wine table. The gift I brought to him was also my new book – “Living to Witness”. The two book titles have the same meaning, both with the meaning of self-encouragement and salvation. We took photos together with each other’s books. He was already gray-haired, and I was also gray-haired. Across a whole generation, across a vast sea, he has already seen their sun, and I, of course, have to continue to witness.
I said that I had just gone to Green Island to pay my respects to your prison cell. He smiled and asked how it compared to yours. I said that it was taught by the same teacher, and it was almost the same. Zhou Dong is also a person who has come through it. We talked about some details of each other, and in such a peaceful and clear night, we suddenly burst into laughter like old prisoners reunited after a disaster. It seemed that we had truly reached a certain degree of reconciliation with the world.
At the time of parting, I said that as a purely personal friend, I really wanted to invite you and Zhou Dong to my hometown in western Hubei to see, where the mountains and rivers are inside and out, and it is also the old land of the Republic of China. He said with a slightly heavy tone – of course I would like to go to China to see, but you know my lifelong pursuit and proposition. If the two sides of the strait still need Taiwan compatriots’ certificates and mainland compatriots’ certificates to communicate with each other, I can’t go…
When the conversation got here, I suddenly realized his persistence and the deep meaning behind his refusal. We embraced deeply, and then clasped our fists and bowed, bidding farewell under the neon lights on the street. We watched him and his wife walk away with a healthy pace, disappearing behind the city sounds and lights of Taipei. At that time, I was thinking that this meeting was probably the last one.
This man, who has twice been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, this leader in the wilderness who has called out to millions of followers, he has completed his life’s mission and will never return to the spotlight of the political stage. The party he once resisted, the party he founded, and the party he withdrew from, and even the newly born party later, may not be able to accommodate his domineering heroic posture of holding a halberd and dancing a shield. He is destined to be a lonely hero, the last generation of classical heroes of the Republic of China; after that, it will be difficult to see such a person in the history books of the Chinese nation.
Born to be a hero, die also as a ghost. I still think of Xiang Yu, and I am not willing to cross the Yangtze River to the east. A poem by a remarkable woman in the Song Dynasty seems to have been written for him today, and he is still the man who is never willing to cross the river.
I respectfully dedicate this article to pay tribute to this great brother who made friends with wine. Alas, enjoy.
January 15, 2024 in Chiang Mai
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