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2014 ELECTIONS: Web article puts Taipei candidate Chao in spotlight
By Alison Hsiao / Staff reporter
Chao Yen-ching, who is the No. 2 candidate on the Taipei mayoral election ballot, signals the number two while attending a meeting in Taipei on Saturday.
Photo: Chiu Shao-wen, Taipei Times
One of the lesser-known Taipei mayoral candidates has been gaining a lot of attention, especially from young netizens, after his life story sparked a dispute on social networks in the past few days.
Chao Yen-ching (趙衍慶), an octogenarian who came to Taiwan after the Chinese Civil War, now lives in a park and often visits charity groups’ stands that hand out food to homeless people.
Web media platform Watchout was arguably first to bring Chao to the public’s attention. In its report on Oct. 31, it quoted Chao’s neighbor as saying the reason that Chao is running in the election is that he “wants his existence to be highlighted.”
Watchout reported that it is not the first time Chao has entered an electoral race. In 2009, he participated in the legislative by-election in Daan District (大安) with a platform that included several policies, including “using the legislator’s government-issued salary to provide public meals for those who cannot afford them after a day earning money from collecting waste paper in Daan District.”
However, it was not until Chiang Ping-lun (江昺崙), a Taiwanese literature student at National Taiwan University, also picked up on the story and published an article on Thinking Taiwan on Nov. 18, which was widely shared, that the veteran was thrust into the spotlight.
Chiang said a tragedy of the White Terror Era instantly came to his mind when he read Chao’s resume on the election bulletin, which described him as having studied at Shandong’s United High School in China and Yuanlin Experimental Junior High School in Taiwan as an “exiled student.”
It was the so-called Penghu 713 Incident that Chiang was referring to.
In 1949, Shandong United High School principal Chang Min-chih (張敏之) took more than 8,000 students to Penghu to escape from Chinese Communist Party troops. Waiting for the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime to arrange for the students to study in Taiwan, the male students were conscripted by Penghu military commander Li Chen-ching (李振清).
Chang refused to comply and was framed as a communist spy. He and several students were later executed, while scores of others were imprisoned.
The female and younger male students were later transferred to Yuanlin Experimental High School in 1953.
A memorial of the incident was not established in Penghu until 2007.
In his article, Chiang fictionalized Chao’s role in the incident and, to add some dramatic flavor, wrote a few quotes that he believed Chao might utter when talking about the incident.
The article, in which Chao was one of the students who were forced by the KMT regime to join the army, was criticized by some netizens, who accused Chiang of “making up Chao’s life history and manipulating the election.”
Netizen Hsu He-chun (許和鈞) countered that he himself had interviewed Chao last month and had confirmed that Chao was not forced to join the army by the KMT.
“He only went to [a military school] and became a soldier when he came of age in 1958, which shows that Chao did not have a grudge against the army,” Hsu said.
Chiang later posted his reflections on Facebook and thanked those who provided historical assistance.
“I intended to share the drama of the 713 Incident,” he said, acknowledging that some of the article is fiction.
“It has been confirmed by Chao that he was indeed in Penghu when the 713 Incident took place, but was too young to be conscripted by the army,” Chiang said.
A netizen, in an act of encouragement, commented: “I believe Chao would understand. After all, [your article] has educated tens of thousands of Taiwanese about the Penghu 713 Incident.”
source: Taipei Times
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