Writer Tang Shu-wen says the ghosts of the martial law period lived on in Taiwanese schools for nearly fifteen years.

By Tang Shu-wen (湯舒雯)

Photos by Su Ching-hsuan (蘇慶軒)

Translation by Harrison Chen

This piece first appeared in The Reporter and is translated and reprinted with permission of the author and publisher.

I turned one year old just as martial law was lifted in Taiwan in 1987. But according to our esoteric calendar system, it was the 76th year of the Republic of China. I've hated numbers since I was a kid. Later I came to think it was because I was always juggling two different calendar systems around in my head. In any case, if memory is a product of personal experience, I obviously don't have any memories of the martial law period.

Seeing others reflect on this conservative era makes me think of how I reflect on my own childhood. Now that martial law is in the past, people talk enthusiastically about their experiences. They speak as boisterous and naive children who defeated the authorities with their wits alone. In these stories, the bad kids are always more interesting than the good kids, and it was better to break the rules than follow them. As for my own past, I can only say that there were no such pleasant surprises. For me, everything just seemed a little confusing without a real reason, a confusion that I suppressed.

I entered high school in 2001, a year after Taiwan experienced its first change of power between political parties. On my first day of high school, a high school senior gave us snacks to welcome us. As soon as she saw the course schedule on our classroom door, and who was on deck to teach us next, she jumped and excitedly yelled “it’s the Goddess of Ideology!”

“The Goddess of Ideology” was a seasoned teacher who taught the Three Principles of the People course. Twice a week, she would walk towards our classroom with a firm grip on the textbook. She introduced the class by saying:

“Ladies and gentlemen, today I’ve come to discuss the Three Principles of the People. What are the Three Principles of the People? Simply put, the Three Principles of the People is the ideology that rescued our nation. What is ideology? Ideology is a kind of thought, a kind of belief, and a kind of strength.”

Having taught for so many years, she spoke eloquently. She clearly knew the entire Three Principles text by heart. She spoke in volumes both casually and naturally without pausing; it was like wind and water. At the same time, her speeches were efficient, and didn't contain a single superfluous word. We couldn’t say whether this style of teaching was terse or beautiful.

The Goddess had an innovative method of teaching. Her trademark was to strictly dictate how we took notes. For example, we would write down this excerpt:

“Nationality is of the people. Those under heaven are under heaven, and that space cannot be monopolized by one or two people alone. Civil liberty is by the people. Before, in the autocratic era, everyone under heaven was governed by bureaucrats and warriors. Welfare is for the people. Since everything under heaven is commonly owned by the people, then all economic rights under heaven should naturally be shared by all people under heaven.”

The words “nationality”, “democracy” and “welfare” had to be boxed using a red pen; “of the people”, “by the people” and “for the people” were to be circled with a green pen. Every instance of “under heaven” must be underlined in blue ink, without exception. She slowly articulated all required annotations to the textbook so that we could transcribe them word-for-word without error. At the end of every semester she would collect all the textbooks from the class and inspect our notes to see if they conformed to each of her meticulous directives. She took care to repeat any main point three times. “The twentieth century must be, must be, must be the era of great welfare for the people.”