Up until then, the unspoken custom in Taoyuan politics had been for the northern and southern districts to take turns nominating their Provincial Assembly members to run for county magistrate, and at the end of 1977 the turn had fallen to the southern district. That nomination would have gone to the representative from Zhongli, and the subsequent general election would have been in the bag if only Hsu Hsin-liang had obediently followed the party line. But the bad seed had already sprouted and was left with no choice: “of course the KMT would not have nominated me. Whether they do or not is all the same, as I said very early on that I would run.”

In 1977, 25 year-old Zhongli local Chang Fu-chung (張富忠) had just graduated from the National Taiwan University of the Arts. In the legislative elections two years prior, to demonstrate the absurdity of these elections to his friends, he had “used my [his] sister’s identity to vote, which turns out was okay!” Chang Fu-chung joined Hsu’s campaign through Hsu’s nephew and helped to design campaign posters. Other now-famous tangwai figures such as Lin Cheng-chieh (林正杰), Ho Duan-fan (賀端藩) and Fan Sun-lu (范巽綠) had worked in Kuo Yu-hsin’s earlier campaign. They were not successful against the rigged vote, but reemerged to join Hsu’s campaign two years later, like flickering embers re-ignited by a spring wind.

When these 20 somethings came to Zhongli, they pitched tents and cooked communal meals as if attracting new students at a university. These youths felt that the campaign should feel carefree and happy like a carnival, and hit it off with Hsu right off the bat. Hsu enlisted his farmer relatives to erect a shack on an empty plot of land for their election headquarters; it was cheap but also had a fresh feeling to it. Balloons floated in the air, doves flew toward the horizon, and the first campaign song in Taiwanese history was born there.

Hsu Hsin-liang tells us, “I studied politics, and when I researched election campaigns in other countries I decided that it was important to choose a campaign song. There was a campaign worker who was interested in music, and suggested that rather than composing a new song we should simply write new lyrics for the old Japanese-era tune Sù-Kuì Âng (四季紅, Four Seasons Red), a song that already flowed easily off people’s tongues.”

tsa̍p-tsi̍t gue̍h, sî tsìng-tong; ta̍k-ke lâi suán lán ê lâng

十一月，時正當；逐家來選咱的人。

In November, the time is right; everyone come and vote for our man.

lán ê hīng-hok kú-kú-tn̂g, sim-tsîng tsin khin-sang

咱的幸福久久長，心情真輕鬆！

Our happiness will be long, and we feel light-hearted!

Khó Sìn-liông, tsò-lâng bô sio-siāng， kám tam-tng, khíng pang-bâng

許信良，做人無相同，敢擔當，肯幫忙；

Hsu Hsin-liang, a different kind of man, who will take responsibility and who will help;

kuān-tiúnn suán i ū hi-bāng

縣長選伊有希望。

Elect him as country magistrate and there is hope.

Other politicians have since borrowed from Hsu’s playbook. In 1994 when Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) defeated the formidable Jaw Shaw-kong (趙少康) in the first direct Taipei mayoral election, his election song Tshun Thinn ê Hue Luí (春天的花蕊, The Pistils of Spring) was sung throughout the city. His slogan of “Happiness, Hope, Chen Shui-bian” also had a very similar feeling to Hsu Hsin-liang’s 1977 poster “New Energy, New People, New Taoyuan.”

Hsu knew that a concise but powerful slogan trumps lengthy political commentary. He adopted the American-style single sentence slogan, whereas the promotional materials of his opponent Ou Hsian-yu totaled up to one kilogram in weight, each listing twenty or so political views and every page packed full with small print.

Chang Fu-chong, who would later be elected to the National Assembly, says “our electoral tactics such as evening rallies, loudspeaker cars and campaign songs had a lasting impact. The model for today’s Taiwanese election campaigns were established right there.”

Strategy: Surrounding the city with the country

The campaign had a rough start. The KMT’s electoral apparatus was ubiquitous, and they put a plan in motion for Wang Sheng (王昇), the director of the military’s Division of Political Warfare, to summon thousands of reserve soldiers to listen to speeches criticizing Hsu Hsin-liang. Dismayed, the young campaign workers asked Hsu what they should do.

Hsu urged everyone to keep calm, invoking a story from Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Ma Chao had organized a rebellion of surprising strength, forcing Cao Cao to flee. Cao Cao stood pat while Ma Chao called for reinforcements, but in the final battle, Cao Cao’s army decimated Ma Chao’s. Rather than picking off Ma Chao’s forces one by one, he allowed Ma Chao to bring his entire army to be defeated in one fell swoop. “By summoning those reservists, the Kuomintang is just calling reinforcements for us. When they curse us, they’re only giving us publicity! If they didn’t summon the reserves, if we had to generate publicity, it would have been very hard for us to reach so many people. These people are now curious about us, and waiting to see how we fight back. Our final battle will be a single response which can change their minds.”

When Hsu was a child he knew the stories from Romance of the Three Kingdoms like the back of his hand. Later when he studied politics abroad, he freely mixed Western political theory with military strategy from the Three Kingdoms, like a general leading an army while also a counsellor devising strategy. In the early days of his election campaign, he spent half a year driving Chang Fu-chong, Lin Cheng-chieh and other young colleagues to the countryside to distribute literature.

“I once left ten copies of The Sound of Wind and Rain at a general store where villagers would gather. The book discusses problems that farmers face. If I saw people planting in the fields, I would walk over and give them a copy. Afterwards, people in the countryside would say that Hsu Hsin-liang actually came over himself to give out books.”

To surround the city with country was one of Hsu Hsin-liang’s strategies. In the martial law era, Hsu could not emphasize the difficulties of running a campaign against the KMT, so the tone of his campaign had to be one of levity rather than terror. Furthermore, business owners in the city feared trouble from the law, and were less willing to express support for Hsu; on the other hand, those in the countryside were more straightforward, and once they made a decision, they made sure they would follow through to the end. Hsu needed their passion to melt the icy oppression of martial law.

After Hsu established a campaign headquarters in Zhongli’s city center, farmers would put down their sickles every day to visit. They even visited during the busy second crop harvest in November. Upon seeing crowds of people gathering every day, the more timid city people would quickly spread the news and a desire to get in on the action would draw more over to watch.

In 1977, 20 year-old Zhongli resident Wang Pai-ran (王派然) was helping his father sell vegetables in the market during his gap year in military service. One day when Hsu’s loudspeaker car passed by, he saw vendors throw pork, fish, and vegetables on to the car as a show of support. “The car was completely full after only making one round. I was so curious that I ran over to the campaign headquarters. They were even cooking meals for people to eat.”

Every day, to boost their campaign’s popularity, they would cook two large communal meals consisting of vegetables, stewed pork on rice (控肉飯), braised bamboo shoots (滷筍絲), and salted vegetable and pork soup (鹹菜豬肉湯). To Hsu Hsin-liang, who lacked major sources of funding, this method was economical as the rice, fish, meat, and vegetables were donated by farmers and the passionate stall vendors at the Zhongli market. Hsu himself would go out to campaign until late at night. In this way, he found a variety of characters to speak at his campaign events, from young girls to grandmothers to the prominent tangwai figure Huang Yu-chiao (黃玉嬌) who had suffered defeat at every turn in prior decades. He built his popularity up bit-by-bit, bantering well with ordinary people and often finding himself quickly surrounded by listeners. A conservative district such as Zhongli which had historically been cold toward politics was boiling like oil in a deep fryer.

Explosion: The people stand vigil on the vote count and protest vote rigging

Chang Fu-chong describes Hsu’s popularity thusly: “one night after Hsu Hsin-liang gave a speech in Taoyuan, the entire crowd followed him to Zhongli to listen to his next speech. When the loudspeaker cars passed by on the street, people would flock over to listen and toss money or fruit. It was crazy.”

In the three days leading up to the election, Hsu focused his efforts on preventing vote-rigging. Chang Fu-chong wrote banners in calligraphy reading: “only the Communist party rigs votes!” But Hsu was thorough, and wanted more than just a slogan. Three months in advance of the election, he had already found distant relatives to help him train a force of poll-watchers. Taoyuan had 369 polling sites in total, and each had to have three poll watchers, which meant he needed over a thousand in total.