Taipei 228 exhibits spark controversy
GLOSSING OVER: Critics said the
government had demonstrated arrogance with its interpretation of
history and had disrespected the incident’s victims and their
families
From The Taipei Times, Feb. 20, 2011
The Taipei 228 Memorial Museum is
reopening its doors to the public this morning after a 10-month
renovation, but its efforts to reveal the truth of the 228 Incident
met with challenges as pro-independence activists and family members
of the incident’s victims yesterday accused the museum of
glorifying the acts of the then-government and distorting the truth
with its selection of documents.
Full story:
The Way It Was...
The Well of Souls: Taipei 2-28 Memorial Museum
By Stephen A. Nelson
(from The Brandon Sun, May 1, 2010)
A stone’s throw from the Chiang
Kai-shek Memorial Hall, there is another museum; different in every way from the shrine dedicated to Chiang. This is the Taipei
2-28 Memorial Museum.
Everything about the 2-28 museum stands in stark contrast to the Chiang
memorial. Instead of a great monument in the
midst of a vast parade square, the 2-28
museum is a small building in quiet corner of a
downtown park. If Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall
is the Great Pyramid of Cheops, this is
the Well
of Lost Souls.
The museum stands in the shadows of the other great edifices erected by the
Japanese: The presidential palace, the parliament buildings, the National Taiwan
University Hospital.
And like those public buildings, this
place was designed in the Asian Glory style — simple lines incorporating Western
elements — that was favoured by the Japanese
when they ruled Taiwan in the first half of
the 20th Century.
Originally, this building was home to
the Taipei Broadcasting Bureau — the
model radio network set up by the Japanese for
their model colony. When the Japanese were forced to surrender Taiwan at the end of the
Second World War, the KMT government took over the radio network and renamed it the
Taiwan Broadcasting Company.
The network
played a central role in the events of the
2-28 Incident, as both sides commandeered the radio
station to broadcast their messages. From here,
the Taiwanese sent out their SOS to the
world.
So what is the 2-28 Incident? And why should people want to remember it? My Taiwanese friends describe it as
Taiwan’s own Tiananmen Square Massacre, the central event that is at the heart of the story
told in Formosa Betrayed: a military
crackdown — carried out by Chiang’s troops on
February 28, 1947 — that marked the beginning
of Taiwan’s martial-law era. Tens of
thousands “disappeared” during what became
known as The White Terror.
The history books always said that the crackdown was necessary to put down an insurrection, weed out communist agents
and protect Taiwan. But if history is
written by the winners, this 2-28 museum tells the
story of the losers. Here, the faces of those lost souls
look you in the eye and silently plead with you
to make sure that their stories are not
forgotten...
UNTIL NOW!
Further reading:
Return to Taiwan's Dark Days
Devils and Angels in Taiwan
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/JD11Ad04.html
Photos from the Old 228 Museum, before the renovations, revisions and rewrites.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/JD11Ad04.html
Photos from the Old 228 Museum, before the renovations, revisions and rewrites.
Find links to my other Taiwan and travel stories:
