Journey Through the White Terror tells the story of my father Paul Sun,
who, like many others, was imprisoned more than 60 years ago during the
“White Terror,” the decade following the withdrawal of Chiang
Kai-shek’s Nationalist government from Mainland China to Taiwan in
mid-December 1949. During this time, the Nationalist government
implemented a policy of “better to kill ten thousand by mistake than to
set one free by oversight,” and as a result, many innocent civilians
such as my father became victims of ferocious searches and persecutions.
At the time of my father’s arrest, I was not quite six years old; when
he returned home, I was almost sixteen. Having witnessed the injustice
of my father’s imprisonment and the freedom my family later enjoyed in
America, I felt compelled to write this story. I have included in the
book reflections on my father’s imprisonment and absence during my
childhood, as well as accounts of the experience of my other family
members and friends. The book concludes with thoughts on my life in the
U.S. But my book is not accusation literature. Neither is it literature
of the wounded. On the contrary, this is a book about soul-searching and
the healing of a childhood trauma. As I stand at today’s high point and
recall the past, I find that I have learned a great deal; I had always
thought that the hardships encountered in my youth were a deficiency in
my life, but now I discover that they were a spiritual asset. I am
grateful for those difficult early life experiences, for they allowed me
to acquire maturity quickly while growing up, and allowed me to find a
complete self amid shortcomings. Thus, this book is also about bidding
farewell to the White Terror. Although the chapters and passages written
in my memoir often relate to the inhumanity of the White Terror, the
foundation of the book rests on sketches of real-life heroes in the
modern world. Those heroes are often nothing other than modest mentors
whose talent and generosity helped us survive the difficult times. It is
about aunts and uncles and friends whose contributions to the lives of
our family will always be treasured by us. Here, you will find the story
of a pedicab driver who made it possible for a political prisoner to be
briefly reunited with his family. You will read how that same driver’s
act of generosity—which took place in Taiwan—was returned as a favor to
the benefit of another pedicab driver after the lengthy span of fifty
years on the mainland, in Beijing. And you will find the story of an
unassuming elementary schoolteacher in Taiwan who gave me my earliest
lessons in Chinese philosophy, which would later become one of the
subjects that I teach in the U.S. Among the book’s most significant
stories are those of important literary figures who were family friends.
One of them, Chang Wo-chun, assisted our family during a risky journey
out of the mainland in 1946. Then there is the story of my uncle Chen
Pen-chiang and the novelist Lu Heruo, whose firm adherence to the ideals
of socialism led to one of the most significant political uprisings of
the post-1949 era in Taiwan. Finally, but far from least among them,
there is the story of my parents, who had learned to hear the voice of
God. B9Their faith helped sustain them through the difficult journey of
the White Terror. The White Terror in Taiwan generally refers to the
period of martial law that began in 1949. But in fact, as early as 1946,
people in Taiwan could already sense that catastrophic times could
erupt at any moment. Our family must have been among the first
Mainlanders to go to Taiwan, as we left China in the spring of 1946.
China was still ruled by Chiang Kaishek’s Kuomintang (KMT). A year
before that, World War II had just ended, marking a special year of
victory for the Chinese, as Japan, the common enemy of all of China, was
finally defeated. With Japan’s surrender, Taiwan was restored to
Chinese rule after fifty years of Japanese occupation, and thousands of
Japanese were forced to leave Taiwan. At the time, Taiwan’s citizens
were hoping that under the new rule of the Chinese Nationalists, things
would improve on the Taiwan island. Meanwhile, Taiwan suddenly became a
new land of opportunity, and many Mainlanders went to Taiwan to assume
new positions. The primary reason my parents decided to go to Taiwan was
to look for good job opportunities. Because my mother originally came
from Taiwan, the trip to Taiwan became even more desirable.
Unfortunately, the year after our arrival in Taiwan, the February 28th
Incident, also known as the 228 Massacre, suddenly erupted. In fact the
February 28th Incident in 1947 already marked the beginning of the White
Terror Period. According to reliable estimates, thousands of Taiwanese
and Mainlanders were either imprisoned or executed during those years.
My father was imprisoned from 1950 to 1960. During those ten years, my
mother became a sewing teacher to support her three children. Without my
mother, my family would not have survived the White Terror years. Even
when my father was released from the prison in 1960, no one dared to
hire him until finally a courageous high school principal appointed him
as an English teacher. Indeed, our journey has been difficult. It’s true
that more than sixty years ago, almost all Mainlanders who went from
China to Taiwan experienced the tragedy of being cut off from their
families on separate lands. But unlike most other people, our family’s
tragedy was twofold. At the same time our mainland relatives were being
branded Rightists and put through unending torture in China, my father, a
mainland Chinese, was falsely labeled a leftist criminal in Taiwan. All
the while, of course, our relatives on the mainland were completely
unaware of everything we underwent in Taiwan. This is indeed a great
irony in modern history. An irony such as this is a tragedy of the
times; it is entirely the creation of an unfortunate political
situation. In the meantime, martial law was lifted in 1987, and Taiwan
has since become a democratic society. It is possible for me now to view
the White Terror episode in a new perspective. After all, the
Ma-chang-ting area in Taipei, which used to b+B11e the place for
executing political dissidents during the White Terror era, has now
become the Memorial Park in remembrance of the victims during the 1950s.
Indeed, the story of Taiwan is one of great change. When hearing about
my White Terror memoir, my Yale colleague Beatrice Bartlett, who had
been teaching a Taiwan history course for forty years, commented: “It is
certainly a remarkable change—isn’t it—that such books can now be
written and published on Taiwan. When I lived there, saying the words
‘erh-erh-pa’ [2-28 Incident] out loud in public would get you stared
at—or worse!” Needless to say, in writing this book I have accumulated
many debts of gratitude over the years, far beyond those I have already
mentioned above. First of all, my thanks go to my father Paul Sun
(1919-2007) and my mother Yu-chen Chen Sun (1922-1997) for the love and
encouragement they gave me throughout the difficult years. I am also
deeply grateful to my husband C.C. Chang. His many years of enthusiasm
and imagination helped me bid farewell to the shadows of the past. I
would also like to thank my brothers K.C. and Michael for sharing their
experience with me. In addition, I have learned from talking to many
people: David Der-wei Wang, Ke Ching-ming, Yu-kung Kao, Chin-shing
Huang, Ayling Wang, Sher-shiueh Li, Chi-hsiang Lee, Liao Chih-feng, Fan
Ming-ju, Chen-main Wang, Jianmei Liu, Jeongsoo Shin, Michael Holquist,
Elise Snyder, Richard H. Brodhead, Stanley Weinstein, Edwin McClellan,
Harold Bloom, John Treat, Jing Tsu, John F. Setaro, Haun Saussy, Olga
Lomova, Cecile Cohen, Reva Alavian Pollack, and others. I am grateful to
all of them for their friendship and inspiring conversations over the
years. In particular, I wish to express my appreciation to the late
professor of Chinese history Frederick W. Mote, who read the original
Chinese edition of this book with the utmost care and urged me to
publish the work again in “its English language rebirth,” for he said
“it deserves to reach a wider audience” in this way. It was largely due
to his inspiration that I was able to add new historical background
information to the English edition. I am also grateful to Leslie
Wharton, my long-time friend from the Princeton years during the 1970s,
who urged me to publish a revised and enlarged edition for the new
global readership. I am indebted to Matthew Towns for his invaluable
help during the process of translation. I also want to give thanks to
Jessica Moyer for helping me translate one of my Chinese essays (“My
Father’s Hands”), and to my research assistant Victoria Wu who made
crucial contributions to the entire process of revision, including
translating David Wang’s foreword for this new edition. The Council on
East Asian Studies at Yale University generously supported my research
on this project, and subsequently provided subsidy grants to help the
publication of this book. I am grateful to Daniel Botsman, Chair of the
Council, and Abbey Newman, Melissa Jungeblut,and Amy Greenberg for their
continuous support. For their unfailing support, I also owe a debt of
gratitude to Hsiang Jieh, Director of the National Taiwan University
Press, and to the editors Tina Pan and Harry Tsai.
K.S.C. Yale
University January 2013
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