My father’s face was not among them. No memorial was built for the men who had survived by selling their souls. The thousands who had disappeared over the years, stained as criminals, who emerged back into the light as neighborhood pariahs for nothing more than the desire to claim an island as their own. No memorial for the men more complicated than martyrs—or for the families who’d had to relearn the hardships of the everyday.
—
Number 183 Nanjing West Road was the “flashpoint,” where the widow peddling black market cigarettes was pistol-whipped, the moment when discontent tipped into violence.
A waist-high marker indicated the spot. The incident had taken place in front of the Tian-ma Teahouse, but that was gone. The current businesses on either side of the plaque, the MEN’S TAILOR, SINCE 1948 and BEAUTY PARLOR CLUB, were both closed—and the latter was a charred hulk of a building gaudily marked with a dusty pink neon sign.
The only light in this gloom was an apothecary shop, where three men stood behind the counter—evenly tall, solemn mouthed, and eyes meditative—quickly measuring herbs on tiny handheld scales; a flick of the wrist moved the herbs from balance to counter, the scale rocking like a sloshing bucket, the herbs dropping softly as daisy fluff onto sheets of tissue paper.
The plaque was easily missed. Cars parked beside it, pedestrians walked past it without a second glance, businesses opened and closed before it. Something had happened here once, but other things had too, and life went on.
We have to remind ourselves to remember.
I gave my respects to the widow, beaten the night that my mother had gone into labor with me—neither woman aware of the other or how their fates were tied, however tenuously. Maybe this is what it meant to be a citizen of a place—bonded to each other by the histories thrust upon us.
I ordered noodles at a vegetarian stand across the street from the plaque. Old men at another nearby stand ate and talked loudly. A woman with a shriveled arm sold scratch-off lottery tickets. The proprietress flipped through a magazine. I would fly back to California the next day, and I was not ready to say good-bye to Baba. My next visit home would likely be under similar circumstances. I pulled a handful of tissues from the box on the table and wiped my eyes. A week ago, I’d spoken to my mother; now, her lifetime—spanning from colonialism through a world war, nearly four decades of martial law, and then democracy—was diminished to dust.
“Too spicy?” the proprietress called with a grin.
I nodded and said, “Yes, too spicy,” and blew my nose. I left my dirty dishes in a bucket of water near the street and wound my way back to the train station.
EPILOGUE: MEMENTO VITAE
A FEW WEEKS AFTER my return to Berkeley, I went to the attic and rummaged among the boxes. Wei had stored copies of old academic journals, manila folders crammed with duplicates of his articles, and, inexplicably, a few years’ worth of final exams. I was no better—I had stuffed my clippings into unlabeled envelopes and, in some cases, had kept the entire issue of the publication that my story had appeared in. We had the girls’ childhood drawings and essays. I’d scattered packets of silverfish repellent over everything, but that hadn’t prevented years of humidity from puckering the pages. I wondered if everyone’s attic was as loaded with nostalgia and narcissism.
Finally, in a yellowed bankers box, I found what had drawn me up there. As soon as I touched the rubber band, it broke limply, too desiccated to even snap. After Jia Bao’s murder, the thought of looking at the manuscript again nauseated me and I had put it away. Now, I sat with it on my lap for a moment, my palms pressed to the front page. He’d been gone for more than two decades. I had moments when I didn’t think I would survive, the pain so deep it sent me clawing for air.
Carefully, I laid aside the first sheet. The Courier font looked old-fashioned, each letter woolly with time. The lines and spacing too lacked precision, and hearkened back to a world in which everything had the giveaway touch of a human hand.
I cringed when I began reading. The grammar mistakes that had been invisible to me then were now too apparent. I saw language filtered and trying to break free from crudeness into something approaching elegance, and I saw all our youth and earnestness.
In another life, I’d once told him. I meant it too, bolstered by a notion that I could take an eraser to my life and scribble it anew, as many times as it took. Had Mama suffered from the same illusion? Was that why she had decided on baptism, only to find a Christian rebirth was metaphorical, and she was still stuck in the one existence she had?
I read in the attic until sunset, and then I carried the manuscript downstairs. Over the next few weeks, in the same office where I’d first worked on it, I rewrote it. It is common practice among writers to let a manuscript sit awhile before revision. In this case I’d waited nearly a quarter of a century. I had been too close before; as translator, I had pieced it together word by word, thinking only of the flow of sentences. Now I could see, clearly, the subtext—the struggle and yearning—that had lain beneath. During my edits, I finally sloughed away my illusions of romance and regret and grazed the sharp edge of who Jia Bao—and I and Wei—had been.
Lost children. How young thirty-two looks from the vantage of fifty-six. And yet I had only a few more answers than I’d had then. How could I find forgiveness for all of us—Baba, Wei, Jia Bao, me? After Baba came back from prison, my parents had forty-five more years together. Had it been enough to wash away the scars of those eleven lost years? Had they ever lain in bed and whispered, I’m sorry, an apology for the decades, one single utterance of regret that would atone for it all?
—
I published two versions of Jia Bao’s book: one in characters, in Taiwan, with the help of my niece, and the other in English. I found a small publisher in Southern California that specialized in East Asian texts, and it agreed to a printing of five hundred copies.
I asked Emily to pass it out among her—as she referred to them—“comrades” in the union, and Stephanie to leave copies in the graduate student lounge. What is this? Emily had asked. A book by a good friend, I had said. Emily faintly remembered Jia Bao but Stephanie did not, so I told them about his escape and murder, but nothing about the other turmoil of those days—not about the trip to Willits, Mr. Lu, or the foundering of a marriage. Nothing about how my parents’ life had echoed amid the chaos.
I gave away copies at community meetings and cultural festivals. I sent copies to professors and human rights groups. I disseminated, like a Johnny Appleseed of revolutionary text.
Whenever I opened the book, felt the strain of paper against the binding, Jia Bao’s voice was there—distinct, alive.
Two distant points now touching, the word and the page a bridge and amends.
—
My father wasn’t executed. He was arrested. He disappeared. He came back, not a saint, but a man. He was angry, sad, on occasion happy. He scolded us, cursed us, loved us as best he could. My mother did the same. Life was not a beautiful thing, not swathed in tulle and glitter, strapped with angel wings. Nothing sublime hid in the pain we found in one March decades ago, a month that went on and on beyond the boundaries of the calendar. It was more than a commemorative hat or T-shirt, or a picture on a wall in a museum. It was more than a story.
It was like this, wasn’t it?
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
After spending fourteen years on this project, I have accumulated quite a list of people, places, and sources to whom I owe thanks. The following is my best attempt to express my appreciation to the many, many people I encountered on this journey. I apologize to anyone whose name I might have missed.
I want to thank the Institute of International Education for funding my initial research trip to Taipei in the form of a Fulbright grant in 2002. In Taiwan, the following were especially giving of their time and stories: Chen Yao Ji, Ho Cong Ming, Li Rong Zong, Li Shi De, Liao De Zheng, Liao Ji Bin, Liu Ke Xiang, Ruan Mei Shu, Su Feng Fu, Xiao Jin Wen, Zhang Liang Zhe (Jeffrey Chang)
, Linda Gail Arrigo, Jerome Keating, Mark Harrison, Paul J. Mooney, my hānai family, the Yus, and my family, the Yangs.
The Bay Area Taiwanese American community was extremely supportive. Ho Chie Tsai, founder of TaiwaneseAmerican.org, was the first to reach out when he heard of my project, and warmly welcomed me into the community. Because of him, I was able to find a number of first-generation Taiwanese Americans who generously allowed me to interview them about their lives. I was deeply moved by the stories they shared. Green Island is also dedicated to this generation, who grew up under the shadow of martial law but never lost their faith in a vision of a better world, and who continue to fight for recognition of Taiwan: Jeffrey Chang, Leon Chang, Cheryl Chen, Mrs. Fred Chen, Hsiu-li Cheng, Ma-Chi Chen, Muh-Fa Chen, Sue Chen, Yi Ming Cheng, Ching-Wen Chenglo, T. K. Chu, Thomas Ho, Tammy Hong, Edward Huang, Meina Ko, Rocky Liao, Rebecca Rose Reagan (Li-Ching Liu), Pam Tsai, Ming-Tzang Tsay, Stella Wu-Chu, Liwen and Fan-Chi Yao.
Love and appreciation to friends and family: my sisters, Christina, Annie, and Emily; my parents; Jackie Bautista; Jeffrey Boyd; Carley, Jia Yn, Limon, and Ming Tzong Chen; Jia Ching Chen and Mona Damluji; “Groop”; Eva Guo; Seth Harwood; Akemi Johnson; Sean Kim; Tony Lee; Kyhl Lyndgaard; Zachary Mason; Heather Moore; Rob Pierce; Jennifer Sime; Gary Snyder; Spring Warren; and Andrea Young.
Thank you to the English Department at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa for research and peer support, and the remarkable students at UH, from whom I have learned so much about passion. Thank you to the staff of the MĀNOA Journal—Frank, Pat, Sonia, and Noah—for giving me a second home in the department. Thank you to the Asian American Literary Review, which, many years ago, published an early version of the first chapter. I continue to be grateful to John Lescroart and Lisa Sawyer for the Maurice Prize, and to my first press, El Leon Literary Arts, and its publisher, Thomas Farber, who has been a mentor and inspiration for nearly twenty years.
For his unabating support and love, Hugh Sutton-Gee.
I am deeply grateful for my amazing agent, Daniel Lazar. Over the years, he and his assistant, Victoria Doherty-Munro, both patiently read and gave feedback on endless drafts. I’m honored that my editor, Carole Baron, believed in the book, saw its potential, and wanted to work with me. She and assistant editor Ruth Reisner guided me through extensive revisions and gave careful comments on each iteration. I am awed by their enthusiasm, energy, and wisdom.
Though elements of this novel are loosely based on actual events, and a very real political situation, this is a work of fiction, and I have changed some facts in order to maintain the integrity of the fictional story. However, I want to credit some of the books that informed this novel in large and small ways. For example, for Jia Bao’s storyline, I drew on the experiences of Peng Ming-Min, Henry Liu, and Chen Wen-cheng to understand the various legal and extralegal mechanisms the KMT government used to control its challengers, particularly from abroad. This is not an exhaustive list, but it is a good place to start for a reader who is interested in finding out more about Taiwan and the themes explored in this novel.
Linda Gail Arrigo, A Borrowed Voice: Taiwan Human Rights Through International Networks 1960–1980
Edward I-te Chen, “Formosan Political Movements under the Japanese Colonial Rule 1914–1937”
Leo T. S. Ching, Becoming Japanese: Colonial Taiwan and the Politics of Identity Formation
James Davidson, Island of Formosa, Past and Present
Mark Harrison, Legitimacy, Meaning and Knowledge in the Making of Taiwanese Identity
David E. Kaplan, Fires of the Dragon
Paul R. Katz, When Valleys Turned Blood Red: The Ta-pa-ni Incident in Colonial Taiwan
George Kerr, Formosa Betrayed and Formosa: Licensed Revolution in the Home Rule Movement, 1895–1945
Faye Yuan Kleeman, Under an Imperial Sun: Japanese Colonial Literature of Taiwan and the South
Sylvia Li-chun Lin, Representing Atrocity in Taiwan: The 228 Incident and White Terror in Fiction and Film
Tsung-yi Lin (editor), An Introduction to the 228 Tragedy in Taiwan for World Citizens
Peng Ming-Min, A Taste of Freedom: Memoirs of a Formosan Independence Leader
Owen Rutter, Through Formosa: An Account of Japan’s Island Colony
Tehpen Tsai (translated by Grace Hatch), Elegy of Sweet Potatoes, Stories of Taiwan’s White Terror
Shawna Yang Ryan
Honolulu
May 2015
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shawna Yang Ryan is the author of Water Ghosts. She is an assistant professor in the Creative Writing program at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.
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