Ninety Years of Silence: A Short Memoir of My Grandfather (Video Essay)

Ninety Years of Silence - A Short Memoir on the Life Philosophy and the Political Stance of My Grandfather My grandfather from my father’s side passed away on 11 November the day when the armistice of World War 1 was signed 102 years ago. From what I was told he was a diligent person first as a self employed peasant in Changhua and later a micro retailer at the traditional markets of Taipei. Well, that was way before I was born; he had already retired ever since I was a child. I learnt very little tangible knowledge from him; his education was from a distant and haunted past of Taiwan’s modern history. He used a Japanese name and learnt about the Russo-Japanese War and the Tripartite Pact at school; I am more used to my American name and learnt about democratization, civil rights, and the importance of rule of law in the days of my studies.

01:12 - He was preparing for war when he graduated from elementary school, and so close to being recruited into the Imperial Japanese Navy, were he a little bit older. War has been, on the other hand, more of a “what-if” scenario than an inevitable reality in my ages, and a concept which people from different political camps utilize most of the time to serve mainly their needs. Now that I start to recall, I think I did learn things that were more intangible and yet more important from him. Perhaps the most noticeable of all is his lifelong attitude of avoiding conspicuous consumption, a crude version of minimalism originated from the tough experiences he endured in his early life. My family used to tease me about how similar I was with my grandfather on money and consumption, a comment I now take in as full complement amidst a global environmental crisis.

02:14 - To be honest, memories I once had about him have almost faded away, apart from some blurred montages. After he caught pneumonia in 2011 and almost failed to live through it, the process of his death (both physically and socially) had already begun; gradually his words and opinions were less and less important, his everyday life resolved into mere basic biological needs, his living space confined within the house he resided in. Nevertheless, out of all the trivialities, I still recall the earlier days in my childhood when my father quarreled with him over whom to vote for during numerous elections. My grandfather would never vote for a candidate from the Chinese nationalist camp; he never gave a formal reason to why so, but probably his crude idea of an independent Taiwan (like his crude idea of minimalism) originated from his own life experience. Taiwan, as a colony of Japan, may have gone through World War 2 on the axis side, but there were never ground battles during that war.

03:28 - In contrast, the 228 incident and the subsequent massacre were probably the closest experience to war Taiwanese have ever encountered in its modern history. In addition to facing the horrors conducted by Chinese nationalist soldiers in 1947, my grandfather was forced to fight for the Chinese nationalists during the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis of 1958, one of the tragic legacy of the Chinese Civil War the Taiwanese could have avoided entirely had the Chinese nationalists never fled and occupied our island. My grandfather’s discontent towards the forced military service could not have been more obvious; he would occasionally refer to his service in the army of Republic of China as being a “Chinese soldier”, something he definitely would never want to be voluntarily. The army of ROC may have changed its core mission from “reclaiming the mainland” to “defending democracy in Taiwan” after democratization, but the atrocities it committed on the generation of my grandparents would probably haunt them into their coffins. As time went by, quarrels over elections and politics became less and less frequent; at one point my parents decided to simply just ignore my grandfather whenever he started to recite events from the past.

04:51 - Meanwhile as he continued to age, it also became more difficult for my grandfather to elaborate and exercise his will, to such an extent that during the notorious election of 2018, my father “helped” my grandfather vote for the Chinese nationalist candidate for the mayor of Taipei in the ballot room. (we knew this happened because my father bragged about it afterwards) It was definitely a voting choice my grandfather would never have made, had he been able to act on his own behalf. My grandfather, along with many other of his contemporaries, were silenced by the colonizers and re-colonizers of this island in the former half of their life, and then their own children (who were raised with patriotism given by the Chinese nationalists during the martial law era) in the latter half of their life. It was quite sad to watch the final demise of a person who had gone through so much yet had so little to pass on to his descendants. Looking at the end of my grandfather’s story, I realize that I also do not expect to have my words and opinions taken seriously from my children (if I were to have some) when my time comes in the future.

06:04 - Because by then, the most important work of our generation will be more than complete, and its legacy will last until the next millennium. Yes, we will have a de jure independent Taiwan by then. But we will leave more to our children than what my grandfather had always hoped for. The Taiwan yet to be born will be an open, just, and democratic society where citizens with all kinds of heritage (indigenous, South East Asians, Japanese, Chinese, Europeans, Americans, …) can thrive and firmly call themselves Taiwanese together. There will be solar panels on every rooftop; there will only be electric vehicles on the streets; offshore wind turbines will be among the first few things that come into the minds of our descendants when they think of the beach and the sea.

06:59 - Most important of all, they will live like this as if there has never existed another way of life. Thus when my time comes, I can tell my children: there is nothing more you need to learn about our story, because you are already living in it. And then I shall have a long and serene sleep, in which I might relive the old days in dreams; there, perhaps my grandfather and I will walk along the riverbanks at Guandu together once more, on a Wednesday afternoon when there are no classes. .