Gao Hua: In the past 60 years, the family and the country, who has complained about myriad concerns (5/8)

5. White terror, or the days of worry-free years?

The main targets of Taiwan's "white terror" in the 1950s and 1960s were "people from other provinces". Long Yingtai's father, Long Huaisheng, had been a military police company commander of the Kuomintang during the mainland era. After he went to Taiwan, he became a rural policeman. Should not be the "object of suspicion" of the party-state system, but still have to write an autobiography. Qi Bangyuan's husband, a railway engineer, was also asked to write historical reflection materials. In contrast, the situation of the people in this province seems to be much better. As long as they are obedient to the people, they are politically "safe and respectful", and they do not involve left-wing and Taiwan independence.

Is there a normal life under the "white terror"? It should be said that this is a distorted life under the influence of political interference. Under the "white terror", the people's lives are still going to get better and better. The main social structural background here is that Taiwan is not solely governed by the government. A planned economy that controls everything. After the mid-1950s, in addition to the government's regulated economy, the "market" factor also began to grow, and ordinary people could always find a bowl of rice to eat by relying on the "market". Long Yingtai's mother, Meijun, set up a small vegetable stall in Kaohsiung Port. Under her management, in 1953, it expanded into a small shop - "Meijun Store". Key years of transformation. At that time, most people didn't pay much attention to these things. People only cared about how much economic aid the United States gave to Taiwan and how much aid the Soviet Union gave to the mainland. They didn't know that the economic freedom of a society was the most important thing. Furthermore, Taiwan does not engage in "mass dictatorship" like the mainland. Although family members and children of "bandit spies" are also discriminated against (Long Yingtai's book mentions that Wang Xiaobo was insulted by school teachers because his mother was wrongly killed), But in general, the family members and children of "bandit spies" are not generally regarded as "untouchables", and their children can still study and go to university when they are in a situation of "everyone shouting and beating".

Although in the era of white terror, some people don't feel any pressure. There are people from other provinces as well as people from the province. "Vientiane" magazine has an article about a writer who fled from the mainland to Taiwan in the early 1950s. He was fortunate to study at the National Taiwan University Law School, and spent a period of peaceful study in what he called "the ivory tower". In the article, the author claimed that he was a member of a peripheral organization of the Kuomintang, an active member of the campus community activities of National Taiwan University, and also participated in a delegation of university students who went abroad on behalf of the "Republic of China". Clearly, the author is someone trusted by the authorities, and his recollection of the 1950s has his own perspective and stance.

This situation is no coincidence. Different people have different feelings about the social life of the mainland in the 1950s. For example, there are many intellectuals who criticize and reflect on "thought remolding" decades later, and some even directly criticize it as "brainwashing"; but there are also well-known intellectuals who appreciate and miss that life and call it "brainwashing". "The Red Years" (Pang Pu: "The Red Years--A Study and Life in the No. 1 Study and Life of East China University Club in 1949" by Pang Pu, Zheng Hongsheng is a critical intellectual from the province, and he grew up in Tainan. From a well-off family, his family is quite well-off. When he recalled his middle school days, he seldom mentioned the horror of the white terror that existed in the minds of many people from other provinces at that time, and rarely mentioned that some people from other provinces were in their memories. The embarrassing life in the 1950s and early 1960s is usually mentioned. He described in detail the process of his taste development, from the food shops or stalls in Tainan, all the way to Taipei, where he was studying, and he fell in love with other provinces. Dishes and food (Zheng Hongsheng: "Shandong Bai, Sichuan Cuisine and Tainan Out-of-Province Noodles--Recording the Taste Exploration of a Fucheng Teenager in the Shengping Era", Vientiane, Vol. 12, No. 1, January 2010).

Taiwan's "rebellion and martial law period" is a strange state. Its peak period should be in the ten years of the 1950s, and it began to ease after the 1960s. After that, although the spies still arrested people from time to time, the whistleblowers still prevailed, and even reached a generalization and depth. Many "loyal party members" who have "excellent anti-communist performance" have been "reported", but social tension has been relaxed. Taiwanese society in this period had a certain degree of freedom, and was put on tights again. Long Yingtai grew up during this period. She not only saw the agents in yellow khakis come to arrest the teachers of her school, but also, like that generation, "raised up innocently and openly in peace".