Local writer and women’s rights advocate Shih Chi-ching (施寄青) died on Tuesday of a heart attack at the age of 68, police and prosecutors confirmed on Wednesday.
Shih was found by her godson at about 10pm on Tuesday on the bathroom floor in her home in Miaoli’s Nanjhuang Township (南庄), they said. There were no signs indicating a struggle.
Shih died before an ambulance arrived and no attempts to resuscitate her were performed to respect the writer’s wishes as stated in her will, they said.
Photo courtesy of Public Television Service
A longtime sufferer of heart disease, Shih underwent heart surgery more than a decade ago.
Born in 1947 in China, Shih and her family relocated to Taiwan in 1949.
Shih graduated from the Chinese literature department at National Chengchi University and taught at Taipei Municipal Jianguo High School, the top boys’ senior high school in Taipei.
She was well known for advocating women’s rights. In 1988, she founded the women’s association Warm Life (晚晴協會) and served as its head, and she also served as a consultant and board member for local women’s rights group the Awakening Foundation (婦女新知基金會).
Her earlier works focused on women’s rights and gender education, while her later works emphasized religion and the supernatural.
In 1989, her book Zou Guo Hun Yin (走過婚姻, “Having been married”) about her marriage, divorce and her path to becoming a women’s rights advocate became a bestseller, earning her the title “Divorce Guru.”
She famously said that if she had not gotten a divorce, she would have led a dull life.
Shih also translated books such as Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India into Chinese.
In 1996, the writer decided to run in the first-ever direct presidential election, coming up with the campaign slogans “Let women run the country” and “Liberate domestic slaves,” but she failed to garner enough signatures to qualify as a candidate.
Before her death, she was scheduled to attend a talk about her new book Dang Tou Bang He (當頭棒喝, “A strike and a shout to the face”) at the Taipei International Book Exhibition next month.
The book is a collaboration between Shih and a psychic about their attempts to help people resolve their issues in the present by recalling their experiences in past lives.
Representatives of local women’s rights groups were in mourning on Wednesday, praising Shih’s contribution to the local women’s rights movement.
Awakening Foundation chairwoman Chen Yi-chien (陳宜倩) said she was shocked to hear the news and expressed her admiration for the writer.
Shih made many contributions to reforms of the nation’s divorce laws, which have historically favored men, Chen said.
Shih was not afraid to write about her own experiences of marriage and divorce, and she educated many Taiwanese women about how to fight for custody of their children and to protect themselves under the law, National Alliance of Taiwan Women’s Associations vice president Chen Hsiu-hui (陳秀惠) said.
Society was not as open at that time as it is now and many divorced women suffered discrimination, she said, stressing that Warm Life has helped many divorced women.
Garden of Hope Foundation chief executive Chi Hui-jung (紀惠容) said Shih would be remembered as a charismatic speaker and women’s rights advocate.
Even though she had withdrawn from the spotlight in recent years, Shih still frequently donated her royalties and fees from making speeches to women’s rights groups, Chi said, praising the late writer for turning her own struggles into a strength.
“I am very, very sad. May she rest in peace,” said Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Yu Mei-nu (尤美女), a longtime friend of Shih.
Shih was known for her sharp wit and humor, and for encouraging women to leave unhappy marriages.
One of her most famous sayings was: “There will be affairs as long as there are marriages. Affairs and marriages coexist, but when facing affairs we must know what to accept and reject.”
She also once said that “the beauty of the body is transient. It is the most unreliable aspect of us. We can only survive in society with solid ability.”
Rather than put their marriages as the first priority, Shih advised women to love themselves and accomplish their own goals.
“Whether to have an affair or not is his problem, but if you don’t take care of yourself it’s your problem,” she once said.
She had also once joked that children are the “killers who destroy women’s movements” and that if her sons end up getting divorced, her only wish is that they “don’t leave me my grandchildren.”
Prosecutors in New Taipei City yesterday indicted 31 individuals affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for allegedly forging thousands of signatures in recall campaigns targeting three Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The indictments stem from investigations launched earlier this year after DPP lawmakers Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧) and Lee Kuen-cheng (李坤城) filed criminal complaints accusing campaign organizers of submitting false signatures in recall petitions against them. According to the New Taipei District Prosecutors Office, a total of 2,566 forged recall proposal forms in the initial proposer petition were found during the probe. Among those
ECHOVIRUS 11: The rate of enterovirus infections in northern Taiwan increased last week, with a four-year-old girl developing acute flaccid paralysis, the CDC said Two imported cases of chikungunya fever were reported last week, raising the total this year to 13 cases — the most for the same period in 18 years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. The two cases were a Taiwanese and a foreign national who both arrived from Indonesia, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The 13 cases reported this year are the most for the same period since chikungunya was added to the list of notifiable communicable diseases in October 2007, she said, adding that all the cases this year were imported, including 11 from
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) today condemned the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) after the Czech officials confirmed that Chinese agents had surveilled Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) during her visit to Prague in March last year. Czech Military Intelligence director Petr Bartovsky yesterday said that Chinese operatives had attempted to create the conditions to carry out a demonstrative incident involving Hsiao, going as far as to plan a collision with her car. Hsiao was vice president-elect at the time. The MAC said that it has requested an explanation and demanded a public apology from Beijing. The CCP has repeatedly ignored the desires
RSS