Leading Taiwanese academics along with former colleagues, friends and students gathered over the weekend to commemorate the late Chang Yen-hsien (張炎憲), former Academia Historica president and head of the Taiwan Society, marking the occasion by publishing an anthology of tribute articles on Chang and his work.
“Chang’s whole life was devoted to elucidating and documenting Taiwan’s history. He is the divine messenger sent by heaven to deliver to us the Taiwanese people’s authentic history,” law professor Lee Hung-hsi (李鴻禧) said.
National Chengchu University historian Tai Pao-tsun (戴寶村) served as chief editor of the anthology, which was published by the Wu San Lien Foundation for Taiwan Historical Materials.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
Running to 565 pages, the collection contains contributions from renowned public figures, academics, colleagues, family members and Chang’s former students — many of whom have become teachers, researchers and professors of Taiwanese culture, sociology and history.
At a commemoration on Saturday, Tai said he titled the anthology: Documenting History to Build Up the Taiwan Nation (治史起造台灣國), because that had become Chang’s life mission, with his tireless fieldwork talking to people, recording countless oral history interviews, enriching the research database and gradually cultivating a Taiwanese national identity.
Close friends of Chang’s, Lee and Tai were overcome with emotion and choked up when delivering eulogies and tributes during the commemoration.
‘OUTSTANDING’
“Chang was an outstanding history researcher. He represented the conscience of Taiwanese history in academic circles. He held strong to the principle of elucidating and documenting Taiwan’s history based on the collective experiences and perspectives of Taiwanese people,” former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) wrote in an article included in the anthology.
Throughout his eight years at the helm of Academia Historica, Chang bravely broke the shackles of the past and led the institution into research on Taiwanese history that was mostly ignored by the government and society, the former president wrote.
“Chang always espoused his conviction that study of Taiwan’s history must be based on Taiwanese culture and identity, and not from the Chinese people’s perspective. He opened the door and allowed Taiwanese to know our own history. From these efforts, the collective Taiwanese identity was gradually built up,” Lee wrote.
Dubbed the “Great Taiwan Historian” by colleagues, Chang was also active in civic affairs, Taiwan’s democracy movement and the struggle for freedom and civil rights.
RANGE OF SERVICE
Besides leading Academia Historica, Chang also held directorship and chairman posts in the Taiwan Society, the Taiwan Historic Research Association, the Taiwan Association of University Professors and other important academic and civic affairs organizations.
Defying political pressure and interference from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government, Chang undertook seminal research projects on the 228 Massacre, recording interviews with survivors and victims’ families, and also on the history of the White Terror and Martial Law eras under the dictatorship of Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) family rule.
Chang died after a heart attack in the US in October last year during a research trip aimed at recording interviews with Taiwanese expatriates — some of whom had been on a KMT blacklist for decades — about their struggles for Taiwan’s democracy and freedom.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the