July 9 to July 15
Chiang Shao-tzu (姜紹祖) took out his pen, ripped off a piece his shirt and wrote his last poem by the light of the lanterns hanging outside the prison camp.
The last stanza indicated his determination: “How could I surrender to the enemy for a life without purpose?””
Photo courtesy of National Central Library
He ordered his subordinate A-hui (阿輝) to bring the cloth back home, and thanked everyone for their support. They handed Chiang a black substance, which he stared at for a second — then tilted his head back and swallowed. It was raw opium.
“I believe that after I’m gone, those Japanese savages will stop killing people. Everyone must live on strongly, don’t do anything stupid and don’t get careless.” Chiang says.
Chiang leaned against the wall, almost collapsing but managing to sit upright. As his consciousness faded, he was still muttering: “We Han Chinese must not bow to the foreigners.”
Photo courtesy of atmovies.com
So concluded Chiang’s brief life, at least according to the Hakka writer Chung Chao-cheng’s (鍾肇政) biographical novel about Chiang’s heroics. Dying at the age of 20 on July 11, 1895, Chiang was the youngest of the “Three Hakka Musketeers” in the Hsinchu and Miaoli area that resisted the Japanese when they arrived to take over Taiwan.
Fellow “musketeer” Wu Tang-hsing (吳湯興) was a far more charismatic leader, and he survived until the decisive Battle of Baguashan (八卦山之役) in today’s Changhua County, the largest clash during the resistance. But Chung, a Hsinchu native, chose to focus on Chiang.
“Among the countless resistance leaders, Chiang Shao-tzu was the youngest,” Chung writes in the introduction of the novel. “Not only was he the first to die, he also died in the first large-scale joint counterattack between the many groups in an attempt to recover Hsinchu.”
Photo courtesy of atmovies.com
LITTLE INFORMATION
As Chiang died young in a time of chaos, there are few historical sources about his life.
“Although many people have tried to gather information about him, in the end they could only sigh and lament, ‘There’s just too little material,’” Chung writes in the afterword. He left no photos behind either.
Photo: Chien Jung-feng, Taipei TImes
In fact, more is known about Chiang’s great-grandfather Chiang Hsiu-luan (姜秀鑾), who put his family on the map in the early 1800s as a government official, successful businessman and pioneer who settled in today’s Beipu Township (北埔) in Hsinchu County (driving out the Aboriginal population). As a result, Chiang Shao-tzu had a privileged upbringing, and in the novel the villagers were surprised that the frail and diminutive scholar had returned home a bona fide resistance commander.
When Chung visited the Chiang family house in the late 1970s, Chiang’s son was already 83 years old and was in too poor health to receive guests. His daughter-in-law and granddaughter could not find the writings Chiang had left behind, but they managed to find a stack of papers — IOUs from the time when he borrowed money to raise his army.
Chung was moved, as they offered insight into what writing in Taiwan looked like before the Japanese arrived.
Photo courtesy of atmovies.com
Born in 1925, Chung says he “grew up speaking in Japanese, thinking in Japanese, even breathing Japanese air.” He adds that Chiang’s writings read the same as those by the arrivals from China after the Chinese Civil War, and notes that they came from the same roots of Han Chinese culture that the colonizers denied his generation.
Chung also met a man surnamed Chiu (邱) who was a great admirer of Chiang and had an opportunity to meet some of his followers in the 1950s. Among them was an elderly A-hui, who described to Chiu the exact circumstances under which Chiang died, a story that made its way into Chung’s novel. Chiu says they all sobbed uncontrollably when A-hui told the story, and Chung also shed tears when reading the account.
HISTORIC ACCURACY
Research on Chung Chao-cheng’s Biographical Novels (鍾肇政傳記小說研究) examines how much of Chung’s tale was based on historical fact. There’s significant Chinese and Japanese historic material on the Taiwanese fight against the colonizers in 1895, with mentions of Chiang scattered here and there.
The first part of his life closely follows historical records, as the unlikely commander gave up his comfortable life and was able to recruit more than 500 people in a few months.
On June 3, 1895, Chiang arrived with his troops in Hsinchu to meet with the other local resistance leaders. With Taipei already fallen, the armies planned to attack the Japanese advancing south. On June 14, they headed north from Hsinchu, with Chiang often serving as the vanguard, winning battle after battle, Chung writes, causing the Japanese to retreat back to today’s Jhongli District (中壢). This did happen, but most historic accounts show Chiang as just one of the commanders in the operation.
However, the Japanese quickly regrouped and routed the resistance forces. Chiang retreated to the mountains and temporarily halted the Japanese advancement with guerrilla tactics. However, the local elite in Hsinchu refused to financially support the resistance, and the Japanese easily took the city. During this time, Chiang returned to Beipu to recruit more troops. He had already spent the family fortune, so he borrowed.
Chung writes that the resistance regrouped on July 9 to organize a secret counterattack, with Chiang’s brigade tasked with capturing the Hsinchu train station. This specific task is only mentioned in a Japanese military account, with most Chinese sources stating that Chiang was tasked with providing support to the other commanders.
Here, the story takes on two versions: one states that Chiang had not only saved another brigade but he also captured the train station — but in the ensuing chaos he and his men were surrounded in a farmhouse and captured. In the other version, the Japanese caught wind of his plan before anything happened and was captured right away. Chung, of course, chose the heroic version.
As far Chiang’s death, four examined sources state that he was killed on the battlefield, while three indicate that he committed suicide. Of course the latter has more dramatic effect, but it also matches the tale told by the real life A-hui.
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