A documentary produced by the Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) department of ethnic affairs and Phoenix TV, Searching for the Taiping Steamer (
The film about a ship sinking offered a lesson for the nation's various ethnic groups, DPP officials and the film's producers said yesterday.
The DPP screened the documentary at a seminar yesterday, and people involved in the Taiping steamer tragedy also attended.
The Taiping sinking reveals the miserable stories of the refugees who fled China to Taiwan between 1945 and 1949, when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) were fighting a bitter civil war, said Yang Chang-cheng (
"The ship carried people who were about to become Taiwanese, even though they did not know if they would ever reach the island," Yang said.
At midnight on Jan. 27, 1949, the Taiping steamer, loaded with the final group of refugees who were leaving Shanghai for Keelung in search of a new life, sank in the Taiwan Strait after colliding with the Chienyuan (
It is suspected that the accident was caused by lack of lighting. Ships were banned from using their lights as they sailed during the martial law era, and the two ships struck each other in the dark, according to the documentary.
Producer Yu Hui-chen (
As many passengers were followers of the KMT, they were distrustful of a film that was co-produced by the DPP.
"The victim's families had many misgivings about the DPP and they were afraid of becoming propaganda tools or something like that," Yu said.
"It is undeniable that the DPP's campaign rhetoric during elections hurt the Mainlanders, a fact which I think the DPP might want to examine," she said.
"We just want to retrieve this piece of history and honor those who died in the turmoil, and we want people to learn from it," Yang said.
The film will be aired on Formosa TV and Phoenix TV tonight at 9pm.
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