Sat, Apr 23, 2005 page3

• TV film recounts horror of `Taiping' steamer tragedy

  HISTORY LESSON The documentary on a ship that sank in the Taiwan Strait in 1949 has lessons about how ethnic groups can live in harmony, its producers say

  • By Jewel Huang / STAFF REPORTER
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  A documentary produced by the Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) department of ethnic affairs and Phoenix TV, Searching for the Taiping Steamer (尋找太平輪) tells the story of the sufferings of those who fled from China to Taiwan by ship in 1949.

  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 (楊長鎮), the director of the DPP's department of ethnic affairs.

  "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 (建元輪), a freighter carrying coal and timber. Nearly 1,000 passengers died, only 38 people survived.

  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 (游慧真) said the most difficult thing during the making of the film was obtaining the trust of the bereaved families she interviewed.

  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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