Hello everyone, welcome to Taiwan Bar
Today, let’s talk a little about
The story of manly Taiwanese farmers in the 1920s
Ahem
Here we go
Speaking of the apple of your eye, we must talk about wifi
Speaking of the most notable peasant movement in Taiwan
We must talk about Resident Evil
( The Chinese pronunciation of Resident Evil is “E-ling-gu-bau”. The pronunciation of “E-ling” is similar to “Erh-lin”)
Ahem
We must talk about Erhlin Peasants Movements
In 1895, right after Taiwan was ceded to Japan according to the Treaty of Shimonoseki
Japan was right on the move of enforcing the policy of “Industry for Japan, Agriculture for Taiwan”
Trying to turn Taiwan into a sweet sugar kingdom
Japan therefore established various policies that frowned the sugarcane farmers
Like the price of sugarcane was dominated by the sugar factory
or the weighing of sugarcane was frequently being falsely reported
The false reporting situation was as ridiculous as three man weighed only 48kg
The farmers even had to pay the factory to collect their sugarcanes
Although the policies were suppressing the farmers
all that farmers could do were protesting in vain towards the Japanese government
or being Japan’s dead meat
When peasants stood up against the government and enterprises
Taiwanese intellectuals also stood up
Lee Yin-chang, who went back home to be a doctor in Erhlin
was also a member of Taiwanese Cultural Association
Facing the difficult situation of sugarcane farmers being ripped off
Sir Lee prescribed the right medicine to the problem
holding “Village Talks” to urge farmers to stand up, stand up!
He even founded the first farmers organization in Taiwan in 1925, “Erhlin Peasants Union”
representing the large numbers of sugarcane farmers
to fight for their rights against the “Lin Ben Yuan Sugar Kabushiki Kaisha(KK) ”
( Kabushiki Kaisha(KK), which means Corporation in Japanese.)
With strong promotion of the intellectuals ( Kabushiki Kaisha(KK), which means Corporation in Japanese.)
With strong promotion of the intellectuals
the sugarcane farmers gradually noticed
when their rights are being violated, they should stand up! Stand up! And fight!
Therefore the seed of rebellion planted in the farmers’ hearts, eventually blossomed
However, even with the assistance of the intellectuals,
KK with government at their backs, they could ignore all requests from the farmers
“Yah,” “Okay,” “LOL,” or read without reply
After playing so many times of I petition and you play dumb with the KK
it was finally the harvest season, hurray
Farmers decided to toughen up,
and refused the collection of the KK before sugarcane price were officially announced
But the KK also insisted on collecting, even brought the police with them
Seeing that the police were protecting the KK
the display of the loving relationship between government and KK
made sugarcane farmers so mad that they held sugarcane and hoes to fight back
The police also pulled out their swords and warning signs
This then pissed the farmers off
Both sides confronting each other with sugarcanes flying around
This was the first Peasants Movement in Taiwan’s history, “Erhlin Peasants Incident”
After the incident, Japanese government became furious and began to play a game-of-tag
Not only Lee Yin-chang, who was viewed as the leader, was taken into custody
but hundreds of members of the Peasants Union and farmers who were involved were also caught
However
Erhlin Peasants Incident was like the first firecrackers that popped on New Years day
many other peasants organizations popped out afterwards
After 1927, the island-wide Taiwan Peasants Union popped out
it had more than 20 thousand members
Fantabulous!
After the chatty talk
Erhlin Peasants Incident seemed to pioneered the road of revolution for Taiwanese farmers
they noticed how important it was to protect their own rights
Intellectuals carried the passion of social reform
and hoping the farmers could stand up against the evil with them
But if unfortunately they fail and starve
Aren’t farmers the biggest loser?
From the aspects of farmers
they face the situation of
not knowing which side to choose
One is the intellectual, but the epiphany they brought might starve them
The other is the KK, rude and dominant,
but bought their products and gave salaries
How they should make the choice
might be a question that others never thought about
O~K
the story ends here today
See ya!