Where Every Ghost Has a Name by Kim Liao

Author:Kim Liao
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2024-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

The Freedom Fighter

March 2011

Lin Kou, Taiwan

I took a bus for almost an hour to a small suburb outside of Taipei called Lin Kou, near the Taoyuan Airport, and walked another several blocks until I found the address. A doorman sent me up, and I found myself in the spacious living room of Roger Hsieh (Hsieh Tsung-min), former Taiwanese independence freedom fighter. He had been imprisoned in the 1960s with a number of Liaos and was the cellblock neighbor of my Uncle Suho. When we met, Roger had invited me to come see him in Lin Kou, and I obligingly went, hoping to interview him about his life and his memories of my family.

How did I meet Roger? Well, the universe delivered him to me, as it had so many other important guides and research angels. I had been keeping a blog, Girl Meets Formosa, of my travels in Taiwan and my research about Grandpa Thomas’s independence movement. While the blog itself never went viral, it became a surprisingly important link between me and a number of amazing people who offered me research resources through their memories, documents, or connections. The first of those people was René Vienet, the “bad boy of sinology.”

When I got René’s email, I agreed to meet him for dinner in Taipei and then promptly Googled him to find out what I had gotten myself into. He was translating some of Uncle Joshua’s writings into French, and the internet had dubbed him “the bad boy of sinology” because he had taken the rather rebellious stance in academic sinology circles of denouncing the human rights abuses committed by the People’s Republic of China during and after the Cultural Revolution. René had come across my blog looking for more information on Joshua but was also happy to chat about Thomas and their independence movement. I was grateful to be offered help from anyone and everyone who found me because I needed it so badly.

When I walked into the restaurant, René stood to greet me. He was a massive, gray-haired white man with a long beard and large glasses. He introduced himself and then turned to introduce me to his dining partner, Roger Hsieh. “Roger is excited to meet you! He knew your family from political prison,” René said.

Roger was an older Taiwanese man in his late seventies with an animated, upbeat expression on his face and bushy eyebrows that danced like caterpillars as he spoke. He was dressed neatly in slacks and a sweater, and he shook my hand with an enthusiastic grip.

“I was imprisoned a few cells down from Liao Shi-hao (Suho) and his mother,” Roger said. He laughed and added, “Twice!”

To speak with Roger was to be swept up in his energetic, jovial attitude, so you’d never know that he endured such trauma in his early years until he told you the horrific details. He liked to laugh a lot, even when talking about his prison sentences and torture at the hands of the KMT secret police.

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