Taiwan: Seventy Years On — A Difficult Anniversary
by Mark Harrison
ON 28 FEBRUARY 1947, in Taiwan’s capital Taipei, two customs guards accosted a widowed woman, Lin Jiang-mai, selling unlicensed cigarettes at the Tianma Teahouse on present-day Nanjing Road. In the ensuing confrontation, one of the guards struck the woman; an angry crowd gathered, and one of the guards fired his pistol and killed a bystander. This set off a riot, and then an island-wide uprising by the Taiwanese people against the Chinese Nationalist (Kuomintang) government on Taiwan.