228, the Nightmare of the Lins.

Recently, the 228 Affair went to be most political titles in any newspaper in Taiwan again. Someone said it was a bell ringer of intertribal conflict in 1947. Someone also said that it was just a act that the police seized the smuggled cigarettes. But the United News in Taiwan pointed that it was a complication of lacking of intercommunication of language absolutely.

The United News found Lin Ming-chu (林明珠, at the right side of the picture above) who sold cigarettes with his mother Lin Chuang-mine (林江邁, at the left side of the right picture), the key man of the 228 Affair, in ten years old at that time, to talk this tragedy. “My mother was a unfortunate woman,” she said in one sentence to summarize the all life of Lin Chang-mine. Cause her large family baited Lin Chuang-mine, she went to sell cigarettes in Yanping N. Rd. in Da-dao-chen (大稻埕), the central part of Taipei city at that time.

At the moment, the KMT government did not open the business for selling cigarettes. So the pitchmen, as well as Lin Chuang-mine, one of the stallman at the arcade placed in the Tian-ma-cha-fang (天馬茶房) below, always did this business without license.

In Feb. 27th 1947, in the gloaming as well, Lin Ming-chu returned home from school at the end of the day's classes and went to Tian-ma-cha-fang to vend cigarettes with her mother as usual. Here, an army man suited with gun closed to her picked up a pack of cigarettes and asked her, “How much money?” in Chinese language. But Lin Ming-chu who educated in Japanese and spoke in Japanese and Taiwanese languages could not understand at the first time, the hoodlum around her started to raise uproar, called Lin Chuang-mine “Someone wants to buy cigarettes with no pay.

A fight would begin, a crowd tended to catch the army man by lost communication and being uproarious. At the moment, the army man wanted to took the gun to threaten the masses, but he hurt the head of Lin Chuang-mine. It fired intense emotion among the people when the old woman bleeds at the same time by the gun. In the meantime, Lin Ming-chu heard someone say, “The wai-sheng-ren (外省人) strikes people…”

After this affair, Lin Ming-chu was sending to country of Kwei-shan (龜山) to go into hiding and never go to school. And Lin Chuang-mine was sending to the Shu’s hospital and stayed in few days. The old woman did not have the idea that Taiwan was became a battleground cause of her. From that day, Feb. 28th, the KMT government started to arrest contrabandist, cigarettes in especial.

When the time goes by, the storm of the 228 Affair would calm down, Lin Chuang-mine knew the whole process by some whisper. She had to vend cigarettes with license for life and her daughter, Lin Ming-chu, was backed to her. But this affair would become a total nightmare to Lin Chuang-mine, her daughter asked her, “What happened at that night?” at all times and her daughter sometimes had some questions about the 228 Affair for Lin Chuang-mine.

Lin Chuang-mine took her daughter to the deepest corner of the house for all time and said, “Stop talking about this. Are you out of mind? I am the one who Lin Chuang-mine is.” She was so afraid for jail. Sometimes Lin Ming-chu heard her mother sighed and said, “Just by one piece of cigarettes, it induced the society became a battlefield of racial antagonism…”
Lin Chuang-mine cannot wait to reverse the image of the 228 Affair; she died in 1969 with 63 years old by cirrhosis, just left a name in the history of the 228 Affair.

Those images above in their original context on the page: 聯合新聞網.