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!