“Everyone, soldiers should die on the battlefield, not in the streets; teachers should die in the classroom and the lecture hall. My brother, as a journalist, used his blood as paint and his flesh as material, and with dignity forged an immortal civic character in the gasoline flames. He died a worthy death: as editor-in-chief, he died in the editor-in-chief’s office. There is nothing shameful in it at all. We, his family, are the most honored family in Taiwan’s four hundred years.”
— Cheng Ching-hua
Cheng Ching-hua, Nylon Deng’s elder brother, spoke these words on May 19, 1989, amid a funeral procession of tens of thousands.
In 2014, Taiwan saw its first occupation of the legislature since the White Terror (March 18 – April 10), much like the actions our ancestors took in the era of 228. During the people’s occupation of the legislature, it was also the twenty-fifth anniversary of Nylon Deng’s self-immolation. Shih Mi-na had long wanted to organize “The People’s Congress Pays Tribute to Mr. Nylon Deng” — to find a few trumpeters on a rooftop terrace on Qingdao East Road to play taps for him, so that young people could come to know this great and strong spirit anew. But it could not be done.
The 2014 declaration that could not be read, “The People’s Congress Pays Tribute to Mr. Nylon Deng”:
“Twenty-five years ago today, Mr. Nylon Deng turned his own body into a torch that lit up the world, awakening countless souls buried in indifference and bringing about the freedom and democracy the people of Taiwan enjoy today. What Mr. Nylon Deng showed us through his life and his death is what it means to live as a human being. He wanted us to see that yes, life can be like this: as long as we live, we need not tolerate the murkiness of the world. We can resist — and we have a duty to resist.
“Mr. Nylon Deng is Taiwan’s sun. Every moment we are alive, we will remember his burning day and night — so that we may see the world clearly, our eyes not clouded by fear of the dark; so that we may feel without fear the blood that fills our hearts, take responsibility for our own conscience, and act.
“When we see our companions suffer, when we sense injustice, when we cannot comprehend the cruelty of the world, when we are oppressed by tyranny, when we gasp helplessly on the edge of suffocation — because we are human, because we have conscience, a sense of justice, and reason, and because we know a man who burned himself for the truth — we must act.
“And so, on April 7, 2014, the people of Taiwan occupy the legislature, because we are sunflowers — because no matter how the KMT presses us to forget, sunflowers will always face the sun and move toward it.
“We are not the KMT; we are not dictators; we are not tyrants. We are a free people, and we are not the least afraid of the sun’s heat.
“Here, the People’s Congress reminds the KMT government that the will of the people of Taiwan, like the sun that will surely rise, will never cease.
“Now let us pay our highest respects to the sun that burned for Taiwan, Mr. Nylon Deng.”
— Shih Mi-na