Snow Red & Moon Angel

She was just a Formosan peasant's daughter, but she had been beautiful in her youth, when she went to Shanghai in the '20s and studied Communism. Now, at 46, after some advanced studies in Moscow and nine years in Jap prisons, she was tuberculous and no longer beautiful. But baggy-eyed, jug-eared Chinese General Chen Yi, looking back on the worst month of his Formosa governorship, would never forget the woman known as Hsieh Hsueeh-hung--Thanks Snow Red.

Chen blamed last month's Formosa rebellion on Snow Red. This was unduly modest of him; most of the trouble had been made by Chen and his postliberation carpetbaggers from the mainland.

Snow Red, as president of her local Women's Association, had made anti-Chen speeches but--said those who knew her--"she didn't sound like a Communist." Chen admitted last week: "Before the trouble started, the Communists were not well organized, but after it started they seized their opportunities."

How to Make Reds. When Chinese rule returned to Formosa (ending Japanese possession since 1895), 64-year-old Chen had seized an opportunity himself. With his Chinese aides and "monopoly police" he took over and expanded the Japanese system of government industrial and trade monopoly (sugar, camphor, tea, paper, chemicals, oil refining, cement). He confiscated some 500 Jap-owned factories and mines, tens of thousands of houses. As the Shanghai newspaper Wen Hui Pao remarked, he ran everything "from the hotel to the night-soil business." The Formosans felt like colonial stepchildren rather than long-lost sons of Han.

One pleasant evening a truckload of monopoly police cruised down the main streets of Formosa's capital, Taipeh, hunting monopoly violators. They piled out, clubbed a woman who had been hawking cigarets. (This was against Chen's law, which said that Formosans could smoke only Formosa-made cigarets--from his gang's factory.) A crowd gathered. A policeman fired. The crowd chased off the police, burned their truck.

Next day Chen's gendarmes fired on a crowd of demonstrators carrying placards, killed four, wounded eleven. The rebellion was on. Crowds seized mainlanders, beat some to death with two-by-fours. They set up a People's Purge Committee. Moderates in the Committee--like the tea merchant Wang Tien-teng--broadcast middle-of-the-road demands: election of mayors; public enterprises to be run by Formosans; abolition of monopolies. Said Wang: "We do not request independence. We support the Central Government and we love our motherland."

But Snow Red and plenty of other Formosans at Taichu (five hours south of the capital) wanted more than that. She took over as chairman of the Taichu branch of the rebellion; her followers disarmed the local police, held the town for ten days. The People's Purge Committee added 32 new demands. Samples: an autonomous constitution, the surrender of monopoly controls to islanders. Some rebels even talked of a U.S. protectorate. In Pingtung, a band of them sang The Star-Spangled Banner as they took over the town.

At first, General Chen had stalled and made concessions. Outnumbered, he had promised to curb his troops, relax monopoly controls. He had sent another Miss Hsieh (whose full name meant Thanks Moon Angel) to the radio to assure the public--incorrectly--that nobody had been killed when the gendarmes fired into the crowd on the first day. Moon Angel was just as well known as Snow Red. She was a Taipeh lady doctor, locally famous for championing relief and rehabilitation for displaced prostitutes, who had beaten Snow Red for election as Formosa's woman delegate to the National Assembly in Nanking. Fellow Formosans did not like Moon Angel's radio speech, however. They dragged her furniture and belongings into the street and burned them.

Five-Year Plan. Chen stalled only till his reinforcements--Chinese regulars and MPs--had arrived from the mainland. By last week Chen had executed or jailed all the leading rebels he could identify and catch, and his troops had wantonly slaughtered (said a Formosan delegation in Nanking) between 3,000 and 4,000 throughout the island. Moderate tea-merchant Wang, Chen said, was deceased: "When the troops arrested him, he resisted and was shot." Chen closed down Formosa's last newspaper because it printed a Nanking report that he would be fired.

Nanking sent a mission to Formosa to "comfort the people." It was headed by Defense Minister Pai Chung-hsi, who told General Chen to relax his rule, make no more arrests except according to law.

In Taipeh last week, General Chen relaxed complacently in a Japanese armchair beneath a pot of purplish-pink azaleas. Then, leaning toward the green brocaded table cover, grey mustache bristling, dark little eyes sharp under their puffy lids, he spoke:

"It took the Japs 51 years to dominate this island. I expect to take about five years to re-educate the people so they will be more happy with Chinese administration."

So far, Snow Red was avoiding reeducation. When the reinforced troops reached Taichu, she and two truckloads of men drove into the cool green mountains of the interior near Jitsu-Getsu San (the Mountain of Sun and Moon), toward shelter among the Formosa aborigines, whom neither the Manchus (in 212 years) nor the Japs (in 51) could ever reeducation.

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