Bad Manners & Book Crimes: How an American Op-Ed Sparked Taiwan’s Self-Awareness Movement – S5-E15

Cover left shows people lining up for buses in 1976 via Taiwan Panorama. And left: A report announces the creation the formation of the China Youth Self-Awareness Promotion Association, more commonly known as the Self-Awareness Association, this group dedicated themselves to improving public morality with a slogan that translates similar to: “We will not be judged by history as a selfish and decadent generation” or “as selfish or decadent.”

THE TAIWAN HISTORY PODCAST – FORMOSA FILES

TRANSCRIPT

S5-E15 -Bad Manners & Book Crimes: How an American Op-Ed Sparked Taiwan’s Self-Awareness Movement

Release Date: May 28, 2025

Time: 30:00

PLEASE NOTE: This transcript was created by AI; it may not be entirely accurate. Any errors are the result of the AI transcription, and Formosa Files is not liable for the content in this transcript. Thank you, and use AI responsibly 😊

Transcript: 

Have you ever felt so strongly about something that you sent a newspaper an opinion piece for their editorial page? Let's say you're just living in a foreign country and you're upset about this, that, and the other. I would suppose you're probably going to bite your tongue and keep quiet. However, something that's really bugging you and you just need to get it off your chest, you might consider writing one of these op-eds or letter to the editors.

And in 1963, an American living in Taiwan did just this. And the response was amazing. Almost overnight, his opinion piece sparked a nationwide movement.

A movement for the betterment of Taiwan. But for those leading the movement, it would eventually lead to long prison sentences. The Taiwan History Podcast, Formosa Files, is made possible through the generous sponsorship of the Frank C. Chen Foundation.

Formosa Files. Let's go back to Taiwan on the Saturday of May 18th, 1963. If you were reading the main state newspaper, the Central Daily News, 中央日报, you might have stumbled upon an opinion piece as you look through the supplementary pages of the newspaper.

And this opinion piece is going to kick off a movement. And as you said, with some of its leaders doing long jail terms. So this editorial is written under a pen name, Di Renhua.

Which sounds suspiciously similar to Di Renjie, a famous Tang Dynasty official known for his uprightness, wisdom, sense of justice, and he later became the subject of Chinese crime novels. This is a Chinese sage-like Sherlock Holmes. Yes, but in our case, this Di Renhua is not solving any complicated crimes.

Instead, he's offering moral guidance. Is he writing in English or in Chinese? In Chinese. And the piece is titled Ren Qinghui Yu Gong De Xing.

In English, this would be The Human Touch and Public Morality, approximately. The author wrote that Ren Qinghui, the warmth of human relations, of treating people well, was limited to a person's family and social circle. But strangers, those outside of one's circle, were treated badly or just ignored.

The author gives plenty of examples of this lack of public morality. Not queuing, cheating on exams, non-students using students' bus passes, people ignoring no smoking signs, just generally being self-centered and disregarding others, and distorting the law to help friends, turning a blind eye to crimes. So 50 years later, in some online memoirs, the author writes, quote, Yes, and although some of these sorts of actions might seem small matters, collectively, he thought they created serious problems for society.

From those references to students, you might guess he's a teacher, and perhaps a foreign teacher. Close. Now, Mr. Di Renhua is indeed a foreigner, an American, but not a teacher.

He was a Yale University graduate student, here studying Chinese history and philosophy at National Taiwan University, NTU, in Taipei, the nation's most prestigious university, and his name was Don Barron. Don Barron. Both of those are titles, like Duke Earl, kind of sounds like a made-up name, I have to say.

Yeah, his full name was Donald William Barron. A real name, and he was from Long Island, New York. This Donald William Barron, or Don Barron, criticized Taiwanese for being selfish and indifferent in public, and Taiwan society for being corrupt.

He used a common Chinese saying that I'm totally going to butcher because I never use this saying, although I've heard it many times, but it goes something like 笑贫不笑娼 (xiào pín bù xiào chāng) so roughly translating to, laugh at or mock the poor, but not the prostitute. To mock the poor, but not the prostitute. So a society that prioritizes wealth over virtue, a society that looks down on the poor while accepting those with ill-gained money. 

Mr. Barron also brought up the practice of vote buying, packs of MSG and toothpaste given out at election time. A silly idea for a bribe, but they used to do that, yeah. And of course, there was bribing officials for more serious matters.

All in all, pretty harsh criticism from a guest in your country. Agreed, but was it not an accurate assessment? Yes, based on what I've heard and read, things were pretty bad before. And for today's episode, we're drawing on a book, Civility and its Development, the Experiences of China and Taiwan, by David C. Schack, who has written extensively on the subject of civility.

This Mr. Schack is an academic who lived here around that time. Yes, first lived in Taiwan at the end of the 1960s. He says that, quote, Barron's critique was by no means exaggerated.

Littering and spitting were commonplace. Smokers smoked wherever they liked. Students hid books they were reading in the library to reserve them for themselves, and some even cut out sections that they needed to read, depriving other students access to them.

End quote. That's really bad. Book crimes.

So 1984, thought crime. But for John, the worst crime is book crime, apparently. Yeah, I'll continue my quote.

Thank you. People failed to apologize for bumping into others in the public space, and crowds routinely walked by anyone who had slipped or fallen or had come off a bicycle or motorcycle. Drivers drove with scant regard for pedestrians.

Things are better now, but drivers drove with scant regard for pedestrians. Yeah. Alas, still too common to assign that behavior to the history files.

Of course, it's not just drivers making it tough for pedestrians, as Schack noted. He also mentioned there's a habit of shops, hawkers, and businesses using sections of the sidewalk to sell goods, fix scooters, and so on. Which, of course, made walking on this sidewalk difficult.

When you had a sidewalk, that is. And although a theme running through today's episode is how much things are better today, this is one aspect. There's plenty of room for improvement still.

Definitely. I recall, actually, a recent editorial in the Taipei Times connected to this. It had that title, Taiwan, a living hell for pedestrians.

Certainly not a pedestrian paradise, put it that way. You're very generous. Okay, so back to the May 18th, what was it, 1963? 1963 editorial.

This editorial makes waves. Yes. In his online memoir, Barron writes, quote, Never could I have anticipated the response.

Many related articles were published in the papers. It was discussed even in the Hong Kong newspapers. In response to the article, students at NTU initiated a movement that spread throughout Taiwan in both universities and middle schools called the Self-Awareness Movement.

He's kind of underplaying the impact because the speed was incredible. The newspaper editorial comes out on a Saturday, and two days later, things are kicking off. Yep.

It's not as if this criticism of poor public morality was new. It had a pretty long history of it come up now and again. But perhaps the timing was just right, and it seemed to have the stamp of government approval because it was in the state mouthpiece newspaper, a KMT newspaper.

And it came from an American. Yes, and people knew that. His pen name didn't work.

Not hard for people to guess who had written it because of references to the university. At that time, there were only two foreigners, him and another American on the NTU campus. So he stood out.

Yes, and two days after the publication of Barron's op-ed, so Monday, two university students, Chen Zhengguo and Qu Xitu, announced the formation of the China Youth Self-Awareness Promotion Association. More commonly known as the Self-Awareness Association. One of the students, Chen Zhengguo, was from NTU, and the other, surname Xu, was then the secretary-general of the Student Federation at National Tsunza University, which is another very prestigious university in Taiwan.

The slogan of this group dedicated to improving public morality was something like, We are not a selfish and decadent generation, or could be translated as, We will not be judged by history as selfish or decadent. And they had approval from the NTU university president, who told students to, quote, Engage in self-examination, build up a sense of public morality, and carry out your responsibilities to the nation. The movement spread to other universities and also some high schools, including famous ones like Taipei First Girls High School and Jingmei Girls High School.

Besides the Taipei headquarters, regional branches were established around the country, including in your beloved Jiayi City. Oh, nice to know. This movement, this group, called on students to engage in social service.

Reading from David Shack's book, quote, Volunteers wearing movement armbands monitored bus stops and stoplight sections to ensure orderly queues, prevent crossing against the light, direct traffic, and help the disabled cross safely. They observed theater entrances to ensure that patrons queued while buying tickets and entered the theaters in an orderly fashion. And they picked up rubbish left on the ground.

This is our version of the cultural revolution. Actually promoting culture. They've got their armbands and everything in there.

Please cross the street politely. And the China Youth Self-Awareness Promotion Association sent speakers to schools all around Taiwan, telling students about the moral goals of their organization. And they published a booklet listing examples of bad and good public morality.

Okay, here's some examples of the bad behavior they'd identified. And these ones are particularly for students. So, cheating on exams, non-students using a student's bus pass, smoking where prohibited, allowing non-residents to stay in student dorms.

Ooh, this one I have a problem with. It means you can't bring your girlfriend back. Spoil sport.

Taking up a desk in the library when not using it, cutting out portions of library books or magazines. Obviously, crimes against books, John. Crimes against books.

Unforgettable. And the booklet gave examples of good public behavior as well. Bus drivers accelerating and braking smoothly.

Another one, drivers obeying traffic rules. Thumbs up for that. Yeah, that's good.

Shop clerks and bus attendants being polite and friendly to customers. So, if they're talking about bus attendants, back in the day, there was this spot in the back of the bus where you would go and get your ticket when you got on. And buying goods from shops that give receipts.

Buying goods from shops that give receipts, huh. This is that government receipt, the Tongyi Fa Piao, introduced way back in 1951, including the lottery component that facilitates tax collection. So many foreigners, I know, they just toss those away or they don't keep them.

You could be rich if you just hang on to those. Or you can put them into your yo-yo card or your phone or something. And the whole idea, right, was if the shop has one of these things, then they're paying taxes.

And the shops that don't issue them aren't paying taxes. So, it's an incentive for the shop and also for the person to say, hey, where's my Fa Piao? Yes, that's right. And if you don't want to keep it, you can donate it.

Charities are happy to receive them. Oh, John, you're shaming me. You're good.

Public morality, my friend. Yes. Anyway, although the self-awareness movement had some success, it would soon get in trouble.

One of the early organizers, the co-founder, Xu Zhitu, he also organized what he called the Unity Foundation. And it was to serve as the funding source for the self-awareness movement. But it was a group looking for unity across the straight, not retaking the mainland.

These guys, no, they were talking about unification. And the group was critical of both the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party governments. But there's another reason why this movement got into trouble, I'm guessing.

The KMT didn't like the competition. They didn't like the lack of control over these students. They had their own youth organization.

Do you know what it's called? Zhou Guotuan in Chinese, Save the Nation Association. Yeah, the China Youth Corps, the full name, the China Youth Anti-Communist National Salvation Corps. Oh, that just rolls off the tongue.

Yeah. Gives you an idea of its patriotic military focus. And it had been Chiang Kai-shek's idea.

And the guy who started it, his son, Zhang Jingguo, kicked it off in 1952. So yeah, they wanted to close down this competitor. It's sort of also funny to think about them wanting to promote manners and all of that, and then also unification.

They would have had their hands full if they were on the other side of this trade, working on manners, like crossing... In any case, the foundation and movement, as you said, came under government scrutiny. And in early 1969, Mr. Xu and other leaders associated with this unity foundation were arrested and imprisoned. The military court, I remember Taiwan's under martial law at this point, indicted the men under Article 2, Paragraph 3, of the Act for the Control and Punishment of Rebellion.

If you're being tried with something which has the word rebellion in it, you're in trouble, pretty serious. But they must have known what they were getting into in some way. I mean, at this point, promoting unification, they should have stuck to manners.

Mm-hmm. And as you said, serious charges and serious sentences. Ten years in prison and five years of civil rights deprivation for one guy.

Three others were sentenced to 15 years in prison and 10 years of this civil rights deprivation. Harsh, especially seeing as there was no evidence they planned any violent action against the state. And by the way, this civil rights deprivation, it meant that after finishing your prison sentence, you couldn't vote, you couldn't run for public office or hold government employment.

You couldn't be a teacher, couldn't get involved in politics or even civic organizations. As for the most important guy, the Xu Xihu, the co-founder of the movement, he had received a diagnosis of schizophrenia from NTU hospital and was thus declared unfit for trial by the military court. I think he ended up in a psychiatric institution.

Lucky guy. Yeah, kind of, yeah. The men sentenced to those long prison terms asked for a retrial, which turned out to be not such a good idea.

So for people who don't know, in Taiwan, you are entitled to three trials before the verdict is final for the most part. And the prosecutors can say, we want a higher sentence on the second. And sometimes it happens.

So I was looking it up. In America, it's almost impossible unless they add charges for you to ever have your sentence increased. So on appeal, if anything, it would be upheld or it would be reduced.

But in Taiwan, you have to be careful about appealing because it may not go your way. And it might not just be an extra month or so. No, no.

Three of them had their sentences increased to life imprisonment and permanent loss of civil rights. However, after President Chiang Kai-shek died in 1975, a general amnesty was declared and... Oh, I'm sure they were released and given an apology and compensation and, uh, I don't know, the key to the city or something. Nope.

Their sentences just went back to the original 15 years. Okay. I'm not sure when they finally got out, but the movement was long dead.

Yeah, pretty much forgotten by this stage. It's not a great outcome, is it? The self-awareness movement didn't make much difference to manners and the leaders during prison time. And these are elite university students.

They had bright futures ahead of them. Yeah, but they evidently weren't all that bright or very self-aware or they would have stuck to the manners and stayed away from the unification. And the co-founder of the Self-Awareness Association, Chen Zhengguo, what about him? Not sure what happened in the immediate fallout, but later he's the chairman of a computer company in the U.S., so a successful end for him.

And what about the man who kicked things off with the editorial, the American student, Don Barron? Yeah, so just to recap, he had been here at National Taiwan University to study and older than you might expect. He was 32 years old when he wrote that editorial and that was at the end, near the end of his two years of study. He left a few months after he caused the stir.

He'd completed his studies and he returned to the United States, to Hawaii actually, and he would later settle in Honolulu as a Lutheran pastor. He'd come out here invited by the Lutherans. So he did come back? Well, yeah, he came back a few times, about a year later to study the Taiwanese language, but that didn't work out.

He got a nasty case of hepatitis, a terrible disease. You can't drink alcohol when you have that. And it's also bad in other regards as well.

Yes, other regards, yes. He came back to Taiwan again, 1966, to work for a few years as a pastor's assistant and a teacher. And during this time, he married a Taiwanese woman, a lecturer in biology at NTU.

It's always a danger when you're living in Taiwan, isn't it? Yes, a beautiful danger. And our Donald William Barron passed away at an old age in 2013. 2013, so that would be the 50th anniversary of the founding of the self-awareness movement.

And by the time of this 50th anniversary of the founding of the movement, many of the aims of that movement had been fulfilled. Taiwan had become a polite place. The old wrenching way, the human warmth remained.

But the public morality aspect had been much improved. And among those impressed by the public civility in Taiwan was a new wave of tourists. Yep, and it was a big Chinese wave.

Young people are shocked when I tell them how long this took. They just can't fathom. It was 2003 when President Chen Shui-bian opened the mini Three Links.

So you could like send a letter from Jinmen to China directly. You could travel there. But it was 2008, President Ma Ying-jeou launched the Three Links, transport, trade, postal services between Taiwan and China.

Before that, you had to stop in Hong Kong or Macau. I don't remember how many times I sat on the tarmac while they changed the flight number. And then we took off again to someplace in China.

Insanity. But 2008, finally, direct flights between the two countries are now allowed. Taiwan also formally opened up to group tourism.

The first groups of PRC tourists came in 08. And in 2011, Taiwan expanded the policy to allow individual tourists. These Chinese tourists traveling independently could really get to explore the real Taiwan, have more natural interactions with people here.

And they were pretty impressed. Among them was a famous young Chinese personality, a guy called Han Han, aged 29, I think. His blog essay describing a trip to Taiwan published in 2012 sparked a lot of discussion.

Han Han was a huge name back in the day. His writing reflected and shaped opinions of the younger generations of Chinese. Yeah, millions of fans followed his online writings.

And in this essay on Taiwan, Han Han described some touching encounters where strangers had helped him out. He was very impressed by his encounters with ordinary Taiwanese, especially from help he received, as you said, from strangers. It gave him a lot to think about, especially how it compared back home to his native China.

One time he left his cell phone in a taxi cab when he was on his way to Yangmingshan near Taipei. The driver had the phone delivered to the hotel where Han was staying. Yeah, so Han wants to thank the driver with this cash reward.

But the driver says, no, it's no big deal. Han said he was stunned by this kindness. Yes, and he thought these human kindnesses were so much more impressive than the showy displays of power and wealth in China.

Okay, here's a reflection from something he wrote, quote, I felt a loss in the environment in which I live, so China, where in earlier decades we were taught to be brutal and aggressive. And in the more recent decades, we've been taught to be greedy and selfish. These sentiments exist under our skin.

I also felt a loss because our elders destroyed our culture, as well as the traditional virtues, destroyed mutual trust, beliefs, and consensus among the people. But they did not build a brave new world. What we have lost is what they, people in Taiwan, have retained. 

We lack something to be proud of. This idea was shared by many Chinese, the idea that Taiwan had retained traditional Chinese culture. They'd kept Chinese traditions and values.

It's an argument. But if Han Han had visited a few decades earlier, he may not have been quite so impressed with Taiwan's public behavior. Right. 

Civility in Taiwan, it's a relatively recent phenomenon. So it seems to have little to do with Chinese traditional culture, you know, following rules. Again, yeah, not a part of Chinese traditional culture.

No, not at all. No. But in Taiwan, you know, this became a mark of being a Taiwanese.

So anyway, how did Taiwanese become so much more polite than before? Was it education? Becoming wealthier? Becoming freer? Was it laws and law enforcement? Let's go back to the research done by this academic, David C. Sheck. Yeah, because he studied it, wrote about it, and actually lived through the changes. Yes. 

Those changes were a long time in coming. Writing in his book, he says, quote, between 1969 and 1979, I spent a total of four and a half years in Taiwan, during which I saw no effective efforts to promote public morality or evidence of it becoming more established, end quote. Well, there were efforts, right? But the key word there, effective. 

Things didn't get better. And he said in the two and a half years he spent here in the 80s, the situation didn't improve. He writes, Throughout these two decades, so the 70s and the 80s, people continued to disregard enjoinments to observe public morality.

Yeah. He says there were now and then a short-lived government campaign or a moral education, this and that in schools, but the results not seen on the streets. But finally, quote, in the early 1990s, Taiwan began to change. 

People not only became more polite, but the general level of concern was perceptibly higher. So he mentioned smokers becoming more considerate, people actually lining up, queuing, littering less. And Taipei City drivers, he notes, are more civilized, thanks to increased traffic law enforcement in the mid-1990s, and also probably just a general evolution towards civility.

I recall the traffic still being wild enough back in the 90s, the late 90s. Do you remember being in a bank or post office? People would crowd around the counter, thrust out their bank book in front of yours, really uncomfortable. Yeah. 

It's impossible for people to imagine today, because today you go and you take your little ticket and number 156, and then you come up and totally civilized, right? But go back 30 years and it's... And as you said in the beginning, one of the big themes of this is how things have changed for the better. And the reason, according to people who study it, is Taiwan's democratization. So the rule of law, political democracy, civil engagement, people actually becoming involved in society.

Part of that might be socially engaged religious associations as well, and fast economic growth while still keeping the equality pretty good, right? Better than other countries. And increasingly high level of education. And of course, people being richer meant they weren't fighting over access to things. 

So they could start to look at the quality of life and it's not just surviving. Yes. And also a newer generation looking at the behaviors of the older one and going, I don't want to be like that. 

So many factors really contributed. You could even make a case that public civility was driven by the MRT. I mean, the MRT system in Taipei is probably one of the best examples of Taiwan's civil morality.

Yes. Yes. You could make that case. 

The MRT subway system started in the late 1990s and it was a new thing. It was a chance for a modern restart, a reboot. I think it took a few years for it to really become as civilized as it is now. 

But yeah, behavioral patterns really changed. People followed regulations. There was praise for the MRT and there was pride in it. 

It became a point of pride, part of Taipei's self-identity. Yes. Shared identity. 

So people have got this shared behavior, the civility on the MRT, on the train cars, the platforms, the stations, and it's spread to other public transportation lines, other public spaces, even all the way down to Kaohsiung. Yes. Although we still have the problem of people not quite understanding that you let people out of a train first before getting in. 

But it's improving. And what I'm really liking recently, I've been seeing more and more, is the offenders start getting dirty looks from the other people. And that's what you need. 

You need the civic pressure of like, that's unacceptable, dude. You know? With that, you can make changes. Anyway, Don, if you were writing an editorial for the newspaper today, looking for an improvement, what would you target other than book crimes? Well, the takeaway might be, don't write an editorial or people might end up doing jail time.

But I can't think of anything off the top of my head. I guess I'd like to see a reduced workload for students. Class hours are too long. 

Let them sleep in a bit. And I'd like to see women wearing skirts more often. Anyway, Eric, how about you? So you just blew it. 

I mean, the first one was good. Yes, class hours. And then you had to go sexist. 

I mean, incredible. All right. Well, me, it's Kaohsiung cigarettes. 

So do you really need to have a cigarette while you're on a scooter? You can't wait until you get somewhere. You got to light one up as you're scootering. I'll go in the evening just- What a small peeve you have. 

It continues. In the evening, sometimes I'll stop at a convenience store for an adult beverage and you're sitting out there and there's this nice sign out there, 10,000 NT fine, no smoking. And they're sitting there just puffing away. 

And then they just throw it. They just toss the butt everywhere. This irritates me so much that I have gotten this close to being Michael Douglas in Falling Down.

Ooh, 1980s movie reference. Actually, it's 93. Okay. 

All right. So time for you to go off and start a anti-cigarette butt movement. Years ago, I would walk up to the people and say, who do you think you are? Isn't this your country? Don't you love your own country? Give them a lecture and get all self-righteous and stuff.

And they would just look at you and pretend like they didn't speak Chinese. I've learned that that kind of approach doesn't work. So when I really can't deal with anymore, I try something else. 

The guy tosses it on the ground. I walk up and I pick it up and I say, I'll throw it away from you. And then I walk over and throw it away. 

And the guy looks at me like I'm totally insane. But I have a feeling that they're going to remember that for a long time to come. The wacko foreigner who picked up my cigarette butt and said he'd throw it away from me.

tbc

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