Lü Jie: From an Avoided Question on the February 28 Incident to Twenty-Eight Lessons on Taiwan History

30-Second Overview: In 2026, Lü Jie launched a ten-hour history course of Taiwan structured around 28 historical sites. The course incorporates not only regime changes but also maps freedom, democracy, culture, identity, and international positioning onto a single framework. ¹

In high school, he once asked about the February 28 Incident in class, and the teacher initially sidestepped the question. Years later, this cram school teacher, who originally entered the history department only because he filled out his application form incorrectly, repeatedly emphasized that history is not about memorizing a single correct answer, but about distinguishing between historical sources, facts, and perspectives. ^{2 3}

Lü Jie’s story is therefore not just about "how a famous teacher became popular." What is more worth asking is: after telling history well, can he simultaneously bring readers back to data, evidence, and their own judgment?

In a high school classroom, a question about the February 28 Incident was temporarily set aside. More than twenty years later, Lü Jie, who once asked that question, is now deconstructing Taiwan history into 28 accessible historical sites. ^{2 1}

The distance between these two events is not just from a classroom to a camera lens, or from a cram school to an online course. It is more like a fault line in history education: some questions are skipped because they are difficult to teach. Some questions, because they are too easy to turn into stories, require an additional question: where is the basis for the story?

Lü Jie’s uniqueness lies in the fact that he did not package himself as someone who loved historiography from the start. He even responded to the assumption that he had "aspired to study history since childhood" with a rather blunt rhetorical question:

"Which ear did you hear me say 'I am interested in history' from?" ³

This is not a deliberate contrast. Behind this rhetorical question is a misfilled application form, and also the story he most often tells: life does not always follow the script you wrote in advance. The question is, after walking through the wrong door, can you re-understand what room you have walked into?

Extended Viewing: Interview photo of Lü Jie.

Photo: Parent-Child World, "Teacher Gong Transforms into a Famous Cram School Instructor" Public page image, embedded via hotlink; not downloaded or cached, image rights belong to the original rights holder.

The Question the Teacher Sidestepped

In a July 2026 podcast episode introduction, Lü Jie recalled asking about the February 28 Incident in high school class. The teacher was "startled" and did not answer directly. What the podcast left behind was not the full transcript of the classroom, but a small scene: the president was already directly elected, yet people still hesitated about what could be discussed in class and to what extent. ²

The weight of this scene lies in the fact that it did not provide a dramatic answer. Why the teacher sidestepped it, and how other students in the room reacted, were not detailed in the introduction. We do not need to fill in the blank with a better-looking story. What is certain is that for the young Lü Jie, this was an experience of "history is not something already written in the textbook."

The question he later asked was not whether Taiwan history should discuss tragedy, but whether it could be taught as a history that people are willing to understand and even proud of. This "pride" does not have to mean grinding complex history into an anthem. It is more likely about letting students know they have the right to ask how a piece of land was named, how it was governed, and what unfinished memories it left behind. ²

📝 Curator’s Note: Questions that are skipped do not disappear; they only appear elsewhere. They may return in a cram school, in the comments section of short videos, or at the family dinner table. The difference is whether we are prepared to let the question linger longer than a slogan.

A Misfilled Application Form That Did Not Send Him into a Predetermined Life

Lü Jie studied in the Department of History at Chung Cheng University, and later completed his master’s degree in the Department of History at Chung Cheng University. This educational background looks like a neat line in a biography, but the protagonist’s version is not so tidy: he originally locked his choices on the Law Department, but ultimately entered the History Department due to a misfilled application. ^{3 4}

Before that application form, his academic journey was not smooth. GQ recorded that after high school graduation, he paused his further studies due to unsatisfactory results in the college entrance examination. During that time, he worked as a convenience store clerk, a cement worker, and in the funeral industry. He also described himself as a "small-time thug," involved in street brawls and disturbances. These are not decorations added to make his life’s turning point legendary, but the living conditions he had to acknowledge when he repeatedly spoke of "facing the true self." ⁵

Chance is often written as destiny, as if misfilling an application form once means you are destined to become a famous teacher. This way of writing is too convenient. A说法 closer to the truth is: an unplanned entrance later became the field of his work. During university, he entered the cram school industry; history was no longer just a required course in the department, but something that had to be explained clearly in front of a group of students. ⁵

A cram school is a very honest field. If the lecture lacks rhythm, students will leave first. Relying only on exam techniques, students might remember one question, but may not remember why they need to learn. Lü Jie’s point is therefore not to completely drive exams out of the classroom, but to put exams back in a smaller position: history can help children face not just a college entrance exam, but also the repeated judgments in life. ³

The Seafood Shop Interview and the First Class He Wanted to Escape

Lü Jie later described the beginning of his cram school career as a very Kaohsiung scene: in university, he was drinking at a roadside seafood shop when a cram school van drove in. He greeted the teacher who got out of the car; upon learning he studied history, the teacher asked if he wanted to teach a comprehensive history review. The next day, a phone call turned into an interview, which also became his first step into a cram school. ⁶

He recalled facing about 30 to 40 students in his first class, wanting to step down from the podium after five minutes. After ten minutes, he slowly adapted to the rhythm of the cram school; after half an hour, he felt "this is my stage." From an encounter to a class, there was no halo of a hero’s entrance; it was closer to a professional reality: if you cannot stand your ground, students will leave; if you can stand your ground, you have the qualification to continue speaking. ⁶

He developed a very specific classroom configuration for this: 70% of the time is spent on the main lesson, with stories and anecdotes, jokes, and "reasoning" each taking up 10%. Stories must connect to the main lesson; jokes keep students willing to stay; reasoning is what he hopes students take out of the classroom. This is not a formula that can be copied into every classroom, but it explains how he treats attention as part of history education. ⁶

In 2014, a video of him teaching in a Kaohsiung cram school unexpectedly spread on the internet. The English activity page of National Quemoy University described this as his career turning point: a person who was originally in a slump began to move toward a new public role because the video was seen. ⁷

The popularity of the video is certainly not a certification of historiographical quality. It only proves one thing: someone was willing to stop and listen to him. The truly difficult work is, after "someone is willing to listen," still allowing the other party to retain the ability to ask questions.

Historical Sources, Facts, and Perspectives: The Three Floors That Stories Cannot Omit

Lü Jie’s view on history actually leaves a ruler for checking his own narrative. He said: "To constitute a history, three elements must be present: historical sources, historical facts, and historical perspectives." ⁸

Historical sources are the documents, objects, records, and testimonies left behind; historical facts are the more reliable reconstructions of the past made by people after identification, comparison, and discussion; historical perspectives are how people understand those facts and choose which relationships to put in the foreground. The three are connected but cannot substitute for each other.

This distinction happens to be the limitation that all history content creators need to face most. Turning a history into a story that can be remembered in five minutes is a skill. But a five-minute story cannot dress up a perspective as the only fact, nor can it treat smooth causality as sufficient evidence.

When discussing history education, Lü Jie said that education often requires students to "learn," but rarely addresses how to think or how to use. Thus, dates, names, and standard answers remain, but the problem consciousness is squeezed to the edge. ⁸

This claim is not just left in interviews or books. In 2018, facing the discussion of the new high school history curriculum, he publicly criticized history education for long requiring students to memorize historical sources and facts, but not fully training them to form their own historical perspectives. He shifted the focus to exam methods, arguing that multiple-choice and essay questions should each account for half: the former confirms data and facts, while the latter requires students to organize context and argue. ⁹

This does not mean that students will automatically learn to think just by changing to essay questions. It is more like a reminder: whatever exams require, students will spend their time on. If education hopes students can explain reasons, compare materials, and take responsibility for viewpoints, evaluation cannot only reward those who circle the correct option fastest.

This also gives a more concrete meaning to his widely circulated quote:

"History does not teach you to recognize history, but to recognize human nature." ¹⁰

If understood as "human nature never changes, so the past can be directly applied to today," it is too fast. Institutions, media, power, and social conditions of different eras all change; people cannot treat the stories of the ancients as ready-made verdicts. What is more worth taking away is another, slower understanding: people make choices among interests, fears, hopes, identities, and power. Studying history is learning to put those choices back into conditions to see.

📝 Curator’s Note: What is most easily misunderstood in popular education is not that there are too many stories, but that stories are treated as the final conclusion because they sound good. Separating "historical sources, facts, and perspectives" actually leaves an exit for every good story that can be checked.

A Viral Video Does Not Equal a Simple Answer

The internet allowed cram school teachers’ classrooms to leave fixed seats. After the 2014 video spread, Lü Jie’s way of speaking was received by more absent audiences. Publishing and media allowed him to face not just students preparing for exams, but also young readers looking for answers to life. ^{7 11}

The most notable video that year was when he discussed the June 4 Incident in class, designing a manure truck as a fictional suppression plan, listing five "benefits," and simulating it on stage. Reports recorded the laughter of students in the room, and also the viral spread of the video after it went online. ¹²

But virality is not a liability waiver. Liberty Times published the same report featuring criticism from Chen Wei-ting, who believed that the grief and resistance sites of June 4 should not be handled in a mocking manner. The report did not publish Lü Jie’s formal response, so we cannot fill in his intent or defense for him. What can be written is that a joke originally used to capture classroom attention, once entering the public internet, was immediately put to the test of historical trauma and the ethics of representation. ¹²

This is a side that cannot be skipped when understanding Lü Jie. He is good at letting students remember events in laughter, but the scale of history education lies not only in what students remember, but also in how the injured people in those events are spoken of. Good stories need tension. Stories involving state violence and death require restraint.

The book What Ge Jiao Is Not History, But Human Nature, published in 2015, states this position very directly. The title uses the word "Loser" (Lu-she), a term familiar to the internet generation, but the core of the book is not to label failure, but to pull the dilemmas of figures from past and present in front of readers: frustration, choices, costs, and starting over do not only happen in textbooks. ^{10 11}

The Society Moves, History Must Be Understood: Lü Jie’s Lecture, published in 2021, extends this language to legends, the Pre-Qin period, and the Hundred Schools of Thought. The book preface again puts the question back to thinking: institutions often require students to learn, but rarely address how to use what is learned. If reading history only leaves dates and figures, the past easily becomes a series of answers waiting to be memorized. ¹³

This is exactly where Lü Jie’s narrative power lies. He brings figures down from the spirit tablets, letting emperors, powerful ministers, or losers become people who fear, calculate, and make mistakes again. For readers newly exposed to history, this is easier to enter than remembering a few more dates.

But power also brings responsibility. The more one can make complex events sound like stories right in front of you, the more one needs to clearly mark the boundaries of sources, inference, and rhetoric. The audience does not need to put down verification just because the speaker is humorous. The speaker does not need to make stories lose warmth out of fear of being questioned.

If history education is only memorization, students will think the past is a string of dead answers. If history education is only satisfying stories, students may think the past is just a plot machine serving today’s positions. The three-layer structure Lü Jie proposed happens to remind us of the shortcuts to avoid on both sides. ⁸

From the Cram School Podium to the News Studio

Lü Jie’s media path did not stop at teaching videos. In 2023, CTV News Information Channel launched The Lü Warring States BATTLE, hosted by him. The program places international affairs, cross-Strait relations, livelihood, economy, and technology into cross-generational and cross-disciplinary discussions. ¹⁴

When CTV released it, they quoted his words: the BATTLE in the program name does not only refer to confrontation, but goes through three stages of "conflict, compromise, and progress." This is a self-setting for a talk show, and can also be seen as the posture he repeatedly uses when teaching history: first put opposition on the table, then force the question to step out of a single answer. ¹⁴

Of course, a talk show is not a history research room. It has rhythm, guests, issue timeliness, and clashing positions; it cannot require every speech to be like an academic paper. But when a history educator walks into a news studio, it still makes a question clearer: if viewpoints need debate, how should the foundation of viewpoints be seen?

A better answer may not be requiring every viewer to first finish reading historical sources, but cultivating a few basic actions: what does this claim cite? Which people does it put into the story, and which does it leave out of the frame? How long is the time referred to by "always has been"?

These questions may not sound热血 (hot-blooded/passionate), but they are the beginning of making public discussion more than just shouting at each other. Because they are simple enough, they are suitable to start from a history class.

Twenty-Eight Sites, None of Which Can Replace the Reader’s Judgment

In 2026, Lü Jie’s online course unfolds with 28 key historical sites, spanning prehistory, the Age of Discovery, the Qing Dynasty, Japanese rule, and the modern era. The course page lists freedom, democracy, culture, identity, and international positioning as clues to understanding how Taiwan arrived at today. ¹

In a StoryStudio interview, he positioned this course as "under the banyan tree," not a classroom; people come to drink tea and chat, rather than to choose a single answer from four options. To demonstrate the change of perspective he speaks of, he cited the Yu Qingfang Incident, comparing the selling of talismans and price gouging to the direct-sales vocabulary familiar to contemporary readers. This is a narrative strategy, not to shrink the anti-resistance event into a commercial joke; its function is to let unfamiliar figures first enter the language of today’s audience, and then return to discuss the organization, faith, and risks of that era. ⁶

This design is like a kind of shift. Rather than cutting Taiwan history into grids of dates to be memorized, it is better to start from a site, a person’s fate, or a choice of an era, letting readers see that "today" did not grow naturally.

But historical sites are not the sets of immersive exhibitions. Behind every site, there are insufficient materials, conflicts of memory, and explanations that researchers may not agree on. A good story opens the door, but does not walk the room for the reader. Twenty-eight lessons provide a path, but cannot replace twenty-eight follow-up questions.

Lü Jie once asked if it is possible to teach a Taiwan history that makes people proud. If this sentence is to stand the test of time, the answer probably lies not in turning every history into a victory, but in giving people the ability to see the wounds, choices, and creations left by different groups on this island, and knowing they can also continue to ask. ²

At the beginning, Lü Jie entered the history department only because he misfilled his application. Later, what kept him there was not that coincidence, but a set of requirements for history: with sources, one can discuss facts. Knowing facts, one can begin to form perspectives. ^{3 8}

The question avoided in that high school classroom did not receive a complete answer here. What it leaves is more like a reminder: when a story is told particularly smoothly, do not applaud immediately. First ask, where are the sources for this history? What are its facts? And with what perspective are you prepared to turn to the next page?

Further Reading

• 〈Who Says Taiwan History Can Only Be Tragic?〉 StoryStudio "Cheers Taiwanese" Podcast — Listen to Lü Jie discuss the February 28 question in high school class, cram school experience, and Taiwan history teaching methods.
• 〈But Human Nature Does Not Change. Famous Teacher Lü Jie: "The Most Important Thing in Learning History Is Not the College Entrance Exam"〉 — Records Lü Jie’s views on historical sources, facts, and perspectives, and how he understands history education.
• Taiwan Cram School Culture: The Rise and Fall of One Street — From Nanyang Street to community alleys, understand how cram school culture became part of Taiwan’s educational structure.

References