Su Beng: A Dumpling Shop That Funded Forty Years of Taiwan's Revolution

30-second overview: Su Beng (born Shi Chao-hui, 1918–2019) was a leading figure in the Taiwan independence movement and author of Taiwan's 400-Year History. Born in Shilin, Taipei, he attended Waseda University, and in his youth went to China to join the CCP's anti-Japanese and revolutionary struggles. After witnessing the struggle sessions and executions of land reform, he became disillusioned, concluding that "Taiwanese cannot be bound together with the Chinese." In 1949 he fled back to Taiwan, plotted to assassinate Chiang Kai-shek, and after the plot failed, smuggled himself to Japan in 1952, beginning forty-one years of exile. In Tokyo's Ikebukuro he opened a noodle shop called "Shin-Chin-Mi," selling dumplings by day and writing Taiwanese history by night, using the shop's income to fund the Independence for Taiwan Association and the entire underground independence movement. In 1993 he returned to Taiwan as the "last person on the blacklist," and in his later years became the most revered elder of the independence camp, passing away at the age of 101 in 2019.¹²

2017, various circles celebrate Su Beng's upcoming 100th birthday early; President Tsai Ing-wen attends. Photo: Presidential Office, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

A Shop Selling Dumplings, Hiding an Entire Revolution

At the west exit of Tokyo's Ikebukuro Station, there once stood a five-story Chinese restaurant called "Shin-Chin-Mi." The shop sold dumplings, shao mai, and plain noodles; business was so good the owner accumulated considerable assets.¹

This owner was Su Beng. And the shop's true purpose lay upstairs. By day he bustled about the restaurant; by night he climbed to the top floor, writing Taiwan's history page by page in Japanese. Part of the shop's earnings went to his living expenses; the larger part became funding for the Taiwan independence movement.¹ An ordinary-looking dumpling shop was in fact a revolution's logistical base.

In a bustling Tokyo commercial district like Ikebukuro, few customers knew that the plate of dumplings they ate was, in a sense, also contributing to a distant independence movement. Su Beng layered the restaurant's daily life and the revolution's daily life in the same building: the first floor was livelihood, the top floor was ideal, connected only by his own two feet climbing up and down. This way of stitching commerce and belief together sustained all his actions for the decades that followed.

To understand why this shop existed, we must go back to a faraway place — back to Yan'an, China, back to the era when a Taiwanese youth once sincerely believed in the Chinese revolution.

From Yan'an to Disillusionment

Su Beng was born Shi Chao-hui in 1918 in Shilin, Taipei Prefecture (today's Shilin District, Taipei City). He attended Taipei First High School, and in 1937 entered Waseda University's School of Political Science and Economics.¹

After leaving Waseda in 1942, he went to China through a classmate's introduction. In that era, socialism and the CCP's anti-Japanese revolution represented an idealistic option for many Taiwanese intellectual youth who had suffered under Japanese colonial rule and resented Japanese militarism. In 1943 he went to Yan'an and the Taihang Mountains for training; because he spoke Japanese, the CCP dispatched him to Shanghai, Beiping, and other places as an underground intelligence agent under the alias "Lin Duo."¹ At that time he was a Taiwanese youth who believed in socialism and was willing to stake his life on the Chinese revolution.

The turning point came after the war. After Japan's defeat, the second Chinese Civil War erupted; he participated in guerrilla warfare with CCP units, but during this period personally witnessed the struggle sessions and execution scenes of the CCP's land reform movement. He also felt the CCP's differential treatment and suspicion toward Taiwanese members — a division he later called "Han chauvinism." The gap between ideal and reality ground away his youthful faith bit by bit. In 1947, while in China, he heard news of the February 28 Incident in Taiwan; there was his homeland's blood, here was the liquidation he had witnessed firsthand — the two overlapped, leading him to a conclusion that would shape his life: Taiwanese cannot be tied to the Chinese; Taiwan must determine its own destiny.¹³

In May 1949, taking advantage of Mao Zedong's inspection tour, he forged a travel pass and escaped the liberated zone, breaking through blockades via Qingdao and eventually returning to Taiwan. A man who had once been willing to live and die for the Chinese revolution thus turned around and walked the opposite path. This transformation from "Chinese revolutionary" to "Taiwanese nationalist" is the most crucial key to understanding Su Beng's life. His belief in Taiwan independence grew on Chinese soil: only after personally witnessing those liquidations and divisions did he decide Taiwan must walk a separate path from China.

Plotting to Assassinate Chiang, Fleeing to Japan

The Su Beng who returned to Taiwan faced an island under Chiang Kai-shek's military rule after the February 28 Incident. Fresh from escaping China's liquidations and civil war, he was no stranger to the cruelty of authoritarian rule, and did not believe moderate petitions could shake anything. His choice was therefore radical: organize armed forces, launch revolution, confront the rulers in the most direct way. In an era when merely speaking of Taiwan independence could get one executed, this was a path with nine deaths and one life.

Starting in 1950, he and several comrades formed the "Taiwan Independence Revolutionary Armed Force," gathering over thirty youths, collecting over twenty rifles left by the Japanese military in areas like Waishuangxi in Shilin, Caoshan, and Dahu in Miaoli, hiding the weapons in the Shi family's tangerine orchard on Yangmingshan, preparing to wait for an opportunity to assassinate Chiang Kai-shek.¹ In an era when political prisoners were routinely executed, choosing the armed line meant putting his own life and the lives of everyone around him on the table. The plan failed in late 1951 when the firearms were discovered; Su Beng was placed on the wanted list and had to flee.

The following year's escape method later became one of the most cited scenes in the Su Beng legend. In May 1952, he hid in the stifling banana hold of a cargo ship called the "Tenzan Maru" carrying bananas, smuggling himself from Keelung to Kobe, Japan. Upon arrival he was briefly detained by Japanese police for illegal entry, and was released in November of the same year on grounds of political asylum.¹ From that moment he became a man on Taiwan's wanted list, and a stateless exile who could only rely on himself to survive. This departure lasted forty-one years.

Taiwan's 400-Year History

Exile was not romantic. He had no nationality's protection, a warrant over his head, and could only rebuild his life in a foreign land with his own two hands. It was in these circumstances that he set his life's remaining work: earn a living, organize, and write, shouldering the endless task of "Taiwan independence."

Su Beng in exile fought the revolution on two lines: one of action, one of thought. And the thought line ultimately grew into his life's most important work.

Late in life, Su Beng still appeared on streets and podiums as "Oji-san." Photo: Siegfy, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

First, where the action line's money came from. When he first arrived in Tokyo, Su Beng and his Japanese partner Kyoko Hiraga pushed a cart selling noodles and dumplings in Ikebukuro, starting from the very bottom. As business gradually grew, in 1960 he bought the shop building at Ikebukuro Station's west exit, building a five-story "Shin-Chin-Mi" Chinese restaurant, accumulating assets of roughly 500 million yen through dumplings, shao mai, and plain noodles.¹ This money did not become his enjoyment; it became the revolution's budget — Shin-Chin-Mi was effectively the Taiwan independence movement's overseas treasury and office.

The thought line grew into Taiwan's 400-Year History. He discovered that many Taiwan independence activists actually knew little about Taiwan's own history. So he spent three years writing this book in Japanese on the top floor of Shin-Chin-Mi, published in Tokyo in 1962; later he spent six years writing a Chinese version, published in 1980, with an English version in 1986.¹⁴ This book's distinctive feature was its change of protagonist: previous Taiwanese histories were mostly written from the perspective of ruling dynasties' rise and fall; Su Beng turned the lens toward the ordinary Taiwanese who were ruled and exploited, writing how they survived on this land for four hundred years and who took what from them. What it sought to awaken was a "Taiwanese nation" self-consciousness — that Taiwanese are a group with their own history, qualified to be their own masters. This "Taiwanese nationalism" later became one of the most influential intellectual resources in Taiwan independence discourse.⁴⁵

Also during this period, Shi Chao-hui gave himself the name "Su Beng," meaning "to make history clear."¹ In 1967, he founded the "Independence for Taiwan Association" (Dokuritsu Taiwan Kai) in Tokyo, published the monthly Independent Taiwan, used Shin-Chin-Mi as a base for training and funding independence activists, and began extending the underground organization's reach back to the island. This dumpling shop thus fed customers on one hand, and nourished an endless revolution on the other.

Taiwan's 400-Year History was once a banned book in Taiwan, yet circulated secretly and was pirated in the Tangwai (outside-the-party) movement and underground independence circles, becoming many people's primer for Taiwanese consciousness awakening. The "four hundred years" in the title refers to the long period from the 17th century — Dutch, Zheng clan, Qing, Japanese, to the Nationalist government — wave after wave of outside regimes ruling Taiwan. What Su Beng wanted to say was: for these four hundred years, Taiwanese have always been ruled by others; now, it should be Taiwanese's turn to be masters of their own house. This historical view later deeply permeated Taiwan's independence movement and nativist discourse, turning "Taiwanese nationalism" from a slogan into an intellectual framework with historical depth that could be cited and debated.⁴⁵

The Independence for Taiwan Association was not merely a propaganda organization. Su Beng trained a batch of underground workers in Japan, managed to send personnel and publications back to Taiwan under martial law, and established secret contact points on the island. This underground line carried extreme risk; capture meant the capital crime of rebellion. For Su Beng, writing history and running an underground organization pointed to the same goal: reconstructing the Taiwanese people's past on paper, while simultaneously advancing the Taiwanese people's future in reality.¹

One often overlooked point: Su Beng's frugality. Shin-Chin-Mi earned him roughly 500 million yen, yet he left almost nothing for himself. In his later years he lived simply and modestly, investing most of his life savings and royalties into the independence cause and related foundations. For him, every yen that dumpling shop earned was ultimately to raise money for a future he believed in.¹³

The Last Man on the Blacklist

Taiwan lifted martial law in 1987, but Su Beng was still regarded as a rebel. In 1991 the "Independence for Taiwan Association Case" occurred; several association members were arrested for studying Su Beng's works, becoming a case that sparked social protest in the White Terror's final act.¹

On October 26, 1993, seventy-five-year-old Su Beng returned to Taiwan covertly as the "last person on Taiwan's blacklist," ending forty-one years of exile. Upon return he was immediately arrested by the Garrison Command at the Xinying Toll Station on the Zhongshan Freeway, later released on NT$100,000 bail; his past actions were ultimately not pursued.¹

The title "last person on the blacklist" is itself a piece of Taiwan's history. During the martial law era, many overseas independence activists' names were placed on a "blacklist," unable to return to their own country; as Taiwan democratized, people on the list returned one by one, and Su Beng was the last, and most dramatic, of them. At seventy-five, he caught the last train home before the system he had opposed his whole life had fully let go.

The documentary The Ongoing Revolution (directed by Chen Li-gui) records Su Beng's life.

Su Beng did not retire after returning to Taiwan. In late 1996, he launched "Taiwan Public Radio" in Taipei, hosting the "I Love Taiwan" program narrating Taiwanese history and current affairs; he drove an "Independence Nation-Building Propaganda Motorcade" through the streets promoting "Taiwanese nationalism," turning the historical view from Shin-Chin-Mi's top floor into a loudspeaker on the roads. In 2004, for the first time he held a Republic of China ID card and went to vote, casting his ballot for Chen Shui-bian — for a man exiled for forty-one years, who once had no household registration, this vote was itself a piece of history.¹

He also always stood on the front lines of the streets. In 2005, when China passed the Anti-Secession Law, eighty-seven-year-old Su Beng staged a twelve-day sit-in protest with NTU students. In 2009, he joined the "Not Happy, Come Out and Walk" island-circling pilgrimage, walking 505 kilometers from Hengchun, Pingtung to Taipei over twenty-six days. During the 2014 Sunflower Student Movement, ninety-six-year-old Su Beng in a wheelchair visited the Legislative Yuan to see the students occupying the chamber.¹ He thus became a familiar figure in Taiwan's street movements: wearing a baseball cap, called "Oji-san" by everyone, the older revolutionary who appeared more and more often at the youngest protest sites.

In his later years Su Beng was especially popular with young people. He put on no elder's airs, willing to stand with students, listen to them, and always encouraged the younger generation to know their own history and accumulate the courage to act. Many young people of the Sunflower generation first realized through this centenarian Oji-san that the Taiwan independence movement, beyond textbooks, was something people actually devoted their entire lives to practicing. A man born in the Japanese era, whose speech still carried a Japanese accent, yet in the 21st century's protest sites could be surrounded by twenty-year-olds shouting "Oji-san" — this scene itself explains why he is remembered.

Leaving a Chair

In 2016, after Tsai Ing-wen assumed the presidency, she appointed Su Beng as a Presidential Office Advisor. This appointment carried heavy symbolic meaning: a man once wanted by the government, who plotted to overthrow the rulers, in his final years was appointed by the Republic of China's president as a top-level advisor. Between them lay Taiwan's entire transition from authoritarianism to democracy, redefining a "rebel" as an "advisor." In 2017, nativist groups held an early 100th birthday celebration for him on Ketagalan Boulevard; Tsai Ing-wen attended in person.¹

On the night of September 20, 2019, past 11 PM, Su Beng passed away at Taipei Medical University Hospital from multiple organ failure, aged 103 (by East Asian age reckoning; 101 by Western count). From his 1918 birth to that night, his life spanned nearly all of Taiwan's 20th century — Japanese era, February 28, martial law, exile, democratization — every segment walked in person.²⁶ In her eulogy, Tsai Ing-wen said Su Beng had New Year's Eve dinner with her every year, encouraging her to withstand pressure; she said: "Next year's New Year's Eve dinner, I will still leave a chair for him, to commemorate the life he devoted to Taiwan."²

When news of Su Beng's passing spread, spontaneous mourning surged across Taiwanese society. For the independence camp, a whole generation's "Oji-san" had departed; for more Taiwanese, a legend who lived to a hundred and still ran for the same cause had left. Director Chen Li-gui's documentary The Ongoing Revolution had already preserved this one man's long revolution as footage that can be revisited again and again.⁷

Su Beng's life was full of controversy, and destined to be remembered differently by people of different stances. Chinese state media called him "a life lived in vain" upon his death; unificationists would not accept his claims; some questioned his early armed line, or wondered why a man trained by the CCP turned against it. On the Taiwan independence side, he is regarded as a "lifelong revolutionary" and spiritual symbol; writer Yen Tse-ya pointed out that Su Beng's "independence" was largely built on "recognizing the CCP clearly." His "independence" sequence was reversed: he first saw clearly what was what on Chinese soil, then turned back and chose Taiwan.⁸⁹⁵

The most important thing Su Beng left Taiwan is a way of looking at themselves. His advocated "Taiwanese nationalism" centers on affirming Taiwanese as a group with the right and capacity to determine their own future, appealing to identification rather than hatred. The Reporter described his "Taiwanese nationalism" at his passing as an "unfinished door" — it opened a possibility of choice for Taiwan; whether to walk through, and how, is homework left for posterity.⁵

Regardless of which side one stands on, few deny his consistency. From disillusionment in Yan'an, to the dumpling shop in Ikebukuro, to the propaganda motorcade on Taipei's streets, he spent a lifetime answering the same question: Who exactly are the Taiwanese, and can they determine their own destiny? His Taiwan's 400-Year History gave this question a starting point that can be flipped through, debated, and continued. Just as the documentary about him is titled, it is an "ongoing revolution," a revolution unfinished to this day, still waiting for posterity to take up.

Further Reading:

• Taiwan Unification-Independence Spectrum — Understanding where Su Beng's independence claims sit on Taiwan's political spectrum.
• February 28 Incident — The key historical trauma that drove Su Beng to armed resistance.
• Taiwan White Terror — The "Independence for Taiwan Association Case" and the historical context of Su Beng's exile.

Image Sources

• Hero photo: Presidential Office, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0. Original file: 08.11 President Attends Su Beng's 100th Birthday Celebration.
• In-text portrait: Siegfy, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0. Original file: Taiwan Independence Godfather Elder Su Beng.
• Video: Documentary The Ongoing Revolution (directed by Chen Li-gui), YouTube, inline external embed only.

References