Zheng Nanrong

When the 228 Incident erupted in 1947, a family on Hankou Street in Taipei trembled inside their home. The father, Zheng Musen, was a "mainlander" from Fuzhou, and people on the street were hunting down mainlanders. It was their Taiwanese neighbors next door who hid them, saving the entire family's lives.

Seven months later, the couple's eldest son was born. They named him Nanrong.

Forty-one years later, this "mainlander's boy" who had been saved by Taiwanese people ignited gasoline in his own magazine office — for the right of all Taiwanese people to speak.

✦ His death stemmed from a precisely calculated belief: if he was not afraid of death, the living would have no reason to stay silent.

A Man Who Could Never Find His Place

Zheng Nanrong's first half of life was a story of constantly searching for where he belonged.

He grew up in Luodong, Yilan. His father ran a barbershop in the welfare store of the Chung Hsing Paper Mill. On his first day of elementary school, he was mocked by classmates for being a "mainlander" and got into a fight. After that, he and his brothers identified as benshengren (native Taiwanese), adopted Taiwanese Hokkien as their mother tongue, and joined the "native Taiwanese camp" to fight other mainlander kids. He began experiencing the absurdity of provincial identity at the age of six.

He tested into Yilan Middle School as the top-ranked student, then into Taipei Municipal Jianguo High School. His father wanted him to attend Taipei Institute of Technology, a five-year program he could finish quickly, but Zheng Nanrong insisted on Jianguo. For the university entrance exam, he abandoned his preferred humanities track and enrolled in the Department of Engineering Science at Cheng Kung University — because the family needed him to start earning money to support his brothers.

After one year, he realized it was not what he wanted. He dropped out, retested, and entered the Department of Philosophy at Fu Jen Catholic University. He then transferred to the Department of Philosophy at National Taiwan University. There, he visited the under-house-arrest Professor Yin Haiguang every week, read Hu Shi, read Li Ao, and read classical liberalism. He arrived at a conviction: Chinese history could not produce a free and democratic society, and Taiwan must walk its own path.

But he refused to take the KMT-mandated required course "Thought of the Fatherland's Founder" (Sun Yat-sen Thought), so he never received his diploma.

After completing his military service, Zheng Nanrong worked in textile export, sold solar water heaters, imported Swiss throat lozenges, and ran a book distribution business. All of them failed. It was not until he was thirty-four that he found his battlefield: magazines.

📝 Curator's Note
Zheng Nanrong's wife, Ye Julan, is a Hakka from Miaoli. Her father fiercely opposed the marriage due to provincial-identity prejudice. Zheng Nanrong pursued Ye Julan by sending letters, having people deliver messages by hand, and even sending telegrams. In the end, the two were married in a civil ceremony at the Taipei District Court and were acknowledged by their families a year later. A boy mocked for his provincial identity married a girl opposed for hers — their entire lives were spent fighting against the cage of identity.

Twenty-four Licenses

On March 12, 1984, *Freedom Era Weekly* published its first issue.¹ Founder: Zheng Nanrong. Editor-in-Chief: Li Ao. Publisher: Chen Shui-bian. Circulation Manager: Lin Shiyu. The slogan was a single line: "Fight for one hundred percent freedom."

But Zheng Nanrong did something no one expected: before the first issue even launched, he collected university diplomas from various people and applied to the Government Information Office for 24 magazine licenses.¹

Because he knew the government would ban them. When one was banned, the next issue would immediately be published under a new license, with the publication name still carrying the word "Era." He eventually used up multiple licenses. The government banned the magazine many times; he simply switched licenses and kept publishing. Every license had its purpose calculated before the first issue even hit the stands.

Freedom Era Weekly specialized in publishing what the government forbade during the martial law era: political reform, human rights protections, ethnic equality, and Taiwan's future. It also provided a platform for environmental movements and Indigenous rights advocacy, making it one of the few media outlets at the time willing to take on a broad range of social movement issues. Every issue danced on the edge of a knife. Zheng Nanrong was prosecuted multiple times, but he never backed down. He said: "For someone with deep intellectual training like me, running a magazine is the most appropriate way to put faith into practice."

In 1987, Freedom Era Weekly did something unprecedented — it publicly initiated commemorative activities for the 228 Incident. It was the first time in forty years that any public media outlet dared to discuss the 228 Incident.²

That Draft Constitution

In December 1988, Zheng Nanrong published Xu Shikai's "Draft Constitution of the Republic of Taiwan" in issue 254 of Freedom Era Weekly.³

At that time, advocating Taiwanese independence was sedition — punishable by death.

Zheng Nanrong knew exactly what this meant. But he believed that if a nation's people were not even allowed to "discuss" that nation's future, then the nation's freedom of speech was a sham. What he wanted to defend was the legality of discussion itself — whether Taiwanese independence was right or wrong was a separate question.

On January 21, 1989, a prosecutor indicted Zheng Nanrong on suspicion of sedition and summoned him to court.²

He refused.

He locked himself inside the magazine's office in Songshan District, Taipei, and declared to the outside world:

"The KMT can only get my dead body. They cannot get me alive."

April 7

Seventy-one days of self-imprisonment.

On the morning of April 7, 1989, Hou Youyi, then Criminal Investigation Squad leader of the Zhongshan Precinct, led a team in a forced breach of the magazine office.⁴ Zheng Nanrong retreated into the editor-in-chief's office, locked the door, and ignited the gasoline he had long prepared.

He died at the age of forty-one. His daughter, Zheng Zhumei, was nine years old.

Seven days later, another social movement figure, Zhan Yihua, set himself on fire in front of the Presidential Office Building during Zheng Nanrong's funeral procession.⁴

💡 Did You Know?
Hou Youyi, who led the forced entry, later became Mayor of New Taipei City. This history remains one of the most sensitive memories in Taiwanese politics — the name of the enforcer of state power and the name of the martyr both live simultaneously in the daily life of this island.

After the Fire

Zheng Nanrong's death sent a shockwave through Taiwanese society.

Many who had been silent began to speak. Intellectuals, lawyers, teachers — those who had kept quiet for years in fear — saw that a person could give his life for the "right to speak" and suddenly felt they had no reason to remain silent.

His wife, Ye Julan, did not break down. She walked through the door her husband had opened with his life — entering politics, serving successively as a legislator, Minister of Transportation and Communications, Minister of the Hakka Affairs Council, Vice Premier, and Secretary-General to the President (2006–2007).⁵ Their daughter Zheng Zhumei grew up and devoted herself to foundation work, safeguarding her father's spiritual legacy.

This family's journey became a rare case of "private grief made public" in Taiwan's democracy movement — personal loss transformed into political energy for an entire generation.

⚖️ Contested Perspectives
Zheng Nanrong's choice continues to invite different interpretations. Supporters regard the self-immolation as a precisely calculated declaration of faith, arguing that he ensured the issue of freedom of speech could not be ignored by paying the highest possible price. Critics, however, see self-immolation as an extreme personal choice that pursued its goal through radical means, obscuring possible paths of reform through institutional struggle. Hou Youyi was executing a lawful arrest warrant and cannot be reduced to a "perpetrator of violence." These two interpretive frameworks coexist in discussions of Taiwan's democratic history, and readers may judge for themselves.

On December 22, 2016, the Executive Yuan officially designated April 7 as "Freedom of Speech Day."⁶ The Zheng Nanrong Memorial Foundation and Museum in Taipei (the original magazine office site) preserves his final office, where scorch marks from the fire remain on the walls.

The Legacy of a Man of Action and Ideas

Zheng Nanrong liked to call himself a "thinker of action." The term described him precisely: he did not merely think about freedom — he lived freedom as a practice.

His core belief was extremely simple: all viewpoints, including those you disagree with, must be open to free discussion. Unification or independence can be debated, systems can be questioned, governments can be criticized. Because "not allowing discussion" is itself a form of violence — more fundamental than the suppression of any specific content.

In Taiwan today, people can criticize the president online, hold protest signs on the street, and debate any topic in the media. This air of freedom is so commonplace that many have forgotten it once required a life to obtain.

What Zheng Nanrong left behind is a question that can continue to be debated: why was someone willing to trade his life for the right of others to speak? Whatever your answer, the fire he ignited in 1989 truly changed the weight Taiwanese people assign to freedom of speech.

References

Further Reading

• Zeng Boen — In August 2019, the 夜夜秀 host referenced Zheng Nanrong's self-immigration in an Open Mic segment, triggering intense social backlash and the first suspension of collaboration with Satyr
• National Human Rights Museum — Oral histories of the White Terror and democracy movements
• Hu Huiling, A Century of Pursuit: The Story of Taiwan's Democracy Movement — Detailed account of Zheng Nanrong and the opposition movement
• 228 Incident Memorial Foundation — The connection between Zheng Nanrong's family and the 228 Incident
• Kaohsiung Incident — Wikipedia — The pivotal event that catalyzed Zheng Nanrong's entry into social movements
• Documentary Nylon — The Free Soul (Director: Cai Chonglong, 2009) — Reconstructs Zheng Nanrong's life trajectory and the decision to self-immolate through interviews with those involved and historical footage