TAICHUNG (Taiwan News) — Today Taiwan is pleasant, orderly, and largely crime-free. It is relatively uncorrupt, the police are helpful and friendly, and social concerns like building pet parks are a big thing.
It wasn't always like that. Taiwan used to have a very 'wild west' feel. In the 1980s, as long as you didn’t talk politics, you could basically do anything you wanted short of serious violence or theft, as laws were generally not enforced or were only enforced to elicit a bribe.
The 1980s and 1990s were an era dominated by men with a very macho, swashbuckling attitude to life. The economy was booming, and many had gotten rich almost overnight.
Farmers who grew up poor but lived not far from Taipei were suddenly millionaires, selling their land for development. Others built small factories, often very polluting ones, and made their fortune that way.
Police, politicians, and officials got wealthy off of corruption. Gangsters were seemingly everywhere.
Vice was the norm
Almost any man who could afford it would drink Hennessy XO cognac, pounding back the expensive drink meant to be savored shot after shot. If you couldn't afford the XO, one was at least expected to get a bottle of VSOP.
The men all smoked, drank, and ate betel nuts. They’d drink heavily over lunch, and again in the evenings before visiting sex workers, of whom there were many at the time and very open in their operations.
Crime was common. It wasn’t uncommon to see gangsters coming into shops to collect their protection money or groups of them beating someone up, sometimes even in broad daylight.
The police primarily used law enforcement against the gangs only when they were getting out of hand or if the Kuomintang (KMT)-led government ordered it. In general, it wasn’t a good idea to jail the people who were paying so handsomely in bribes. It was bad for business.
Tough "sissy boys"
Young gangsters would race through traffic in packs at breakneck speeds on Honda racing-style motorcycles and dressed in conspicuously colorful and tasteless clothing. Curiously, for a while, jackets with “sissy boy” in English emblazoned on the back were popular, suggesting they weren’t big language learners.
Older gangsters rode around in black cars with tinted windows. It was known that tinted windowed vehicles were to be avoided.
In the evenings, they would congregate in cabarets featuring comedy acts and strippers, hostess bars, or the newly invented KTVs, always with prostitutes, of course.
Gang shootouts and wars were frequent. Similarly, political assassinations were pretty common, as corruption was big business, and local elections (which were allowed, unlike national elections) were often in effect turf wars between patronage factions.
The emblematic tale of Chen Chin-hsing
It was also an era of dramatic crime stories, but none was more famous and emblematic of the times than the 1997 story of Chen Chin-hsing (陳進興). Kidnappings were common at the time, even of children of not particularly rich families, but in that paranoid time, curiously, the 16-year-old daughter of famed entertainer Pai Bing-bing (白冰冰) was kidnapped on her way to school.
The kidnapping gang sent a piece of the daughter’s finger and a ransom note to Pai. While still trying to collect their ransom, police caught up with the gang and launched a raid, but three members of the gang managed to escape.
After the daughter’s body was found, it was determined she had been raped, tortured, and finally murdered. A seven-month nationwide manhunt riveted the nation, with the press following every twist and turn, shootouts with the police, and of course, lots of rumors.
After various shootouts around the country, two of the three gang members eventually shot themselves rather than get caught, but Chen kept evading the police. At one point, Chen forced a plastic surgeon to disguise him, then killed him, his wife, and a nurse.
As the manhunt wore on, Chen continued to be one step ahead. However, something happened that seems unimaginable today. Though to most people he was clearly a monster, he became something of a hero to others. Women wanted to sleep with him, and many did, in spite of him being a wanted criminal.
Lurid tales and rumors abounded about his exploits. One story said he had ball bearings implanted into his penis to enhance pleasure, indicative of the kind of stories about him at the time.
Hostage "hello"
Chen finally decided to make a dramatic last stand. He decided to take a “hello” hostage, which was his way of referring to a white foreigner. He broke into the home of South African military attaché McGill Alexander and his family, holding them hostage. While firing at police, Alexander and his daughter were wounded by Chen.
Curiously, Chen's lawyer, Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) politician Frank Hsieh (謝長廷), decided to take it upon himself to help negotiate. The policeman in charge was Hou Yu-ih (侯友宜). Hsieh would later go on to become premier and Hou is now mayor of New Taipei City and may represent the KMT in the upcoming presidential election.
In the end, the hostages were released and Chen was arrested. He was executed in 1999.
So what happened to this wild, swashbuckling culture? Why have these things receded into the background or are increasingly relegated to places like Miaoli?
There are several reasons. One of the biggest was the rise of democracy in the 1990s.
The out-of-control crime situation was a big campaign issue at the time, and politicians responded. Crackdowns on both corrupt police and gangsters became common, making it much harder for them to operate so openly and excessively as before.
A Chinese exit door
While the environment was getting tougher, the economy was also slowing and money was harder to come by. However, right next door was China, which was booming economically, extremely corrupt, and had an operating environment that the gangsters and those freewheeling entrepreneurs who’d built factories on their farmland were familiar with.
Both groups started moving to China in the hundreds of thousands. Those people still exist, but the vast majority are in China or in third countries running fraud rings targeting the Chinese, which is frequently in the news, especially when they get deported to China.
Removing these macho, swashbuckling men from Taiwan meant they were no longer so influential. The younger people, older people, and women left behind became bigger forces in society and brought their sensibilities with them.
These cultural changes, higher incomes, strict policing, and a demographic collapse meant that, for young people today, becoming a gangster isn’t as attractive as it once was. Today’s culture emphasizes politeness and kindness and has a far gentler tone.
Thankfully.
Courtney Donovan Smith (石東文) is a regular contributing columnist for Taiwan News, the central Taiwan correspondent for ICRT FM100 Radio News, co-publisher of Compass Magazine, co-founder of Taiwan Report (report.tw) and former chair of the Taichung American Chamber of Commerce. For more columns by the author, click here. Follow him on Twitter: @donovan_smith.
