We arrive early to the Taipei West Bus Station, where we are to catch the bus to Sun Moon Lake. We decide to explore some of the bus station surroundings with our extra time.
We go to the nearby 2/28 Peace Park. The Peace Park is indeed a peaceful place, where a few elderly people practice Tai Chi among the trees. Besides the Tai Chi people and a few others walking their dogs, the park is empty.
The park has plenty of shade and a few small ponds with green water and green turtles. Straddling these are bridges and pagoda style gazebos. Dozing in the shade of one of these is a young man in a cutoff shirt and sneakers. I wonder if he is one of the gay men who apparently "cruise" the park at night.
The most striking part of the park is the monument memorializing the fallen. The structure has a spire-like top attached to what looks like three square blocks standing on their corners, tipped towards one another. Underneath the blocks is an enclosed space that people can walk under. In the center is a column with writing on it surrounded by a deep well. A pair of hand imprints pressed on the rim of the well beckon visitors to place within them their own hands and peer over the edge. Water falls from the sides of the well down to the depths. The sound of falling water echos up from below, a deafening sound contrasting with the silence outside. The whole structure sits atop clear, still water dotted by stone spheres like black beads on glass.
My brother-in-law explains to me this was the memorial dedicated to the Taiwanese who were massacred in the 2/28 uprising. The tipping point for the uprising occurred when a Kuomintang police officer struck a middle-aged woman for selling tobacco against government regulation. Several Taiwanese gathered to riot against the police and government officials, which in turn led to the massacre of some 30,000 people by the Kuomintang.
Having this context in mind, the dark spheres seem like tears shed by the silenced people, and the roaring waterfall takes on the the sounds of rioting and grieving.
The 2/28 Peace Park makes me think about how human disasters are much like natural disasters in terms of their unpredictable yet cyclical nature. The 2/28 Peace Park is a testimony of how a 2/28 could happen anywhere, anytime, again and again.
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