March 25 marked the 71st anniversary of renowned Taiwanese painter Chen Cheng-po’s death during the brutal crackdown on anti-government uprisings that began on Feb. 27, 1947 — known as the 228 Incident. Ko Tsung-ming, first-prize winner in the New Taiwan Peace Foundation’s Taiwanese Historical Novel literary contest awarded on March 17, expounded on the idea behind his winning piece, titled ‘The Chen Cheng-po Code,’ in an interview with ‘Liberty Times’ (sister newspaper of the ‘Taipei Times’) staff reporter Lan Tzu-wei

Taipei Times 
Date: Apr 09, 2018 

Liberty Times (LT): Can you tell us how you came to write the novel, The Chen Cheng-po

Code (陳澄波密碼)?

Ko Tsung-ming (柯宗明): My wife, Shih Ju-fang (施如芳), and I have long worked together writing scripts, and in 2007 we were approached by [artistic director] Wang An-chi (王安祈), who asked us to create a script based on localist imagery, for a piece that would be performed by the Guoguang Opera Company.

We believed our home was our ancestral land, and everything on Taiwan should therefore be considered local. We did not believe that localist culture should be confined to the temples. I thought of Chinese calligraphist Wang Xizhi’s (王羲之, 303-361) work, Sunlight After Snowfall (快雪時晴), that was collected by the National Palace Museum. The piece of calligraphy was brought to Taiwan and has since become part of Taiwan’s culture.

When Wang, along with the then-Chin Dynasty [晉朝, during the Western Chin period, 265-317], settled in [China’s] Jiangnan region (江南), he told his children that Jiangnan was their home, that they were not refugees, but had rather relocated to the region.

It is from this perspective that my wife and I came to write the script for the play that shared the same name as Wang’s calligraphy.    [FULL  STORY]