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'Anne Frank Story of Taiwan' Now a TV Documentary

September 29, 2008

The historical incident of a Taiwanese man who hid from the martial law police for 18 years in a tiny crawl space just 60 cm wide set for TV documentary

By Dan Bloom

TAIPEI, TAIWAN(RUSHPRNEWS)09/29/2008 -- Everyone around the world knows the famous story about Anne Frank, the little Jewish Dutch girl who kept a diary when she and her family were hiding from the Nazis during World War II in Amsterdam. Anne died tragically in a Nazi concentration camp, after she and her family were discovered in their hiding place and taken by train to the notorious Nazi death camps.

After the war, Anne's diary was published as a book titled titled "The Diary of Anne Frank". It is a heart-breaking story of courage amidst daily terror, of compassion amidst the horrors of war, of family togetherness amidst the deprivations of the Nazi occupation of Holland.

Within its own historical archives, Taiwan has its own "Anne Frank" story about a man in Hsinchu City who hid in small secret hiding place -- a thin crawl space just 60 centimeters wide between two walls, with no room to even stand up -- for 18 years! Let me repeat that number again -- 18 years!

The event took place during the martial law period on the island some 50 years ago.

A television producer for the History Channel is planning to shoot a one-hour documentary about the incident, interviewing surviving family members and local townspeople as well as university professors who are aware of the story. Most people in Taiwan have never heard of this story before. Shieh Jhy-wey, a widely-travelled professor in the German language department at Soochow University in Taipei, has gone so far as to dub this "the Anne Frank story of Taiwan".

The man's name? Shih Ru-chen. His lifespan: 1916 - 1970. Fearing that the government's secret police at that time were looking for him, and rather than risk being arrested, tortured and perhaps killed, Mr. Shih decided to try to find a hiding place.

Mr Shih lived in Hsinchu with his family. He also had an open mind, a freedom-loving mind, and this sometimes got him into trouble with the miltary authorities of that time. (Today, of course, Taiwan is free, soverign, democratic country.)

Because of something he did or wrote or said or whispered, or because of some friends he had or some meetings he attended, the military police were looking for him. They wanted to arrest him, interrogate him. Mr Shih decided that the best course of action would be to try hide from the military police. So he left his home and walked to his brother's house, asking if he could find a hiding place there.

Mr Shih's brother, Shih Ru-chang, built a new wall in his house next to an old wall, and in the small space between the two walls, there was just enough space for a grown man to sit down and crouch -- but not stand. This is where Shih Ru-Chen hid ... for 18 years! Not one month or one year or two years. 18 years! It's hard to imagine, but look at the photos on this page, and you can see an old picture of Shih and a color photo of his brother showing a reporter where the crawl space was located, just 60 cm wide.

Mr Shih did the same thing that Anne Frank and her family did during WW II. Rather than give in to the forces of darkness, he decided to find refuge in a secret hiding place in his brother's house. And of course, in order to keep the police away, everyone had to keep the story very very hush hush ... for 18 years!

Every night, Mr Shih's brother, Ru-chang, would remove some bricks from the new wall and let him get out to stretch his legs, eat and get some well-needed exercise. Then after a short time, back into the hiding place went Mr Shih. for ... 18 years.

When Mr Shih began his ordeal, he was 36 years old. He died, still existing within the tiny confines of that crawl space, in 1970, when he was 54.

His story and photograph is now in a Chinese-language book in Taiwan, and his surviving relatives have participated in an oral history of his life as well. The story would make a great book in English, too, but so far nobody has written it.

There might not be a market for such a book in the West. Would Hollywood be interested in a movie about his life? Maybe the famous film director Ang Lee, currently shooting "Taking Woodstock" in upstate New York, could take a stab at it someday.
There's a side story to this main story, too.

Every night, when Mr Shih's daughter was still a little girl, the loving and devoted father would quietly get out from his secret hiding place between the walls and tip-toe over to his daughter's bedside to tuck her in and cover her with a warm blanket in the winter and a thin white sheet in the summertime. This was his nightly ritual, but she never saw him because she was sleeping. In the morning, the little girl would ask her grandmother the same question over and over again:

"Who tucked me in last night, Grandma?" she asked.

And Grandma always said, with a sad and mysterious smile: "Dear Me-hui, who tucks you in every night and covers you with love? Oh, it is the 'Bedroom Goddess', the lovely and sweet bedroom goddess, who protects you at night, dear!"

"Oh," said the little girl. "I think I understand."

One time, to keep the little girl believing in the bedroom goddess, Grandma even made a small shrine in the bedroom, using the corner of the room to offer prayers to the make-believe "bedroom goddess." This would keep little Mei-hui happy, she thought.

But when little Mei-hui turned six years old, her grandmother finally let her in on the secret hiding place and introduced her to her father. And for the first time in her life, that she could remember, Mei-hui was face to face with a man she was told to call Poppa. And she did.

"Poppa, I love you," Mei-hui always said to her father whenever she saw him at night when he came out of his hiding place for a few short minutes.

"I love you, too," her father replied, tears in his eyes.

"And one more thing, Poppa. I know who tucked me in all those years before -- it was you! Thank you, Daddy!"

And every night, after that face to face reunion with her loving father, little Mei-hui would wait patiently after sunset and count the minutes before her father would come out to chat and play with her.
What a wonderful time it was when they were together! How happy she was to be in his arms! How proud she felt to be Shih Ru-chen's daughter! It was all that little Mei-hui could ask for.

She never complained, she never cried, she never regeretted her fate or her father's destiny because she knew in her heart he was the best father a father could be in his situation. As you can imagine, Mei-hui grew up fast in those days.

And then one day, one night, in 1970, after 18 years of hiding in a tiny crawl space unfit for a human being, Shih Ru-chen's body gave up, and he breathed his last breath, dreamed his last dream and died. No doctor could come to take care of him because the military police were always watching the house.

You might think this story is over now as you scroll down the page here, and while the story is true, and the telling of it is almost finished on this Internet page, it is also true that the story of Shih Ru-chen will be passed on down from generation to generation in the freedom-loving country of Taiwan -- a small island nation with a big heart! -- forever and ever, and the sun will never set on Mr Shih's courage or his bravery or his ideals.

Tell this story to the world, and it will gain even more power! For just as the Jewish people gave us Anne Frank of Amsterdam and her courageous family, so too have the Taiwanese people given us Shih Ru-chen, a man who was not afraid to live for his ideals, and who died for them, too!

Want to know more? See this news article in English:

http://shihruchen.blogspot.com

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About the author: Dan Bloom is a regular contributor to RushPRNews. Bloom is based in Taiwan. A native of Massachusetts, he attended Tufts University and graduated with a degree in literature in 1971. Email the author at: danbloom@rushprnews.com

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