Shelley Rigger

And the cops came and somebody hit her.

And there were other Taiwanese bystanders and they were just infuriated.

You know, here's this woman just trying to get by and you have this stupid tax that doesn't allow you to sell single cigarettes.

And now you are abusing this woman and they rioted.

And that riot just kind of spread everywhere.

And there was a whole island uprising against the Nationalists.

And the Nationalists were, like, not ready for that.

A lot of police and soldiers went back to barracks or even left the island altogether.

And for a couple of weeks, it was, like, not clear who was in charge.

They killed a lot of the leaders, they killed a lot of kind of socially important people, landlords, professors, a lot of intellectuals were taken in, either imprisoned or executed, and they kind of decapitated the society.

And those who were not personally affected were very well warned that you do not challenge

This government.

So that is called the February 28th or 228 incident.

And that's really the defining moment for Taiwan politics ever after, where Taiwanese learned that the nationalists were not going to cut them any slack just because they were Chinese too, but were going to impose their rule with an iron fist and that Taiwanese were going to have to figure out how to live together.

under that regime.

Everything is different after the 228 incident, but it gets really different in 1949 when the Communist Party and its Red Army are successful in defeating the Nationalists in the Civil War.

October 1st, 1949, Mao Zedong declares the founding of the People's Republic of China.

And anybody from the nationalist movement, the nationalist government army who can get out of mainland China is out.

The whole nationalist government gets transported to Taiwan.

Exactly.