LIU
CHI-TUNG

A Rock with Lettering on Its Back

That morning, I walked along the road of my daily life as usual, taking for granted what I had already seen. But that day, I caught sight of a giant rock that had been almost straightened out. In the sunlight, the rock looked like a cut surface of a Jadeite Cabbage, or as if it were a piece of Meat-Shaped Stone from the Palace Museum.

As my perspective followed the curve of the road and the slope, and the car approached, I saw four large characters engraved on the rock: “Wu-Wang-Zai-Ju (Never Forget the Lessons of History).”

How could such a rock be on this road?


The last time I saw a giant rock like this was two years ago when I was conducting artist-in-residence on Green Island in the summer. Many characters were engraved on the giant rocks around the Human Rights Museum, or rather, the previous prison was surrounded by characters. I remember encountering "Green Oasis Villa" first, then “Mie-Gong-Fu-Guo(Wipe Out the Communists and Restore our Country),” and then "Wu-Wang-Zai-Ju."

I heard that engraving these characters was one of the difficult tasks that the freshmen were ordered to do. (*In the 1950s, political prisoners who were imprisoned on Green Island were referred to by the government as "the freshmen," meaning that they were expected to learn how to be a proper person again.)

The giant rocks were so high, how could the freshmen climb and engrave them? How did they view these characters?



I looked for clues in the photos left by the freshman photographer and found many photos of giant rocks and mountain walls, which were often the protagonists, but none of them had characters engraved on them.

One of the photos was of a giant rock that I passed by every evening when I was there, and even though the giant rock in the photo had no characters, I remember clearly that it had lettering on its back.

Usually, people judge the front and back of an object by the principle of taking the side with the characters as the front and the side without characters as the back, for composition. But when the freshman took photos, he regarded the side without characters as the front of the rock, choosing to avoid the characters, escape from recitation and dissemination of the consciousness that the government wanted to implant in their minds, refuse to make the film a medium for slogans, and use light to depict the image of the rock.

When the freshman photographer took this photo, there was another giant rock behind him, similar to the one near my house, with "Wu-Wang-Zai-Ju" engraved on its back. However, the giant rock near my house was decisively cut in half due to the need to widen the road. The public convenience of transportation took precedence over the ideological symbol. And the giant rock in front of the Human Rights Museum still stands proudly on the coast, welcoming tourists to take photos with it around the clock.

But what should we not forget? After they take pictures on the coral coast where the sea breeze blows, whose suffering will they remember?

As someone born after the lifting of martial law in Taiwan, I grew up reading textbooks that were not published by the National Compilation and Translation Bureau. When I first encountered the phrase "Wu-Wang-Zai-Ju", I naturally pronounced it incorrectly. However, as my generation and the next generation began to lose touch with the correct pronunciation and the origins of the phrase, its symbolic meaning was lost as well. The language became unable to effectively convey its intended message and became irrelevant and useless, stranded on the sidelines of modern society.