00:00October 10, 1946. Hundreds of students gather under moonlight to inaugurate this new school in Taipei, known as Yanping College.
00:09It's the first university to be built by Taiwanese, those who have lived on the main islands long before Japanese
00:15or Chinese nationalists.
00:16But it would open for only a semester before being shut down by the Kuomintang authorities.
00:22A special exhibition at the National 228 Museum reveals the hidden history of this short-lived institution.
00:43For a good education, most Taiwanese went to Japan at the time.
00:51Although other colleges like National Taiwan University existed at the time,
00:55they were founded under Japanese rule and later adopted Chinese instruction.
00:59Yanping was different. Classes would be taught in Taiwanese, Taigi, and Japanese, languages more familiar to local students.
01:06But after just a few months, on February 28, 1947, a violent government crackdown on Taiwanese locals began, an event
01:14now known as the 228 incident.
01:16Professors and students were targeted for their involvement, and the school was quickly shut down,
01:21especially as it had been seen as a symbol of the local Taiwanese identity.
01:25As Yanping only existed for a few months, curator Yoyo Liu says finding records and memorabilia to create the exhibit
01:33was difficult.
01:34Instead, she turned to the modern-day Yanping, which still exists as a high school that carries on the spirit
01:40of the original college.
01:41So there are some old teachers or teachers who will continue to remember their relationship between the people and the
01:49people and the people.
01:52So we actually got quite a lot of information like the wild-day land.
01:56For example, there are some of the young people who are 60-year-old Yanping, who say,
02:01His math teacher, his math teacher,
02:03was taught in learning Chinese.
02:07It would be like this.
02:10Now the lessons from Yanping continue,
02:12through this exhibition and in its namesake high school,
02:16continuing to unearth the struggles
02:17Taiwanese faced in the past.
02:19Scott Huang and Tiffany Wong in Taipei for Taiwan Plus.
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