Published in 2008

The story of Tzeng MauShing

Without a doubt, the story of Tzeng MauShing is exactly the miniature of the Taiwan labor movement. Interestingly, his impulsive and impatient character had indeed put himself and the labor movement into a relative advantage position, as the senior management team could hardly predict what Zeng would do further if they chose to neglect the appeal from the union. In the recent twenty years, Zeng had taken a crucial role in almost every labor movement, ranging from the striking trend after the lifting of martial law, collaboration between unions, deputies between whether Taiwan should be unified with the Republic of China, the assembly and confrontation between labour organizations, the forcible suppression from the government to the participation of elections. In such mind, it would have no ways to compose Zeng’s biography without mentioning the history of labor movements as his stories were indeed reflecting different stages of the Taiwan labor movement.

“People change, feelings fade, promises are broken but memories stay forever”. This book follows Tzeng’s footsteps to record the growing progress of the labor movement in these decades. Favorable stories like brotherhood loyalty could always be discovered within the chapters, however, we should not neglect the fact that there would have stories like betrayal, surrender, the bias between parties, or even interest conflicts inside the book. Nowadays, it is challenging to find people like Zeng to lead the labor movement and we could hardly tell how the future will go in the coming twenty years. Yet, the old days shall be known by every one of us in a valid and transparent way to act as a reminder and reference for the coming future.