[Story Issue] Huang Shou-li and Yu Kai

Yu Kai (Provided by Kuo Kun Ming)

Huang Shou-li, while a student at the Taipei Industrial College, was taken in for no apparent reason during the Countrywide Sweep of the 1950s White Terror. He was held at the Taiwan Security Bureau’s Martial Law Section. Fond of singing, Huang would use music to pep up his fellow prisoners – the Japanese “Carriage Song” to send them off, and “Danny Boy” to remind them that their mother was waiting for them at home. In the cell next to him was National Taiwan University student Yu Kai, who had come alone to Taiwan as a refugee from Shandong. Shortly before Yu’s execution, he begged Huang to sing “Danny Boy” for him in homage to his mother back home, who, unaware that her son was about to be shot, no doubt continued her lonely vigil at the homestead door. The song finished, Huang reached through a crack in the wall so as to encourage Yu Kai to hang in there. It was then that he discovered that Yu had not one finger with fingernail intact.