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At first, General Chen had stalled and made concessions. Outnumbered, he had promised to curb his troops, relax monopoly controls. He had sent another Miss Hsieh (whose full name meant Thanks Moon Angel) to the radio to assure the public—incorrectly—that nobody had been killed when the gendarmes fired into the crowd on the first day. Moon Angel was just as well known as Snow Red. She was a Taipeh lady doctor, locally famous for championing relief and rehabilitation for displaced prostitutes, who had beaten Snow Red for election as Formosa's woman delegate to the National Assembly in Nanking. Fellow Formosans did not like Moon Angel's radio speech, however. They dragged her furniture and belongings into the street and burned them.
Five-Year Plan. Chen stalled only till his reinforcements—Chinese regulars and MPs—had arrived from the mainland. By last week Chen had executed or jailed all the leading rebels he could identify and catch, and his troops had wantonly slaughtered (said a Formosan delegation in Nanking) between 3,000 and 4,000 throughout the island. Moderate tea-merchant Wang, Chen said, was deceased: "When the troops arrested him, he resisted and was shot." Chen closed down Formosa's last newspaper because it printed a Nanking report that he would be fired.
Nanking sent a mission to Formosa to "comfort the people." It was headed by Defense Minister Pai Chung-hsi, who told General Chen to relax his rule, make no more arrests except according to law.
In Taipeh last week, General Chen relaxed complacently in a Japanese armchair beneath a pot of purplish-pink azaleas. Then, leaning toward the green brocaded table cover, grey mustache bristling, dark little eyes sharp under their puffy lids, he spoke:
"It took the Japs 51 years to dominate this island. I expect to take about five years to re-educate the people so they will be more happy with Chinese administration."
So far, Snow Red was avoiding reeducation. When the reinforced troops reached Taichu, she and two truckloads of men drove into the cool green mountains of the interior near Jitsu-Getsu San (the Mountain of Sun and Moon), toward shelter among the Formosa aborigines, whom neither the Manchus (in 212 years) nor the Japs (in 51) could ever reeducation.