The Taste of Being Wronged ~ Reflections on Participating in the "Kaohsiung Harbor Police Officer Ch'en Case"

Speaking of the taste of being wronged, I only vaguely remember when I was little and my cooperative card inexplicably ran out of money. I asked the cooperative auntie about it, and she took my card, checked it in the system, and handed me a list. I said I never bought that many things at all. In elementary school, I barely went to the welfare shop twice a year, and moreover, some of the snacks listed were things I had never even laid eyes on.

The auntie simply replied coldly with two sentences:

"The system is inputted this way; what has been bought has been bought."
"Kids these days never keep track of what they buy."

I felt deeply aggrieved, but didn't know what to do. I stormed out of the cooperative, returned to the classroom, and burst into tears in front of our homeroom teacher.

Being wronged probably feels something like that to me—a bit painful, and often a past that one just cannot get past.

As for the client in this case, Mr. Ch'en Li-ming, I wonder what kind of feelings he has harbored along this journey up to this very moment?

In the legal arena, ordinary citizens have no choice; they can only care about our thoughts while living in the world we have created.

Therefore, when things happen, they usually can only ask us: What happened? What should we do?

Photo / The thick case files of the Ch'en Li-ming case

Through participating in the writing of this article, I tried patiently to flip through stack after stack of thick case files. The intricacies of the case and the complexity of the evidence were a constant test for me. Moreover, the entire writing process did not always go as smoothly as desired, with errors and corrections repeating all the way until the final moment before formal finalization.

Perhaps you might ask me, during the process of participating in the writing of this entire article, have I ever felt any regret?

Actually, I have.

When I thought I had a full grasp of the case facts, yet couldn't answer at all the casual questions thrown at me by the JRF supervising staff; when I eagerly spent my winter vacation organizing a thick stack of materials, only to later discover I had headed in completely the wrong direction; when I had too many things on my plate and slept less than four hours a day for a whole week; when my eyes acted up and I had to travel back and forth between hospitals; when I deeply regretted realizing my talent was not as great as I had imagined...

That's right, I am actually not someone who gives without any grievances or regrets. Disappointment, complaints, and self-blame intertwined throughout the process from time to time. In so many such moments in life, I truly, truly regretted it.

However, what on earth was it that drove me to finish this article?

Perhaps when you take a brief look around your surroundings, you will find the answer.

The asphalt you step on when heading out in the morning, the bus you board, the food you eat at noon, and all the way into the night, the streetlamps keeping us company on our late-night journeys home... If it were not for these people stubbornly dedicating themselves to their respective posts, I could hardly imagine leading such a blessed life.

Therefore, you could say that the investment and birth of this article is a way for me to express gratitude to this society.

It turns out that being able to carve out a part of one's life to burn for others is actually a very beautiful thing.

And looking back along the way, I discovered that what makes me the happiest is not striving to win awards or scoring high on exams, but rather the sweat and tears shed without any quid pro quo.

Perhaps, only these various quiet moments stripped of their halos can be so easily unforgettable.