A Paris Friend's Impressions of Su Chien-ho

By Shiuan, a friend of JRF in Paris.

One day I received a message from Ming-ju, a friend at JRF, asking if I could host Su Chien-ho when he came to France for an event. My heart skipped a little — the famous Su Chien-ho? As the agreed day drew nearer, I read more and more about him online, wondering what kind of person he would be. His life had taken such twists, tormented for years by a flawed interrogation and judicial system, his youth wasted; even with the support of family, lawyers, and civil-society groups, surely he must be full of resentment toward the world?

But the moment I actually met Su Chien-ho, I realized how impoverished my imagination of a wrongful-conviction victim had been, and felt ashamed for trying to understand a person only through the lens of a wrongful case.

Knowing in advance that Chien-ho loves art and does curatorial and fundraising work at JRF, we arranged to meet at two of Paris’s most famous museums, the Orangerie and the Orsay, to wander and chat. On this trip I also met Li Chao-yen, a director preparing a documentary about Su Chien-ho, a woman close to my own age, which made getting to know Chien-ho feel much more at ease.

Su Chien-ho, who speaks in a slightly old-fashioned, straightforward way, greeted me with humor the moment we met, and without any awkwardness launched into endless conversation, with so many stories to share — from the city-government event that brought him to France, to the death-penalty-abolition march, to things he saw in the detention center, to stories about love. The topics leapt about so much that I often did not know how to respond, and the questions I asked would be answered at some unexpected turn in the conversation — a dialogue full of question marks, but fascinating.

During the exhibition, many of Chien-ho’s gestures made me feel again how special this person is. One was his insistence on keeping the shutter sound on when taking photos, to protect everyone’s digital privacy and avoid photographing anyone without their knowledge. So, although the galleries were crowded and we looked at the works at different paces, the click-click echoing through the rooms meant we never lost each other — an unexpected way of locating one another by sound.

Another special thing was that Chien-ho photographed almost every painting — perhaps to archive them later. As we went, he shared stories of selling paintings, deals worth several million, and now and then pointed out which painting resembled the style of a Taiwanese artist.

Because we got on so well, and because I privately wanted to introduce to Chien-ho and Li Chao-yen the art-travel service I run in Paris, combining street-history tours with outdoor sketching, we arranged to meet again the next day, since we had other plans after the exhibition.

When we met the next day, Chien-ho had changed hotels and was staying in the eastern suburbs, an area locals tend to avoid. Very tactfully, he said that taking the metro from the suburbs into the city let him see the lives of different people in Paris — so well put! Since French food did not quite suit everyone’s taste despite the rare trip, we met at the only Taiwanese vegetarian restaurant in Paris, with paintings on the walls and white rice and seasoning to Taiwanese tastes. That was how I learned that Chien-ho’s mother is vegetarian, which led to family topics, and to Chien-ho’s retirement dream of opening a combined café where he could hold art exhibitions.

After the meal, I showed them around the Marais district, the Carnavalet Museum of Paris history, and the Place des Vosges. Sketching together in the garden of the history museum, we enjoyed a quiet, carefree spell of drawing; drawing always brings you into a state of flow, and in the blink of an eye more than an hour had passed. Chien-ho said he had not picked up a brush in a long time, and that among all he did in Paris, the one thing he would never forget was drawing in that garden. Hearing this moved me deeply and gave me much encouragement to keep improving this sketching activity.

At the Place des Vosges, the conversation suddenly turned from art to fortune-telling — it turned out Chien-ho also reads astrological charts.

In just two short days, though our time together was brief, it felt like knowing an old friend, our topics wide and varied. I had thought someone who had been through such injustice would carry much resentment, or be strongly guarded toward others, but what I felt in Chien-ho was trust, and an optimism that the future would be better.

The judicial process goes on, and there is no telling when the struggle will end; to find a gap in that darkness and enjoy the sunshine and happy hours with us in Paris was truly precious. Chien-ho seems to be the kind of person who, when happy, wants to give things to his friends; the things he verbally promised me kept growing — but I will not write them down, so he has a chance to take them back! He did, though, promise Li Chao-yen a big birthday meal, and that one I will write down, hoping he does not forget. I look forward to returning to Taiwan, where I will have a chance to show Chien-ho and Li Chao-yen around Dadaocheng in return.

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