I Was Born After Martial Law Ended. A Foggy Tale Still Broke Me.

I watched the Taiwanese film A Foggy Tale.

After it ended, I sat there for a while without knowing what to say.

It was not the kind of film that tries to overwhelm you with dramatic turns. There was no grand emotional climax, no obvious scene designed to make the audience cry, no swelling music that tells you, very politely, that this is the moment to fall apart.

And yet I cried so hard I could barely breathe.

That surprised me.

Not because the film was not sad.

It was sad.

But the sadness did not arrive like a knife. It arrived like fog.

Slowly. Quietly. Everywhere.

By the time I noticed how heavy it had become, I was already inside it.

A story about people trapped inside an era

A Foggy Tale is set against the history of Taiwan’s White Terror and martial law period.

But while watching it, I did not feel like I was simply watching a film about history.

I felt like I was watching people trying to live under a time they did not choose.

That, to me, was the most painful part.

We do not choose the era we are born into.

We do not choose the political system that surrounds us. We do not choose which words become dangerous. We do not choose which silences become necessary. We do not choose how much fear a normal day can carry.

People still have to eat. They still have to work. They still wait for someone to come home. They still worry about family. They still try to love, survive, and continue.

But under that kind of regime, ordinary life is never only ordinary.

There is always something underneath.

A hesitation. A silence. A fear of saying the wrong thing. A knowledge that safety is fragile.

The film does not need to shout this.

It lets the weight accumulate quietly.

That quietness is what hurt.

I was born after martial law ended

Taiwan’s martial law had already ended before I was born.

I did not live through that era.

I learned about it through school, through news, through stories, through fragments of public memory. I understood it as part of Taiwan’s history, at least in the way someone from a later generation can say they understand something.

But while watching the film, I kept asking myself:

Did I really understand the weight of that time?

Of course, watching one film does not make me understand what people lived through.

I do not want to pretend that I can borrow someone else’s trauma and call it knowledge.

But there are histories you inherit even if you did not personally experience them.

There are things that happened before you were born, yet somehow still live somewhere in your body.

Maybe that is what I felt.

A heaviness I had always known about, but had not fully felt.

I was born into a freer Taiwan.

But that freedom did not appear by magic.

It came after people were silenced. After people were watched. After people disappeared. After families were damaged. After fear became part of daily life.

When I thought about that, I cried.

Not because the film told me exactly when to cry.

Because I suddenly felt the cost of the air I had been breathing.

There was no clear crying scene, but I cried anyway

Usually, when I cry during a film, I can explain why.

Someone dies. Someone says goodbye. Someone finally gets what they have been waiting for. Someone’s suffering is recognized.

But my tears during A Foggy Tale were harder to explain.

They were not only sadness.

They were grief. Anger. Fear. Helplessness. A kind of historical exhaustion.

And underneath all of that, there was the awful feeling of inevitability.

The feeling that people were trapped inside a system too large and too cruel to fight directly.

The film does not give you the comfort of a simple emotional release.

It does not hand you a villain in one corner and hope in another.

It shows a world where people are forced to live inside impossible choices.

Speak, and you may be in danger. Stay silent, and something inside you is still harmed. Try to protect someone, and discover that you may not even be able to protect yourself.

That kind of helplessness is not loud.

It is daily.

That is why it broke me.

Anger stayed with me too

After the sadness, anger remained.

I want to be careful here, but I also want to be honest.

There are times when polite language feels too clean for what history deserves.

Watching the film, I felt again how much damage authoritarian power can do. How it can make people afraid of their own words. How it can turn neighbors into risks. How it can break families not only through violence, but through suspicion, silence, and fear.

And yes, part of me thought:

The Kuomintang should disappear.

I know that is a harsh sentence.

I know political history is complicated.

But some wounds should not be softened until they become convenient.

A system that silenced people, destroyed lives, and made fear part of ordinary existence should not be excused as merely “the times.”

When we say “that was just the era,” we risk blurring the shape of responsibility.

I do not want that kind of politics, that kind of regime, or that kind of logic to ever return to Taiwan.

Not under the same name. Not under a different name. Not under any excuse.

A society where people cannot speak freely should not be allowed to come back.

I want Taiwan to keep becoming better

After watching A Foggy Tale, I thought a lot about Taiwan.

I do not think Taiwan is perfect.

There are problems. There are conflicts. There are exhausting political arguments. There are moments when I feel worried, angry, or tired.

But I love Taiwan.

And because I love it, I want it to keep becoming better.

I want Taiwan to remain a place where people can speak. Where people can be angry at politics. Where people can say something is wrong without disappearing for it. Where freedom is not treated as decoration, but as something people actively protect.

I was born after martial law ended.

That means I inherited freedom without having paid the same price as those who came before me.

But inheriting something does not mean taking it for granted.

I do not want the past to become just “old history.”

I do not want the weight of that era to become something we mention politely, then put away.

A film cannot change history.

My tears in a cinema cannot repair what was lost.

But maybe remembering is one small form of refusal.

Refusing to let the fog become clean. Refusing to let violence become abstract. Refusing to forget that ordinary people carried extraordinary fear.

A Foggy Tale was not an easy film to watch.

But I am glad I watched it.

I still cannot fully explain why I cried so hard.

Maybe it was grief. Maybe it was anger. Maybe it was a prayer.

Maybe it was the feeling of being born after the worst of it, and still realizing that the past is not as far away as we want it to be.

When I left the theater, something stayed in my chest.

Heavy. Quiet. Unfinished.

And all I could think was:

May Taiwan keep becoming freer, kinder, and better.

May we never go back.