Chiang Peng-chien - Early Life

Early Life

Chiang Peng-chien was born April 25, 1940, in Dadaocheng, Taipei, Taiwan. His father was a shoemaker from Fujian, China.

In 1955, Chiang entered the Taipei Municipal Jianguo High School. He then got into the National Taiwan University, majoring in law. After graduation, he passed the bar examination in 1964. Chiang began practicing law after earning his master's degree.

Chiang advocated for human rights. He founded the Taiwan Association of Human Rights. On the 1979 Human Rights Day (December 10), members of the Formosa Magazine and other Tangwai pro-democracy advocates went on a demonstration. Many of the participants were arrested by the Kuomintang government and tried in military court. Chiang defended Lin Yi-hsiung, one of the "Kaohsiung Eight."

Read more about this topic:  Chiang Peng-chien

Famous quotes containing the words early life, early and/or life:

    Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...
    Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)

    Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.
    Eudora Welty (b. 1909)

    What is a novel? I say: an invented story. At the same time a story which, though invented has the power to ring true. True to what? True to life as the reader knows life to be or, it may be, feels life to be. And I mean the adult, the grown-up reader. Such a reader has outgrown fairy tales, and we do not want the fantastic and the impossible. So I say to you that a novel must stand up to the adult tests of reality.
    Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)