The Whole Bai Bing-bing Chen Jin-xing Saga

Okay, it’s like this: I’m looking for detailed information on the whole Pai Ping-ping/Chen Chin-hsing story. Besides articles from the archives of Taiwan’s English dailies, does anyone know where I can find related, coherent data - or at least enough bits where I can piece it together? Has anyone read a book or a decent article about the story?

I now know about the Banged Up Abroad video and I’ve ordered the book Hostage in Taipei by McGill Alexander (the South African military attache whose family was taken hostage by Chen) so I know about - or will know about - how the story ended, but I’m missing what happened prior, along with many of the details. I also know there’s a synopis of the story in Denny Roy’s Taiwan - A Political History.

Any tips, leads, hints, suggestions, bailout packages? :neutral: Yuk, yuk.

Thanks,

Ed

Hi this is the link to the Banged Up Abroad episode. I was here at the time and can tell you this is a very accurate and complete description of that crazy night. Hope this helps.

youtube.com/watch?v=zR3Lc2ns … re=related

Thanks. I watched it. It prompted me to order his book from Amazon. Still waiting for it…

I have heard/read snippets of some of the press interference with the case (e.g. Pai Ping-ping going to pay the ransom, only for members of Chen’s clique to spot members of the press following her) and something about police shooting at each other… but, like I said, I lack details. I have a feeling Alexander’s book won’t focus on the Pai Ping-ping section of the story.

Thank you again,

Ed

You’d better search through the archives of the three English-language newspapers - China Post, Taiwan News and Taipei Times. The Taipei Times is the newest of the three papers - I’m not sure it goes back that far.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a book about it, even in Chinese, except for the hostage crisis book you have already ordered. It’s strange. If such a thing happened back home (the UK for me), there would be two or three books about it for sure.

I had a stack of clippings on this and wrote something up, but somewhere between Australia, my ex’ place in Yong He and HK I lost or tossed it.

That Saffie military attache is quite a religious crank. Chen, the chap in that hold off, converted to Christianity before they shot him, pretty much as a result of the repeated God bothering by the Saffie.

HG

A few nitbits from my brain:

There were originally 3, Chen was the last to survive. The other 2 were killed in shootout with the cops. Even those have a twist. A cop had to give back his award for shooting one when it was revealed that he lied about it.

People offered to ride their scooters without helmets so it would be harder for him to move about. I don’t think that was their real motive.

Chen became a minor sex symbol when it was revealed that his had little metal balls inserted to increase pleasure.

Another snippet:

When Chen was executed, they took his body to I think the Chan Gong Memorial hospital and told an elderly patient there waiting for a donor heart that they had a beauty for him, the heart of Chen Ching-hsing. Now in the Chinese way of thinking a person’s thoughts reside in the heart. The old boy promptly refused it.

HG

the most gruesome part of the case…the three fugitives snuck into a plastic surgeons, made the surgeon perform surgery on their faces, then they killed him, raped the nurse and killed her…these were some major bad asses…

You know there’s one aspect of the case I always found intriguing, yet I’ve never seen it used for it’s obvious political leverage, and that was that the three kidnappers were crooks, but did have a quasi-legit business in repairing and hiring out video gaming machines until Chen Shui-bian banned them from Taipei, and not long before the initial kidnapping.

HG

Here’s the wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pai_Hsiao-yen

Thanks. You’re probably right about having to scour through the archives of the local dailies. I was kind of hoping to get around that because the bits and pieces I’ve seen have been a.) poorly wriiten b.) op-ed pieces that are, as they are often are in those papers, rather weird.

Yes, Juba, it is strange that the story just sort of disappeared, which is part of the point I’m trying to make in some writing that I’m doing: that stories - nay, mind bogglingly dramatic stories - come and go in Taiwan like rainstorms. In my country, Canada, there’s a story that’s been in the news for a year about a group of high school students killed while driving to a basketball game. There were some sort of inquiries and/or investigations, it raised all sorts of questions about safety and responsibility, a community was emotionally torn apart, etc., etc., etc. In Taiwan, such a story would surface and then never be heard tell of again the instant a larger one usurped it. It would have a shelf-life of three days, tops.

Thanks for the tidbits Big Fluffy Mathew and Huang Guang Chen; and yes, I’m also wondering how much ‘we were in the arms of Jesus’ I’ll have to wade through in order to get to the interesting bits. If it ever comes, bloody Amazon; usually much faster than this…

At one point, wasn’t one place surrounded by police who were shooting at other police who had stormed the place? I thought one of my students told me that one time. I also remember my students telling me that police tipped Chen and or his gang off just before they raided his hideout.

Anyway, thanks again,

Ed

I think what you are talking about is the incident where Gao Tian-ming copped it. The media led the charge up the stairs with the cops shooting from behind, The footage on local TV was superb!

Most of the sources I used were Chinese. They were very good.

HG

You’re being serious? Cameras before bullets?

Wonder if that’s on youtube…

It’s unlikely that I could read enough of a Chinese source to really have it come through clearly. Probably only 60%.

[quote=“Ed Lakewood”]You’re being serious? Cameras before bullets?

Wonder if that’s on youtube…

It’s unlikely that I could read enough of a Chinese source to really have it come through clearly. Probably only 60%.[/quote]I couldn’t find a video, it was before the era of youtube. But it wouldn’t surprise me. Camera crews get in the way of the emergency services all the time for a juicy story. Sneaking into emergency rooms at hospitals etc… You can see in the “Banged up abroad” video that the street outside the house is full of press and the public. The police were either unwilling or unable to cordon off the area.

There is a lot more info in Chinese if you search for the Chinese names.

I also remember that Bai Bing Bing resigned from the entertainment business after the affair, and now appears on every other variety show.

Yeah, I don’t know how to type (or write for that matter) in Chinese, so searches are probably out - then I’d have to find a translator… and whereas I don’t live in Taiwan anymore, that would be problematic.

Yes, that Banged Up Abroad was interesting, but I heard that the police had him and members of his gang surrounded more than once (before the Alexander family was taken hostage) - yet they managed to escape. I’m going from snippets people told me a decade ago.

Ed

I remember that night in Tienmu which was close to my house so we went out to watch it unfold. After my wife went home I stayed and hung out with the news reporters and we later entered a next door abandoned building and went to the ding low about 5 floors up and watched the night unfold next door peeking our heads over the wall.

The funny thing is I used to live in Tianmu, just down from Xingyi Road, yet I never knew that happened there until I watched that Banged Up Abroad clip. I was told that that happened near Songjiang Road, which obviously wasn’t true. I remember when I landed in Taiwan, the fellow who picked me up at CKS Airport couldn’t believe I hadn’t heard of the story in Canada. Anyway, I was never really interested in finding out details until now…

All personal anecdotes, recollections welcome.

Thanks

Its weird how some people have an inevitable fate with that story; I certainly had my fair share of it; a sighting of the trio near my tian mu office, and later -driving my motorcycle up cherry hill just as the Saffie incident was unfolding, to watch the whole drama from outside. I also lived in Bei tou at the time, and I moved to Fen Ji Hu, and discovered (a couple of months after Chen Jing Xing was executed) his hideaway where he spent the last 6 months of his life just up the road from me - the house behind no. 11, lane 133, Fen Ji Hu to be precise - if you go and take a look, you can still see the hundreds of discarded empty cans of taiwan beer to this very day - which he drank over that period (there are a lot of abandoned houses there, so it was an ideal low profile location). I found it perversely amusing that Gao returend to his favourite whore house & cavorted with his women before topping himself as the police (& cameras) tried to stotrm the building. I have many taiwan news/china post newsclipppings I’ve kept if you’d like to see them, Ed.

oh yeah, one more thing I should mention, another perversely amusing twist to that story - guess which movie was just started showing in Taipei when the remaining duo went for their new look faces through plastic surgery (before massacring the clinic staff)? - Face Off (starring Nicholas Cage & John Travolta)

Heres an example of Taiwan news hounds chasing after police and getting in the way of flying bullets sometimes.

This particular incident was just an unfortunate druggie who was thought to be some sort of political subversive. The inept police couldnt stop the guy (who refused to stop) until finally they pumped enough bullets in him to kill him. The guy was so high on drugs he could still drive but was not smart enough to stop and get out of his car before getting hit by bullets.

youtube.com/watch?v=n01iDkpmmZ0