Ketagalan Boulevard

This guide begins on a hot afternoon in May 1989, when police lines stopped a funeral procession on this Taipei street, then called Chieh-shou Road. It follows Cheng Nan-jung, a magazine publisher who died demanding full freedom of speech, and traces what happened when his procession tried to reach the Presidential Office Building ahead. You'll hear about a second activist who stepped forward in that standoff, and how the street's name became the city's rebuttal seven years later. Look down the wide, open boulevard now and picture the barricades that once stood here.