Nylon Cheng Foundation and Memorial Museum

In February 1989, Nylon Cheng stood inside the Freedom Era Weekly office beneath a banner demanding “100 percent freedom of speech.” The banner hung above the desks, paper, telephones and shelves used to make the magazine.

Freedom Era sometimes withheld the names of contributors who would have been exposed by what they wrote. Its contents page instead stated that editor-in-chief Nylon Cheng accepted responsibility for everything published in the magazine. The statement appeared in print, issue after issue.

The magazine eventually published a draft constitution for a Republic of Taiwan. When prosecutors charged Cheng with insurrection and moved to arrest him, he refused to appear. He remained inside the office for 71 days. On April 7, 1989, police entered Freedom Lane. Cheng self-immolated in the editor-in-chief's room rather than submit to arrest.

The third-floor office is now the Nylon Cheng Foundation and Memorial Museum. Visitors approach the damaged room along a black wall carrying poems written by Cheng's family and colleagues. Beyond it, the room is enclosed behind glass. Fire marks remain on the walls and objects inside. The museum preserves the room where the magazine was made.

Cheng's daughter, Cheng Chu-mei, was nine when he died. She asked that the room be kept so people could come to remember and experience her father. In a later interview about the museum, she also described preservation as an answer to contemporary news reports that had reduced him to mental illness or treated the fire as simple arson.

The rest of the office holds a permanent exhibition on Cheng's life, the magazine and three political movements. The foundation continues to work with issues of Freedom Era, belongings, manuscripts, photographs and production records.

When the foundation unpacked stored boxes in 2020, staff found letters from readers requesting copies of the draft Taiwan constitution. The letters later entered a traveling exhibition. They show the publication moving beyond the office through people who wanted to read, copy and keep what it had printed.

Cheng's statement “I am Taiwanese” was a claim of civic identity, not ethnic purity. It belongs beside the draft constitution and the magazine's decision to place legal exposure on its editor.

Outside the glass around the editor-in-chief's room, unopened packs of cigarettes have accumulated. Former colleagues and later visitors leave them for Cheng.