“I told them, if they insisted on coming in, we would burn the ship that night,” recalled Kuo Chien-ping, one of the movement’s leaders. Onshore, residents armed with rocks and bottles they claimed were filled with gasoline — it was actually water — lined the pier prepared to defend their island, also known as Lanyu. “It was the first time the government really listened to us,” said Syaman Lamuran, whose entire family joined the protest. “Everyone was there. Even my mother, barely five feet tall, was clutching a stone.”