March 26 Demonstration, 326
Getting off my Taiwanese class today I went to take the bus to work. But the big March 26 protest march against China's so-called anti-secession law beat the bus to the bus stop, and so I was caught in the atmosphere of tens of thousands of people marching. I stood there for an hour before I decided to walk to the paper.
A three-lane main thoroughfare, Roosevelt Rd., and a sidewalk were constantly thick with people for a full hour, and there was no end in sight when I decided to leave. I walked along another demonstration route (Heping Rd.) on my way to the paper, just as crowded. There were ten routes in all, one for each article in the "law." Afterwards, the KMT-ruled city government decared that 240,000 people had participated in the march, while the DPP claimed a 1-million attendance.
Both figures are probably politically motivated, the DPP's because they had declared that their goal was to gather 1 million people for the demonstration, the KMT's because they wanted to do everything they could to show that people in Taiwan are not against the law. Strangely enough, that is the stance taken by the KMT. But more about that some other time.
In any case, there must have been more than 240,000 people there. I am not used to estimating such huge amounts of people, but a three-lane road and a sidewalk thick with people marching at a good pace for an hour and more must be more than 25,000 people. Since there were nine other routes with basically the same amount of people, there must have been at least upwards of 700,000 people, somewhere in between the two estimates, or maybe even more.