As tourists gathered to take photos of a huge bronze statue in central Taipei, a man brandishing a paint ball gun hopped the velvet rope and took aim.
"Tear down the bronze statue! Ruthless killer, remove the bronze statue!" activist Chilly Chen shouted.
He managed to pop off one shot of orange paint before he was tackled by a military honour guard and security officials.
It's not the first time someone has tried to deface the statue, which memorialises Taiwan's former martial law-era leader Chiang Kai-shek.
Chilly Chen alone has thrown eggs, squid ink and paint at the statue on multiple occasions.
"His statue is a really harmful image for the relatives of people killed [indirectly] by him, and it makes a mockery of Taiwan's democracy," he told the ABC.
For three decades Chiang Kai-shek ruled Taiwan with an iron fist.
Relatives of victims and civil society groups blame Chiang's political repression for up to 28,000 deaths in Taiwan during the early years of his rule.
They also say he was indirectly responsible for more than a 100,000 political prosecutions over four decades that also included more than 1,000 executions.
However, the island territory remains divided over Chiang's legacy.
And lingering admiration for Chiang among pockets of the community has helped stall (the current) President Tsai Ing-wen's efforts to remove hundreds of statues of the late dictator before the end of her term next year.
Murder and surveillance in the White Terror years
Exiled from mainland China when Communist forces took over, Chiang fled to Taiwan and declared martial law there in 1949.
He had already directed a bloody campaign against political opponents in Taiwan before his arrival from the mainland, in a crackdown dubbed the 228 Incident.
The decades that followed with Chiang and his son at the helm are now known as the White Terror period.
Chiang's Kuomintang (KMT) forces are accused of executing suspected Communists, while many others died from beatings or neglect while imprisoned.
Secret police surveilled the population, heavy censorship was imposed and perceived political dissidents were arrested on trumped-up charges.
Chiang had viewed these measures as a continuation of his civil war against the Communists who had ousted him.
Decades earlier, while fighting them on the mainland, he said he'd rather "mistakenly kill 1,000 innocent people than allow one Communist to escape".
Despite this, there is some lingering admiration for the generalissimo in Taiwan, particularly among older people and military veterans.
Chiang's advocates say he fought the Communists and built modern Taiwan through land reforms and infrastructure.
"President Chiang Kai-shek brought those with expertise and experience over to Taiwan to develop the island from a poor, former-Japanese colony into one of the Four Asian Tigers," said Wu Sz-huai, a member of Taiwan's parliament, the Legislative Yuan, and member of today's KMT party.
"This was an achievement of Chiang Kai-shek and an achievement of his KMT government. His good deeds outweighed his bad actions."
The modern iteration of Chiang's political party, the KMT, still exists, and is hoping to win back the presidency in 2024.
However, grappling with Chiang's legacy is tricky for both the KMT and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party as an election year looms.
How a Taiwanese park became a statue graveyard
In 2018, President Tsai Ing-wen set up a transitional justice committee to delve into the White Terror years.
One of its key proposals was the removal of monuments to Chiang and changing the names of streets and buildings that honoured him.
The Tsai administration has offered funding for local governments, schools and organisations to remove hundreds of other Chiang statues that continue to dot the island.
A 500-kilogram statue of Chiang riding a horse was removed from a township on Taiwan's east coast last month.
It was the latest addition to a lakeside park where discarded Chiang statues from across Taiwan have been placed.
About 200 out of roughly 1,000 statues have now been moved to the park, which serves as a tourist drawcard, including for those who still venerate Chiang.
"Without him, Taiwan wouldn't have made progress," said Chen Chia-ying, a visitor to the statue park in Cihu, who said Chiang's face was "everywhere" when she was a little girl.
"Young people nowadays don't know the history. They don't learn about it. It's not in the textbooks."
However, the question of what to do with the biggest, grandest statue of all remains unanswered.
Last year, Culture Minister Lee Yung-te held a competition for ideas to redesign the memorial hall in central Taipei, which he described as a "monument to authoritarianism".
Multiple proposals were publicly unveiled, including one that would replace the 6.3-metre statue with an empty chair for anyone to sit in.
However, since then, no further steps have been taken, nor has the government made any concrete plans to progress the idea.
And there's also a considerable amount of apathy from many who think politicians should spend their time and energy tackling more pressing issues.
A man in his thirties watching the ceremonial changing of the guards at the Chiang statue in Taipei, Joe Luo, said he doesn't think the statue should be removed.
"Old people care about this, but I don't think people in my generation do," he said.
"We think he's just a character of history. We know he did some bad things or some good things in Taiwan, but it's all in the past."
Chiang's purported descendent on the rise
While debate continues over Chiang's bronze monuments, a man claiming to be his flesh and blood descendent is the rising star of Taiwanese politics.
Chiang Wan-an, 44, became the youngest mayor of Taipei after winning last year's election as the KMT's candidate.
The US-educated lawyer claims he had no idea that his great-grandfather was Taiwan's late dictator until he was a teenager.
When he was in high school, his father revealed a deep family secret: He was the illegitimate child of Chiang Ching-kuo, the generalissimo's son and heir.
In his role as mayor, Chiang Wan-an has to walk a fine line to acknowledge his purported great-grandfather's actions.
He led commemorations for White Terror victims this year, but was interrupted when hundreds of protesters rushed the stage while he spoke.
The younger Chiang has also previously backed calls for a revamp of the memorial hall.
However, he suggested it focus on all leaders who protected and developed Taiwan, including his purported grandfather and great-grandfather.
He, along with other members of the KMT, have suggested the current government's program of transitional justice is sowing hatred and division among Taiwanese society.
And he has claimed the program is partly motivated by the DPP's rivalry with the contemporary KMT.
Another aspect of the program targeting "ill-gotten" assets of the KMT, from the authoritarian days, is seen by critics as a partisan attempt to weaken the party politically.
The partisan argument means any further progress on changing the Chiang statue will likely be left for Taiwan's next president to tackle.
"The issue is of no advantage in the election campaign," activist Chilly Chen said.
"Some people say we should move on, we should not look back, we should just focus on the economy. But, no matter what, we'll keep following this issue."
