On the evening of 27 February 1947, agents of Taiwan's Tobacco Monopoly Bureau confronted Lin Chiang-mai, a widow selling cigarettes outside the Tianma Tea House on Nanjing West Road. They confiscated her cigarettes and her cash, and when she begged for them back, an agent struck her on the head with his pistol.

An angry crowd closed in. As the agents fled, one fired into the crowd and killed a bystander named Chen Wen-hsi. By the next morning, protesters were marching on government offices across Taipei, and guards opened fire on them. The uprising and the military crackdown that followed became known as the 228 Incident.

Historians estimate that between 18,000 and 28,000 people were killed in the weeks of suppression, including much of Taiwan's local elite. Under martial law the subject stayed forbidden for four decades; open discussion and official apologies only began after 1987.

A memorial marker now stands at the site of the tea house in Taipei's Datong District, about five kilometers from the National Concert Hall, where Yu-kai Chou later attended his twin daughters' concert.