Stephen M. Young On Taiwan: Lasting memories of Taiwan – 台北時報 Feedzy

Many of my best experiences living and visiting Taiwan over five decades have been shaped by Taiwan’s amazing collection of waters. I once took my future bride Barbara Finamore to visit the majestic Sun Moon Lake in west central Taiwan, in the hopes of persuading her to marry an itinerant diplomat. I later often joined a band of intrepid friends to bike along the many paths and parks lining the Tamsui River that flows through Taipei City and empties into the Taiwan Strait. But I feel a special affection for the Ai He (Love River) that flows through the center of Kaohsiung, where I first experienced the real Taiwan.

When my father, a career US Army Officer, was assigned to serve as an adviser to the Taiwan military in 1963, he came home to our then-residence in Fort Lewis, Washington, and announced that we would shortly be moving to “Formosa.” My siblings and I rushed to our atlas and finally located what appeared to us to be a tiny tea leaf off the coast of what was then known as Red China. We had never heard of the place, despite being fairly worldly as part of a military family.

Some months later, in fall of 1963, we embarked on an epic journey. In those days, flying military flights involved numerous stops in the northern Pacific, including Anchorage, Hokkaido, Tokyo, and Okinawa, before finally landing in Taipei. When the plane landed in Songshan Airport on the eastern side of the city’s basin, we deplaned to a blast of heat and the smell of rotting vegetation, the legacy of Typhoon Gloria, which had recently flooded vast sections of the city.

We stayed a couple of days in Taipei’s landmark Grand Hotel, overlooking the Tamsui River. While my father checked in with the MAAG (Military Army Headquarters) for consultations, my siblings and I explored the city. We were struck by the sea of bicycles as residents commuted to and from work and school. They rode along lanes separated by only a small barrier from the buses and cars spewing out massive clouds of exhaust into the skies grey from pollution. There were swarms of taxis and official cars zooming haphazardly through the city’s streets. I can imagine my father wondering how he was going to be able to drive through this unmanaged chaos, where only the bravest could possibly survive. But that had to await the arrival of our 1958 Chevy, travelling by slow steamer ship from Washington State to Taipei.

Then we flew south to Kaohsiung, where my father was assigned to work with the Taiwan Second Field Army. Because there was a waiting list to move into quarters, we spent a month in Kaohsiung’s Grand Hotel, on the banks of the Love River. The Love River was an open cesspool, with human waste, dead animals and God knows what else slowly flowing into Kaohsiung’s polluted harbor. We thought we’d succumb to the stench, though in time it too became familiar enough to tolerate.

Next we moved into a comfortable, but still temporary, standalone house surrounded by a tall fence with broken glass embedded into the top, apparently to discourage house robbers. Unfortunately for us, it proved less than effective. One morning we awoke to discover that a determined robber had surmounted the glass-topped wall, picked open the locked gateways to our house, and rummaged through drawers in our parents’ bedroom, searching for loot. He even had the audacity to relieve himself in the small binjoe (drainage ditch) surrounding the house. Fortunately, the losses were not significant, but a sense of vulnerability hit all of us, as we were adjusting to our new digs.

To add to those indignities, a small-time farmer used one wall of our house as a border for his modest small patch of land, where he grew crops and raised pigs. That was fine, but once every couple of months he would hogtie one of the poor creatures to the back of his bicycle and take it to market. The insulted pig didn’t go quietly into the night. Instead, it screeched and bellowed, ensuring that the entire neighborhood would share in its misery. Getting up to ride the school bus the next morning usually found us sleep deprived and rattled.

After six months, we moved again to the US Army Compound a mile and a half from our temporary quarters. The stench of the Love River was replaced by the aroma of human waste, used by local farmers for fertilization. We were nonetheless delighted to be part of a small community of US military families. Especially exciting was an outdoor theater, which showed movies most nights on a primitive screen just a short walk from our home. Not only did they show dated movies, but they also had short news clips, which were very welcome.

I vividly remember new arrivals to our community telling us about a new English band that was all the rage in America. Apparently, they had appeared on the Ed Sullivan show, setting off a teen fervor nationwide. I am of course referring to The Beatles. Later still, we found that a local department store was selling bootlegged twelve-inch records featuring The Beatles’ first album. We were delighted to catch up with the times, listening endlessly to the Liverpool band’s wonderful new sounds, supplemented by the rest of the British invasion, featuring groups like the Rolling Stones, Animals, and the Dave Clark Five.

My siblings and I rejoiced when our household goods eventually arrived. We were particularly happy to be able to ride our bikes. Bicycles were the most common form of transportation for all but the most affluent denizens of the city. I vividly remember riding during rush hour along city streets along the Love River with local cyclists, ox carts and three-wheeled pedicabs. Sometimes we rode our bikes to nearby Tsoying, where the navy families lived. That larger compound featured a teen club, bowling alley and US military club where the grownups congregated.

I attended eighth grade in Tsoying, then graduated to high school. This required a perilous hour-long bus ride north to Tainan. The ride was never boring, as the bus dodged through all variety of vehicles seemingly making up their own rules of the road. Everyone drove as if tomorrow would never come. And for some it didn’t, as we regularly saw accidents with victims sprawled lifeless on the road.

I was to return to Taiwan four more times, living in Taipei as a young Foreign Service officer in the early 1980s, then as a student at our advanced Chinese language school up on Yangmingshan (known as “Grass Mountain” to locals). As a young officer at the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) I lived on the former US army compound on Hsinyi Road, then as AIT Deputy Director in a wonderful one-story house in a walled compound about a mile from work, and eventually as Director of AIT in a modern apartment building near the National Palace Museum.

During my stint as AIT Director, my wife and I enjoyed many strolls along the Tamsui riverside park directly across from our building. We also relished watching the annual Dragon Boat races and cheering on the AIT team, which never seemed to do better than last place. In visits to Kaohsiung, I marveled at how thoroughly the Love River had been cleaned up. You now even see people bathing on its pristine shores!

I last visited Taiwan this spring as part of a Global Taiwan Institute (GTI) delegation. We met the full range of senior officials and were hosted to a relaxed family dinner with President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and her two pets. President Tsai was joined by Vice President William Lai (賴清德), now a leading candidate to replace her in the upcoming election early in 2024.

I cherish my memories of Taiwan, its waters and its scenery, and hope to have further opportunities to visit this beautiful island state. Each visit has been a new adventure, revealing further advances in Taiwan’s economy and political system. I consider my life to have been greatly enriched by these experiences.

Ambassador Stephen M. Young (ret.) lived in Kaohsiung as a boy over 50 years ago, and served in AIT four times: as a young consular officer (1981-’82), as a language student (1989-’90), as Deputy Director (1998-2001) and as Director (2006-’9). He visits often and writes regularly about Taiwan matters. Young was also US Ambassador t o Kyrgyzstan and Consul General to Hong Kong during his 33-year career as a foreign service officer. He has a BA from Wesleyan University and a PhD from the University of Chicago.