WE arrived at the Taipei international airport late at night. Mr. Tien and many other friends welcomed us.

    We were accorded VIP treatment, because my father was an educator and an overseas Chinese leader.

    We were taken to a government guest house in the city of Peitou. It was an exquisitely landscaped Japanese-style guest house with beautiful gardens.

    We were served delicious food, including Chinese breakfast, lunch and dinner.

    We felt at ease. It was like home in the mainland because all the people working in the guest house, who came from different provinces of China, spoke a common language—Mandarin. We had no problem communicating with everybody.

    After many days of staying in the guest house—with all the comforts of living, including guided sight-seeing of Taipei—my parents were anxious to find a place of our own. They wanted us to go to a good school to continue our education.

    I saw happiness in them once again, something I haven’t seen for a long while. They felt relaxed. After living  in a foreign land for many years, they were finally at home.

    Even if they were not in mainland China, they were in  a Chinese land. In Taiwan, they could talk, write and communicate eloquently with the people.

    Under the Koumintang government headed by Chiang Kai-shek, every student was required to speak in Mandarin—the official language of the nation. It was every bit part of the deliberate effort to get rid of the Japanese colonial influence.

    In Taiwan, a government agency called Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission took care of Chinese that came to the island from all over the world. In the 60s there were about 30 million of them in Taiwan.

    When we arrived, Taiwan was still recovering from the war and from 50 years of Japanese colonial rule. Many of the elder Taiwanese embraced the Japanese culture and way of life. Many of them favored the Japanese over the Nationalist Chinese from China.

    A small island with limited natural resources, Taiwan needed assistance from all over the world, including overseas Chinese. Finding investments was the job of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission. It was also its responsibility to relocate families and made sure that the overseas Chinese got the needed education.

    The commission took care of my family since our arrival. It helped us find a school for everybody. It also helped us find a house.

    After two weeks of comfortable living at the guest house, we moved to a new home near Taipei. Only parents stayed in the house all the time because I and my brother and sisters stayed in a school dormitory.

    My parents were happy to see all their kids in school. They knew we had a brighter future than before.

    It was my freshman year in college. I enrolled in a course, majoring in diplomacy (political science). I told my parents I wanted to a politician or diplomat someday, so that I could serve my country and my people. It was my dream.

    During the first day of registration, I was required to write an essay. It was easy because I had no problem in Chinese. Since I was a little boy, my father taught me how to read and write in Chinese. I was reading the newspaper when I was seven or eight.

    The professor gave me high grades on my essay. I wrote a lot of Chinese classics, which not many of my classmates could do.

    I went home every weekend to visit my parents. I could feel their happiness. They loved their new life in Taiwan. We had good neighbors, who often cooked food for the family.

    My mother liked to tell our neighbors the story of my family—how we left our hometown in China to end up in a foreign land, and then to Taiwan finally. The neighbors liked the story—just like a movie but true.

    The Chinese in Taiwan were a different people. They wake up very early in the morning to go to work. At five o’clock in the morning, the streets were busy—young students going to school in bicycles, farmers carrying their farm produce to the market, tricycles ferrying people to work. It was a different scenario from before.

    In the mid-60s, America was involved in Vietnam. Taiwan was the base for the U.S. military. Taiwan benefited economically from the military base. Many Taiwan-made products were used in Vietnam, especially garments and plastic products. It gave Taiwan the golden chance to move forward.

    When Taiwan-Republic of China signed a defense treaty with the United States, many U.S. military personnel were stationed in the island. GIs roamed the streets of Taipei. The Taiwanese learned a great deal of English from them. Restaurants and bars flourished in Taipei.

    Taiwan gained economic prosperity from the U.S. aid and military assistance. Truly, Taiwan could not have survived without American aid.

    But the economic success of Taiwan should be credited to the diligent and hardworking people. Many intellectuals, engineers, bankers and diplomats went to Taiwan in 1949. These Chinese from the mainland occupied key positions in government. They governed the island. Because of their Japanese education and background and because they could not speak Mandarin, very few local residents served in government.

(To be continued)