A Taiwanese in the United Nations — where Taiwan could not enter, he found a way in.
As an economic expert, he has travelled across the world whereupon he provided his expertise to a number of countries.
He is an internationally seasoned Taiwanese, standing atop the world stage and where he conducts his exquisite performance.
Lo Fu-chen is a Taiwanese who left his hometown far behind and made his own way into international academic elite circle. He is neither a suitcase-carrying businessman nor a diplomat dispatched by government. He is but himself.
During the era when ROC (Taiwan) was repelled from the UN, it became isolated from international society and Taiwan’s political structure was quite enclosed. Lo Fu-chen couldn’t go back to Taiwan because of political reasons, however with a UN passport in hand, he was able to travel around the globe as a world citizen.
By what stroke of luck did a boy born in Sakaemachi, Chiayi left home for 40 years, unable to return, yet shines so brightly from atop the world stage?
Born in Sakaemachi, Chiayi during the Japanese colonial era, Lo went to Tokyo as an overseas student at the young age of 6. He went back to Taiwan after the war. After he graduated from college, he went to Japan to study again and eventually received his doctorate degree in Regional Science from University of Pennsylvania.
During the 1960s, when he was working on his doctorate degree at UPenn, he joined a pro Taiwan independence march and was thus blacklisted by the KMT government ─ not only was he forbidden to return to Taiwan, but he also became a man without nationality. In the 1970s, he was recruited by the UN to work at Nogoya’s UN Center for Regional Development due to his distinguished academic performance. He helped developing countries to establish their economies. He was also invited by countries such as India, Iran, Malaysia, etc. to work as their economic consultant. For 27 years, with UN passport in hand, he flew around the world working for the well-being of the people.
Just when he was ready to enjoy his retirement, the government in Taiwan changed hands. The new government wanted to use his connections in Japan as well as his economic expertise, and appointed him to the position of Taiwan’s top representative to Japan. His life thus took a big turn. Switching to politics at the age of 65, his greatest achievement in his 4-year term as top representative was to successfully negotiate former President Lee Tung-hui’s trip to Japan, which was indeed a great diplomatic breakthrough.
Lo is like a versatile Renaissance-man. Other than his economic expertise, he writes poems, does calligraphy, draws, sings, and even cooks. Through his eyes and stories, we are able to take a peek into his world of the past half century.
作者簡介：
Narrator
Fu-chen Lo
Born 1935 in Sakaemachi, Chiayi, Taiwan. B.A. in Economics, National Taiwan University, M.A. in Economics, Waseda University, Japan. PhD in Regional Science, University of Pennsylvania, USA.
As a distinguished economics scholar, Lo Fu-chen was recruited by the UN Center for Regional Development and the United Nations University. His books have been collected by 4709 libraries worldwide.
Since he worked for an international organization, flying became part of his life. He toured various countries, took part in international conferences, and helped solve world economic issues. At his leisure, he savored cuisines globally, collected antique, calligraphies and paintings, and even went up Mount Everest on a helicopter. His life experience is both diverse and rich.
He can write poems, draw, sing and cook. Had he not become an economist, he probably would become a painter, a poet or a singer.
In year 2000, Lo gave up his US citizenship and took up the position as Taiwan’s top representative to Japan. After serving 4 years at the Represeatative Office, he charied the Association of East Asian Relations in 2004 until his retirement in 2007. He now resides in Taipei with his wife.
Author
Rou-jin Chen
Rou-jin Chen was a journalist, who is now a columnist. She specializes in historic writing, and is the author of many best-selling books. She has won the Good Book Award from China Times, Best Ten Non-fiction Award from United Daily News, and Golden Tripod Awards for Publications twice from the Ministry of Culture of Taiwan.
Translator
Yew Leong Lee
Lee Yew Leong is the founding editor of Asymptote. He is the author of three hypertexts, one of which won the James Assatly Memorial Prize for Fiction (Brown University). He has written for The New York Times and DIAGRAM among other publications.
Proofreader
Lanny T. Chen
Once a columnist and editor of Taiwan Tribune, Lanny T. Chen now concentrates on book translation. Her works include the Chinese version of Moll Flanders (by Daniel Defoe), Alma Mahler or the Art of Being Loved (by Francoise Giroud), Forbidden Nation ─ A History of Taiwan (by Jonathan Manthrope), Formosa Betrayed (by George Kerr) etc.
作者序
Preface
I am a Taiwanese through and through. I left Taiwan shortly after completing my university studies, not expecting to stay abroad for 45 years before coming home for good.
My initial reason for leaving the country was to evade the oppressive atmosphere of Taiwan under martial law. I went to the United States to study at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1960s. Then, determined to be a free man, I gave up my R.O.C. passport, thereby crossing the point of no return. The founder of the University of Pennsylvania, Benjamin Franklin, was also one of the co-signers of the United States Declaration of Independence. Although people from the United States and England share a same language and racial background, Americans nevertheless wanted to establish their own sovereignty as a country; this was their God-given right. When the United States was declared independent, the first modern nation state was born. Living in exile in the 1960s at that time, Chin-fun and I drew comfort from this Declaration. This time was also the beginning of a new life for me.
In the 1970s, after I presented a paper at the World Geographical Union’s annual conference, an official from the United Nations approached me asking me if I would be willing to work for the UN Center for Regional Development (UNCRD) that they had recently set up in Japan. This would be another turning point in my life. I would spend cumulatively 25 years in Japan over the course of my life. The time spent in both pre-war and post-war Japan led me to developing quite a deep personal history with the country. As a young child, I had lived in Japan for five years before the War, and three years as a graduate student for my Master’s degree. From 1990 to 2000, I spent another ten years in Tokyo working for the United Nations University, which was followed by four years from 2000 to 2004 as Taiwan’s top representative to Japan, I helped to foster bilateral relations between Taiwan and Japan—a most meaningful opportunity of a lifetime.
In the 1970s when I first started my work at the United Nations, East Asian countries one after another entered a period of high economic growth. Japan was first, followed by the four East Asian “dragons”: Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore. The 1990s saw the rise of China and, with it, the Southeastern Asian countries. In the past decade, India’s economy has also begun to soar. As economic development advisor to these countries, I experienced a firsthand account of this boom that has been hailed as the “East Asia Miracle” by the World Bank.
It wasn’t only an economic shift that these countries experienced but also a deeply societal one; every country inexorably entered the era of modernization. It was a great blessing for me to have witnessed and contributed to it all firsthand. Such historical events include the assassination of South Korean President Park Chung-hee in the 1980s followed by the Gwangju Uprising; the People Power Revolution in 1986 that overturned the Marcos government in the Philippines; the democratization of Indonesia sparked by the transition from pro-Communist Sukarno to pro-US Suharto. I’ve also seen the chaos before the collapse of Iran’s monarchy in 1978; and the change in Pakistan’s government. In November of 1980, I visited Beijing for the first time and saw how China put the Gang of Four on trial. On the first anniversary of the Tiananmen Square incident, I happened to be giving a lecture at Peking University, so I had the opportunity to talk with the students while their university’s main gate was blockaded by soldiers from the People’s Liberation Army. When the Cold War ended, I personally witnessed the upheaval that each Eastern European country went through. I saw how my friends, my students, as well as the general public faced up to the change. All these historical moments contributed to my precious life experience.
During the ten years from 1990 to 2000 that I spent at the United Nations University, the United Nations held its first ever Earth Summit in Rio de Janerio, Brazil. This UN summit announced that the new challenge facing mankind was Earth’s sustainable development—this would become one of my core research subjects at the university. My other main research topic was a problem faced by the world’s “mega cities,” i.e. the problem of a great influx of rural populations into these large cities, partly due to the population explosion in third world countries. On the other hand, due to the maturation of an international economic integration that saw the formation of “world cities” and network of cities controlling major internationalized economies. For both these research topics, I collaborated with scholars and organizations from both developed and developing countries; as such, I traveled all over the world.
For a time, I felt great regret that I could not be by Chin-fun’s side as she raised our children in the United States, thousands of miles away. This was the period that Tse-hsin (Ted) and Tse-yen (David) were attending high school and university which is, without a doubt, a period of adolescence where one is most impressionable and when one is most in need of his father’s guidance and the warmth of family life. At the end of 1984, after I decided to go back to Asia, I received an offer for a full-time professorship from the University of Pennsylvania’s Regional Science Department. Even so, my heart was still pointing me towards helping developing countries, so I flew across the ocean alone to pursue my calling.
Long-distance calls each weekend and postcards from Paris and Argentina cannot make up for my being an absent father to my children. Fortunately for me, Chin-fun was and is a strong woman, who ably took up her wifely duties of looking after the household and the children in my absence.
My children finished their studies smoothly and found jobs in American companies. One after the other, they were sent to Tokyo for work. During my time at the United Nations University and my four years as Taiwan’s top representative to Japan, our family was finally reunited in Tokyo. It was also during this time that my children both got married and our family of four grew to six. Our family gatherings then were the happiest moments of our lives. Ten years later, my grandchildren are now using many different languages to talk to us. After leaving Taiwanese soil for over forty years, my family has become an international one.
In the summer of 2004, I finally came back to Taiwan to stay for good. From my tenth-story apartment, I have a grand view of Tatun Mountain, Yangming Mountain, as well as the undulating peaks of many mountains. The sunset view is especially touching. Protesters bearing blue or green colors represent KMT or opposite parties fill the streets down below from time to time. Evidently, modern society, like the society I grew up with, is still inherently unjust. Nevertheless as a democracy, Taiwan has made leaps and bounds. The era of military rule is over, replaced by that of a new democracy. Like many other Asian countries, Taiwan is now well on its way to becoming a true modern democracy.
Over the last twenty years, the economic growth of China, just across the Taiwan Strait from us, has been a cause for joy. To think that the May Fourth Movement of students in Peking back in 1919 had proclaimed that science and democracy could save China. Today, only Science has prevailed. The Chinese still have quite a long way to go as far as democracy is concerned. Compared to China, Taiwan is truly fortunate in this respect. The Taiwan that I’ve returned to after forty years of being abroad is a brand-new Taiwan.
Chin-fun loves the opening of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. The word ‘dream’ can also be interpreted as an ideal, the road striving towards that ideal, a road sign. This book represents that road we’ve walked together, but it’s also a record of our everyday lives.
I’m very grateful to Chen Jou-Chin for her professionalism and her dedication in completing this book. For their attentiveness, I want to thank my editors at Commonwealth Publishing, Hsu Yao-yun, Chou Su-yun and Lu Yi-Sui. Finally, I’m grateful to Asymptote’s editor-in-chief Lee Yew-Leong for translating this book into English.
Lo Fu-chen 1 July, 2013
Preface
I am a Taiwanese through and through. I left Taiwan shortly after completing my university studies, not expecting to stay abroad for 45 years before coming home for good.
My initial reason for leaving the country was to evade the oppressive atmosphere of Taiwan under martial law. I went to the United States to study at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1960s. Then, determined to be a free man, I gave up my R.O.C. passport, thereby crossing the point of no return. The founder of t...
目錄
CONTENTS
Introduction / Eva Lou ― 10
Preface ― 15
01. A Three-Year Old Giving Away the Bride ― 21
02. An Aunt Becomes a Mother, a Mother Becomes an Aunt ― 29
03. A Hundred Years Ago, Mother Was Once a Telephone Operator ― 37
04. Father Founded a Transportation Company and Even Built Bridges ― 45
05. A Celebrity’s Dog Caused Me to Hit My Head against the Wall ― 53
06. Eating the Rice Sent by Wang Yung-ching (王永慶) ― 61
07. We Owned a Lake ― 65
08. A Six-Year-Old Overseas Student ― 69
09. Singing at The Top of Our Voices: “Chiang Kai-shek and Soong Mei-ling Have Fled Into the Mountains” ― 75
10. Leaving Our Homes En Masse for Schooling in a Hot Springs Resort ― 81
11. Japanese Subjects No Longer! ― 89
12. Learning Mandarin Chinese in Japan ― 95
13. The Scar of the 228 Incident: A Chiayi Perspective ― 101
14. Passing the Night on a Ping Pong Table in a Military Police Station ― 107
15. Many Famous Classmates at National Tainan First Senior High School ― 117
16. Shiy De-jinn ( 席德進) Was My Art Teacher ― 123
17. Nowadays Universities Admit Tens of Thousands of Students, But in the Past They Only Took Two Thousand ― 131
18. For Organizing a Graduation Dance, Our Class Rep Got Demerit Points ― 139
19. Fighting for a Photo of a Swedish Actress with a Girl ― 145
20. Learning Proper Dinner Etiquette before Going to Study Abroad ― 153
21. I Wanted to Open a School at the Age of Twenty-five ― 159
22. Forty-three People Secretly Becoming Sworn Brothers in a Hotel ― 169
23. Getting Engaged During White Terror ― 175
24. The Unbelievable Economics Department at Tokyo University ― 181
25. American Policemen Gave Me a Lift to My Protest ― 189
26. The Son of the British Prime Minister Mops the Floor in the US ― 197
27. Shouting at Robert Kennedy ― 201
28. A Letter from the Young Lee Chia-tung ― 205
29. PhDs Take On Naval Divers at Williamsport ― 213
30. Bringing Bananas to America ― 221
31. Taking Classes from a Nobel Prize Winner ― 229
32. The Magnificent Computer Capable of Processing 43K ― 237
33. A Ph.D. Certificate that Even a Ph.D. Can’t Read ― 241
34. My Friendship with Ikuda Kōji ( 生田浩二) ― 247
35. Being Investigated by the FBI in America ― 253
36. An MRT Pass for Global Travel (The United Nations Laissez-Passer) ― 259
37. A Traveling Economic Advisor ― 265
38. You Know that You’re Near a University if You Smell Tear Gas ― 275
39. Half Tables at a Wedding Banquet in an Iron-Curtain Country ― 281
40. Sounding the “Midnight Bell” at Hanshan Temple ― 287
41. Testifying at the US Congressional Hearing ― 293
42. Meeting Zhao Zi-yang ( 趙紫陽) and Zhu Rong-ji ( 朱鎔基) at the Beijing Conference ― 297
43. Lugging Back Jinhua Ham from Thousands of Miles Away ― 309
44. Lamb’s Eyes for Dinner ― 315
45. Eating Soft-Shell Turtle ― 321
46. Flying up Mount Everest on a Helicopter ― 325
47. Providing Economic Data for the G7 Summit ― 331
48. Drafting the Kyoto Protocol ― 337
49. A “Taiwanese” Meets World Leaders from All Over ― 343
50. Chiang Kai-shek Enlists Schumpeter as Economic Advisor ― 355
51. When His Fiancée Called Off the Engagement, He Tore Down the House ― 361
52. My Malay Muslim Brother ― 365
53. A Japanese Celebrity Comes to Taiwan, Happy About Not Having to Fear Assassination ― 371
54. My Appointment Intensifies the Awkwardness between the President and His Premier ― 377
55. The Japanese Princess Was Forbidden to Watch Television During Her Childhood ― 383
56. Becoming Tokyo’s Only Foreign Consultant ― 391
57. Giving the Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations A Secret Tour of Taiwan ― 395
58. Yamanaka Sadanori’s Silver Cane ― 403
59. Being “Smuggled” into the American Embassy ― 411
60. Getting a Li Shih-chiao ( 李石樵) and a Grand Piano into the Taipei Representative Office ― 417
61. The Taiwanese Rep’s American Ways ― 425
62. Lee Teng-hui Visits Japan, to Whose Credit? ― 431
63. A Handsome Guy Regardless of Time Period ― 439
64. In Which Koo Chen-fu Says, “Nevermore from Taiwan will There Emerge Such a Person Again.” ― 447
65. Being the Witness at Jason Wu’s ( 吳季剛) Brother’s Wedding ― 453
66. Bringing Second Brother Up to Speed About My Life Abroad ― 459
Chronicles of Lo Fu-chen ― 470
List of Lo Fu-chen’s Major Academic Works ― 478
CONTENTS
Introduction / Eva Lou ― 10
Preface ― 15
01. A Three-Year Old Giving Away the Bride ― 21
02. An Aunt Becomes a Mother, a Mother Becomes an Aunt ― 29
03. A Hundred Years Ago, Mother Was Once a Telephone Operator ― 37
04. Father Founded a Transportation Company and Even Built Bridges ― 45
05. A Celebrity’s Dog Caused Me to Hit My Head against the Wall ― 53
06. Eating the Rice Sent by Wang Yung-ching (王永慶) ― 61
07. We Owned a Lake ― 65
08. A Six-Year-Old Ove...
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