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TAIPEI AIR STATION |
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TAIPEI AIR STATION |
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After approximately one year, our family moved to another Japanese style house located behind the Lutheran mission’s Nan Ta Lu (Big South Road) church. This house was next to a soy sauce factory and the neighborhood always reeked of soy sauce. Vonnie, Meris (my second and third sisters) and I are outside the front gate of the Nan Ta Lu church in this circa 1955 photograph. |
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I attended Chinese Kindergarten in Hsinchu for two years (1956-1957 and 1957-1958). Getting to school meant riding a pedicab with several other students. Here, I am pictured in the driving seat of a pedicab before leaving for school one morning in 1957. Due to the fact that both of my parents worked and that I was in the care of my amah “Ha” for most of the day, I only spoke Mandarin Chinese and thus had no issues in attending a Chinese Kindergarten. I did not speak English until after I turned 6 and was told I had to learn English so that I could function on our family’s impending furlough to the United States. |
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My sister Meris and I are pictured along with an unidentified friend in Tsoying, near Kaohsiung in 1958. We must have traveled down island at the time my father was completing his annual 2-week reserve duty stint in the US Marine Corps. Tsoying was the site of the major Chinese Nationalist Navy and Marine bases on Taiwan. This very beautiful lake with the two pagodas was also a photographic icon of Taiwan. |
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I am pictured in our first Hsinchu house with our pet dog, whose name I don’t remember, in 1955. Note the Japanese styling of the house at 52 Kung Yuan Lu. In the far background, you can see broken glass on top of the outer wall. This was a widely utilized home protection installation to keep burglars from scaling the wall. |
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This photograph, circa 1955, of my mother and I with a group of elementary school children at Sun Moon Lake shows the prevailing school uniforms of the era. All children in Taiwan schools in grades 1-12 had to wear uniforms and that included regulation haircuts for both boys and girls.
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