Logo
Prev
Bookmark
Rotate
Print
Next
Contents
All Pages
Related Articles
Browse Issues
Help
Search
Home
'
National Geographic : 1982 Jan
Contents
WO WERE TALKATIVE, one was shy, one was brooding and silent. The four young men, engineering students on a holi day, seemed to represent a cross section of campus personalities: ambitious, uncertain, rebellious. In philosophy and purpose, I found, they were as like as four peas in a stir-fry pod. I asked about the writing carved into a marble slab near Taiwan's Taroko Gorge, where sheer cliffs tower hundreds of feet above a swift river. The message dated from the Sung Dynasty (A.D. 960-1280) and was written in classical Chinese. The writer, Wen Tien-hsiang, had been imprisoned on the mainland by Mongols during one of China's fratricidal wars, said the students. He had refused to cooperate with his captors despite promises of free dom. Doomed, he reflected on his fate, in words as grandiloquent as the setting in which they were now placed: "There is in the universe an Aura which permeates all things and makes them what they are .... In man it is called spirit; and there is nowhere where it is not. . . . Only at some great crisis is it manifested widely abroad." Brave, colorful words, I observed to my eager committee. And does such spirit still exist? And do the times still demand it? Two turned thumbs up in the gesture of approval. "The words have as much mean ing now as they did then," said one. The shy one nodded agreement. I inquired about their future, and they replied that after study in the United States, they would return home. "Our country needs us," added the brooding one. Nationalist Tenacity Surprised Many If trouble brings forth strong people, Taiwan's perpetual crisis has proved a bless ing. Born in defeat, threatened by invasion, now "derecognized" as a nation by most of the world, the little island state has not only survived, it has also flourished. When the army and government of Na tionalist leader Chiang Kai-shek retreated to the island just a hundred miles off the Chinese mainland in 1949, most of the world believed they would be overrun by the Com munist forces that drove them there. Other Fervor explodes as pilgrims converge on the port of Peikangfor the birthday of Matsu, goddess of the sea. Masked againstfirecrackersmoke, celebrants
Links
Archive
1982 Feb
1981 Dec
Navigation
Previous Page
Next Page