Tall Tales in the Modern Period

I am Eleanor Morris Wu [McCaskey Public High School, Lancaster, PA,1959] First, in my class, co-valedictorian, While I was at McCaskey I was very active in Junior Achievement, winning the achiever of the Year award in my sophomore, junior and Senior Years at McCaskey, My main role in junior achievement was promoting the virtues of free enterprise in all counties of Southern Pennsylvania with our local JA Director, William Sumner, I made speeches at Public high schools throughout Pennsylvania promoting Free enterprise and importance of Junior Achievement for students to learn these values as a bulwark for Democracy. In 1958, I was chosen by the National Board of junior achievement to run for the National President of the organization in Bloomington Indiana though I would be the first female and first member of the East C [Harvard University to run for that office]. On the long train ride from Lancaster Pa to Bloomington, I bonded with other members of the Jan, on our way to the convention from New Jersey to New York with their agreement to support me formed a de facto campaign organization of East Coasters. Unfortunately, though when we got to the Conference we found ourselves badly outmanned and overfunded by the Southerners and Westerners. Despite that, it was a valiant fight and I went home as an honored guest speaker to the national manufacturer Association at their annual convention in one of Philadelphia’s largest hotels. After my speech, I was awarded a $500 scholarship from the NMA to any college of my choice.

Graduating from Lancaster’s Public High School JP McCaskey as first in my class and co-Valedictorian I was admitted to four or five Ivy schools with scholarships available from most of them including Radcliffe College, at that time although educationally thoroughly assimilated with Harvard college, administratively it was a separate entity though that had changed by the time I graduated from Harvard in 1963 so I, along with the rest of the’ Cliffies [as we called ourselves], received the valuable Harvard University, Harvard college diploma along with boys, diplomas duly signed by President of Harvard College and Harvard University was not only a big deal to my parents and McCaskey High but also to the Lancaster community as a whole as I was the first person in the long history of Lancaster verb to gain admittance to a college of Harvard University and my picture and story on the front page in Lancaster’s signature paper Lancaster New Era.

Moving to Cambridge Mass for college had to put Pennsylvania politics aside and I quickly threw myself into the intellectual cornucopia which was Harvard University. BA cum lauded the 1963 English with intensive studies in French Literature, Math, and Biochemistry and DNA New Era and radio interview news, [with Nobel prize winner James Watson [4-year grade average 3,76, 4-year full scholarship]; In 1961 while at Harvard, I won an all University-wide creative writing competition, thereby gaining entry as one of 12 students into the famous American playwright Lillian Hellman’s creative writing class.

I well completely stayed out of politics while I was at Harvard, Although I spent a lot of time with the anti-Vietnam war crowd at Harvard due to my admittance to Lillian Hellman’s creative writing class and my great admiration as a teacher and a wonderfully kind human being and an artist, I never joined in the radical association, while some of her other students were active in, SDS, [Student for a Democratic Society] These students were constantly joined by students from other universities with radical anti-war movements, like Bill Ayers and Bernadette Dorn from MU Michigan and Bernie Sanders from Chicago and they did a lot of things I could not condone in also felt it was not my place to judge them, so terrified were they of being killed or left behind to die a terrible death in some south Asian hellhole, all the work, the suffering they and their parents had been put through to say, just for example, for them to get a hard-won Harvard degree, to be eradicated as nothing and for no possible good reason by her random act of some Viet Cong’s malicious and careless shot of his Russian or Chinese made a pistol.

Always on my mind when I was with these guys and their frantic girls, was yes, the boys and I had gone to school with grownup within bucolic Lancaster, as soon as these boys finished high schools there proudly in their military togs, beaming from; love and gratitude their parents, neighbors were bestowing on them. They were doing their duty, without a murmur, without even a whisper of regret to the beloved parents who had brought them up and neighborhood friends and neighbors who were as close as family, people, you could always rely on from cradle to grave, from one generation to the next, this was Brigadoon Lancaster, something these spoiled whiny brats from big cities, in high towers with built-in swimming pools and golf courses on upper floors would never understand.

Yet somehow, we were all still Americans Under the influence of college friends, some Canadians and some French, I joined them in Canada hoping to find a safe and easy entrance into the movie and TV business through the famous open-minded and clean-living CBC After writing some radio plays for CBC in Canada I quietly slipped away to Taiwan to take up what would be one of my life’s great obsessions, a study of ancient Chinese science, math, and philosophy with the intent of integrating its mysterious griefs with Western math.

My Scottish math prof on exchange from University of Glasgow had set me on this course in my freshman year, handing me pages Chinese I Ching an ancient document of mathematical mystery used by chines in today’s world for horoscopes and gambling, ’Analyze he would say to me after class, someday you will find the cure for cancer there, Prof Wallace had arranged for me to study ancient Chinese math and science at the Chinese Academy in Taiwan under legendary Chinese scholar DAR Chang chi y UN who had also been a Professor at Harvard after the war, Before I took off for Taiwan, he had joined the department of anthropology U Toronto though I would not get my MA there till 1982, and I was just finishing up my fiveyear Freudian psychoanalysis with Dr. Morton D Berg, MD. member if the American PostPsychoanalytic Society, and what seemed to me, after 5 years of analysis with him, as Lay Psychoanalyst, Yet he warned me to actually get my papers as a Lay Psychoanalyst I would need a Ph.D. from an American or Canadian University, and a doctorate from the China Academy in Taiwan would not get me those papers, He was against my going to Taiwan to get a Doctorate there, I argued with him, I needed the doctorate from China Academy and after that I needed to stay in Taiwan AND GET INTO China when they would finally open the doors to foreigners for which I need to find answers to some basic psychological and anthropological questions which were deeply bothering me were.

1) Do the Chines have an Oedipus complex or not or is it just a western thing, unknown in the Orient?

2)Also, do the Chinese really have a patriarchy as the early clergy who went to China proposed or was it really a matriarchy through all the veneer western psychologists and anthropologists cleaned disappeared as asocial structure millions of years ago and no longer exists.

Even as a vestige the dear doctor was very upset with me and saw him very seldom after that. Our argument was never resolved as Dr. Berg died in 2004 long after I had left Canada in 1989 but before I had the final answers to our arguments, which was not until I went to live in Taiwan in 1989, staying there until 2015, and having the chance to travel widely in China after the Chinese opened their doors to foreigners in the year 2000.

There I found my answers and I am preparing for writing many books about the Chinese that do not have an Oedipus complex because Oedipus complex only occurs In societies organized explicitly as patriarchal, were male father is the ruler in all things, and his power represented not just symbolized by his existence of his genitalia that strike primal fear into children especially his young sons and causes them to have an ’Oedipus problem similarly, chines do not have a patriarchy they have matriarchy, reason being china THEN NOW ALWAYS riddled with episodes of famine still is that the way Perl Buck called it in The Good Earth but what happens in a famine? there are five kids at the table but mom has only rice enough for four, mom decides who takes the hit, the kids are scared to death of her through their lives, she is the final power, this is a matriarchy.

Anyhow Dr. Berg was unhappy about my leaving Canada and the west and going on my own in the Far East the reason was not just about where I would get my DOCTORATE but about a man I was involved deeply with and whom I had told the Dr. I planned to marry, he was very much against it but in the end, he conceded. He told me if I loved him, he told me, it would work, love can perform miracles he said. Meanwhile, by 1964 I had already joined the dept. of anthropology at U Toronto and I had decided, taking Dr. Wallace; advice as my goal-line to study the Chinese and While Canada is half a world away from China or Taiwan, they have one of the oldest and largest Chinese communities in the world in her big cities at least big English speaking cities of Vancouver and Toronto, in my early anthropological tasks of field work, asking questions about Family, kin, religion, clam I had been making really great friends down in Toronto Chinatown to the point where everyday night I could be seen down on bay streets gorging myself on fantastic Chinese food, tea, wine, and beer, talking away especially with the man known as the legend ‘Chinese uncle’ K dock yip, the first man to graduate with a law degree from the Toronto law school, Osgood hall, everyone’s layer, mentor, savior, friend, including mine. Well one of those nights when I along with five or six of doK’s other loyal followers, steeped in our sweet and sour pork, egg drop soup with shellfish morsel, pork spareribs with black bean sauce and a sweet Canadian lager, a strange person appeared at our table. He was so beautiful I could not take my eyes off him, he was like nothing no one I had ever seen before, He was smallish, slender, delicate really, his features were neither Chinese nor western, he was talking away in Mandarin Chinese among the local Chinese whose dialect was Cantonese Mandarin it was a hard language to follow but everyone was entranced, especially me.

Of course, it was really love at first sight and within half a year I was Mrs. King Sing Wu, through a whirlwind courtship, honeymoon in beautiful Quebec city in the Chateau Laurier hotel, a little piece of French divinity on the endless cold and barren plains of Canada, Our whirlwind courtship and a super romantic honeymoon was tipped offbeat luxury trios to Manhattan where it hit all the new Broadway shows and I had a chance to introduce him to my dear CREATIVE WRITING teacher at Harvard, Mrs. Lillian Hellman. Kim Sing AND I TOOK HER OUT TO AN EXQUISITE FISHDINNERIN ONE OF NEW York Chinatown; MOST AUTHENTIC Chinese restaurants with authentic Fu Jian cuisine. Of course, my step dad, sister and many of my friends and relatives in Philadelphia were horrified that I was marrying a Chinese but my wonderful mom just ate him up, the yawning gulf between Kim Sing and my Jewish relates were softened however by the revelation that Kim Sing was, in fact, an illegitimate son of one of the British Jewish magnate that virtually ran the Hong Kong economy at that time, The magnate had paid his way through an exclusive elementary, middle school and high school in Hong Kong attended by the very wealthiest CHINES AND ’BASTARDS; like himself. The magnate had also paid for his college education at Imperial Toyo University in Tokyo where Kim Sing had honed his art and theatrical skills, becoming a renowned theatre director in Hong Kong after the War. But Kim Sing’s Jewish British paternity had never been the official recognized by the magnate who sired him and FROM Everybody’s point in Hong Kong or in the mainland Kim Sing remained simply a regular Chinese though perhaps a specially privileged done. In that sense, he remained little different in status from the half black children place others sired by their wealthy privileged and Saxon white slave owners in the deep south before Emancipation.

I eventually learned that Kim Sing’s real job in the Americas and Pacific was as a peripatetic ambassador or diplomat in the pay of the democratic The REPUBLIC of China on Taiwan, He was casually referred to as Taiwan’s underground ambassador to Canada referring to the fact that Taiwan’s original ambassador, Hsieh Yuk Chi, had been kicked out of his palatial embassy in Ottawa when the Unrecognized the Communist People’s Republic’ and derecognized the Republic of China on Taiwan, Kim Sing’s job was to be in Canada and US as an official Taiwan representative to bolster the failing spirits of the overseas Chinese everywhere outside of China and persuade them that not all had been lost for their people and homeland the UN’s cruel move to relegate them again to a meaningless class if totally unimportant people, His job was to reassure them that the Republic of China on Taiwan, the gold standard of all Chinese who had succeeded through their personal sacrifice, to escape the black hole that was Chinese civilization in a tailspin of a legacy starvation, poverty, and death, now seemingly encased in the throttle of Communist taskmasters, more thoroughly brutal and more exactingly dictatorial than even the most brutal emperors of ancient China.

Because of Kim Sing’s fine education, his personal charm, plan and the unmistakable era of supreme Chinese officialdom carried one down through the ages from the blackest periods of China’s [as to her present dark] period under Communism, the ordinary overseas Chinese, already partially Westernized with their love of freedom, democracy, and free enterprise could take heart that all they had sacrificed to gain the good life they now enjoyed in the West would not be sucked away from them, their families with whom they had kept up viable contacts would once again disappear from the sucked again back into the black hole which had become China’s legacy and the bright spot on their political horizon and that was prosperous and free but was crafted in their native language and held firm to all the positive aspects of China’s storied past the ’golden land of the Chinese dream, free, prosperous, democratic Taiwan would not be abandoned by rich and generous America but would stand with her, as brothers in arms, against present day enslavement of the human spirit Communism.

Of course, it was not just Kim Sing’s aura of Chinese officialdom that made him such a prime candidate for rallying the faith of the overseas Chinese both their own accomplishments and the promise of the Republic of China on Taiwan could still, hold for Chinese place in the world as a bastion of freedom democracy and free enterprise there was also Kim Sing’s extraordinary military record Learning of the imminent outbreak of war between China and Japan after the infamous ’Manchuria incident of 193 where Japanese had invaded Chinese territory with the intent of war, Kim Sing, without finishing his college degree, stealthily made his way to the Japanese coast, hired a boat to take him to China’s northern border where he located and slipped in China’s national military academy, administered by Chiang Kai Shek, soon to be the undisputed leader of Nationalist faction of the Chinese and who would go to war both against invading Japanese and ideologically committed Chinese Communists, Finishing his military courses in two years and graduating as a lieutenant colonel, awaiting his battle orders in his native the southern province of Canton, Kim Sing began his long trek by foot, car, bus, donkey or horse on the thousand mile distance between Peking in from China to Canton City in Canton province to meet up with his soldiers and to see his mother who the British Jewish magnate who was her husband in all but name had sequestered extended family, for she was dying of cancer and had not long to live, After nursing his beloved mother as long as he could before she died, Kim Sing made his tearful and heart- broken departure from her and began a trek as lengthy as the one he made from Peiking in Shantung PROVINCE to Canton but this one was going in the opposite direction this time from south to north.

Obeying the orders of Chiang Kai Shek sent to him by courier Kim Sing took his men in battles they worked their way up the coast from Canton, Fu Jian, juicing, then Nanking Shanghai, The battles were difficult and sporadic, often there was no food for his soldiers and the soldiers would have to confiscate from [poor farmers who themselves did not have enough to eat] Often Kim Sing would sacrifice his own rations to the soldiers, Finally, they reached the land’s end of the Nationalists futile struggle to keep China from Communism and what would later bring about even greater brutalities against China’s innocent people than those waged by the JAPANESE ‘THE great leap forward’ and the ’Cultural Revolution whose casualties were in the tens of millions, At any rate when Kim Sing reached Harbin in China’s extreme north, where the rag tag and starving armies of Chiang Kai Shek were being besieged by better fed Communist armies from the south within Russian armies already on Chinese soldiers to the East, Kim Sing knew the end was high for General Chiang. As the last straw when the American general refused General Chiang’s request for material aid and weapons reinforcement, Kim Sing dismissed his soldiers and headed out again, by any means possible, to find peace in Taiwan.

After the war, Kim Sing built a successful career in Taiwan as a stage, film and TV writer, director, producer, He worked hard to see Taiwan succeed and oppose threats from communism. With his many friends, classmates, and colleagues from Tokyo Imperial University, Wham Poa, Kim Sing eventually made his way north highest echelons of the Republic of China on Taiwan, officialdom and eventually found his way to Canada and North America, which is where I met him at the end of the′60′s.

After our marriage, Kim Sing’s job took off, as he was mandated to visit every significant community of overseas Chinese in Canada, the US, and Pacific Rim, even Europe, London, and Paris where possible. I went with him everywhere providing American language and translation where possible, Our young son born in 1972, went with us as possible, where not possible, he stayed with a trusted person, my sister in Philadelphia or my mother in Lancaster, With Kim Sing I visited large overseas Chinese communities in Toronto of course Montreal, Winnipeg, Alberta, and Vancouver, in US, New York, Washington DC, Los Angeles, Francoise, Boston Hawaii We would go back repeatedly to the biggest of these centers, New York, San Francisco, Vancouver, Alberta. We also visited Japan several times and the Philippines.

As time went on, however, in fighting in the overseas Chinese community in Canada became quite ferocious. Young-bloods, especially young men with University degrees in Taiwan or Hong Kong fought viciously for any piece of influence they could squeeze from an aging grandfather in the overseas community uncle with political aspirations and some political influence in Taiwan Canada had severe political problems of its own which I eventually became involved in as a young person, who came from whatever country, spoke whatever language, had terrible problems finding white collar jobs, i.e. industry, education or government if their names were not pure Anglo Saxon, As Canada does not have a melting pot philosophy like the US it results in a kind of Anglo Saxon super elitism which affects every branch of society, the Canadians try to slowly move this reality which really begins with their attitude towards the French, The ENGLIS AND French SETTKERS IN Canada had some very ugly wars in the 16th and 17th century which English won, with one result being the hierarchical terms which ENGLISH, French, and Canada phrased in [upper Canada’s in English speaking controlled Ontario lower Canada being controlled by French SPEAKING, CONTROLLED Quebec].

To gloss over elite Anglo-Saxon governance in Canada they formed cultural society’s public policy and ways to control the overarching ambitions of no Anglo-Saxon people to have a share of the power and opportunity enjoyed almost exclusively by Anglo Saxons in Canada. The expressed intent of the multicultural policy was to enable people who are with older generations of different ethnic groups to retain their individual cultures in a sea of Anglo-sexism, stay proud, self-confident in their culture and teach their children their culture etc.

This works well for the older generation in whatever given ethnic culture as older people cannot easily learn a foreign language or assimilate to foreign ways, for their children, however, growing up and educated in free Canadian schools, this does not work too well unless of course, the native land of their foreign languages is still extant, rich enough to support their ‘return’ to the land of their ancestors.

For the most part, however, children of no angel Saxon, but ethnic identity grow up admiring Canadian not ethnic figures of ownership and when they grow up they want a piece of Canadian action.

The fact they are denied this leads to a lot of discontent among the younger generation Canada so that their immigrant dream remains a love the only target of that dream is the US and Canada becomes like LSD world was to their parent, a culture denying them an opportunity Like I said when I first became involved in Canadian politics they came after me because I was married to a Chinese with great influence with them.

The first election was involved in I worked for Alan Grossman a conservative match having been republican in the US and now conservative de face to supporting free china against communist China conservative seemed the right way to go to other leaders off Chinese community.

Although the CANADIAN conservative PARTY WAS THE SUPER ELITE CANADIAN PARTY PAR EXCELLENCE THEY SOMETIMES RAN BETHNIC CANADIANS FOR IMPORTA seats especially if the riding in question was in a heavily benthic area, In the early 70′s CANADIAN conservative PARTY WAS running Alann Grossman, in the heavily populated ethnic area in Toronto to Centre city, Kim Sing had been asked to help out but because there is a lot of non-Chinese as well as Chinese in the area he asked me to give it a go, Inn conservative party meetings I had met a number of young ethnics more or less my own age from different ethnic groups like Ukrainian, German, Italian, Czech, Lithuania, Japanese, Korean, Indian, Sri Lanka and West African.

I had quickly struck up a friendship with young Ukrainian, maybe 10 years my junior, a graduate BA in Ukrainian studies from McGill U in Montreal and doing his Ph.D. there. He was a surviving member of a large well-known family of Ukrainian Cossacks who had lived through the ‘Great Hunger’ [the notorious famine of the 1930′S which had killed 30 million Ukrainian farmers, who had survived the famine, escaped to Belarus where the three were captured by soldiers of the Red army and shipped off to the Gulag, after the war Stalin’s power began to wane and a delegation of Brits and Tanks were sent to the Gulag over conditions of Russian war prisoners, There the hearts of laconic Brits and overenthusiastic Tanks were touched to the core by a vociferous anti-communist rally of surviving Ukrainians, led by Alex’s father, Repercussions were heard and the Kremlin and the mass of surviving Ukrainians were deported to camp’s in the UK outside of London for an indefinite period, Though Alex’s father died in the UK he was touted as national Ukrainian hero and his wife and two sons born in the UK were later transported to Canada under aegis of the well end of Ukrainian Fund-centered in and naturally, that stirred the hearts of the laconic Brits and empathetic Yanks] Repercussions re heard in the Kremlin and them mass of Ukrainians in the Gulag were deported to camps in the UK outside of London, Although Alex’s father died in the IONFDONB camps. Alex and his brother along with their mother were later transported to Canada under the Aegis of The Ukrainian Fund. Well End Owed Trust centered in Calgary.

Part 2

Although the CANADIAN conservative PARTY WAS THE SUPER ELITE CANADIAN PARTY PAR EXCELLENCE THEY SOMETIMES RAN BETHNIC CANADIANS FOR IMPORTA seats especially if the riding in question was in a heavily benthic area, In the early 70′s CANADIAN conservative PARTY WAS running Alann Grossman, Jew in the heavily populated ethnic area in Toronto to center city, Kim Sing had been asked to help out but because there is a lot of non-Chinese as well as Chinese in the area he asked me to give it a go, Inn conservative party meetings I had met a number of young ethnics more or less my own age from different ethnic groups like Ukrainian, German, Italian, Czech, Lithuania, Japanese, Korean, Indian, Shri Lank-an and West African.

I had quickly struck up a friendship with young Ukrainian, maybe 10 years my junior, a graduate BA in Ukrainian studies from McGill U in Montreal and doing his Ph.D. there. He was a surviving member of a large well-known family of Ukrainian Cossacks who had lived through the ‘Great Hunger’[the notorious famine of the 190, staged a vociferous and naturally, that stirred the hearts of the laconic Brits and empathetic Yanks] which had killed nearly 30million Ukrainian farmers. Due to their enormous connections Alex’s family had managed to escape the worst of the communist induced famine escaping to the northern Belarusian territory, however there they were carried by soldiers offered arm and shipped off for a cold wait in starvation conditions in the Soviet Gulag, however at the end of the WW2 when Stalin’s power was waning and international mob servers from the West, England and the US, Alex’s father, the leader of all surviving Ukrainian Cossacks.

STAGED A RALLY OF SUCH EMOTIONAL DEPTH AND Pathos that stirred the hearts of the laconic Brits and empathetic Yank’s that caused serious repercussion for the Managers of Death in the Kremlin that Alex’s father and the 10,000 Ukrainian Cossacks, their followers and defendants were granted amnesty by the Soviet government and deported to a camp outside of London ‘awaiting further consideration of relocation’.

Alex’s father was a veritable hero to all surviving Ukrainians, both those who had escaped the holocaust within Ukrainian territory and those who had managed t I flee it and who like the Jews had disappeared were scattered among the various lands of the earth who had been charitable enough to take them in and succor them, Both Alex and his older brother Oleh had been born in the London camps through his father, as a result of years of near starvation, depression, and hardship, died within 10 years of staying in the London camps, while in the mid 50′s Alex, his brother Oleh and his mother Onaiah, were shipped off to Canada due to the courtesy of the very large and well-endowed Ukrainian Center and Fund of Canada, home to more than 500,000 Ukrainian survivors of the Soviet-inspired famine of the 30′s that had more than decimated what had once been one of the great Slavic nations on earth.

As time went on I became acquainted with Alex better and his family. His older brother Oleh, was in a constant rage and his personality hitting the depths and heights of the stereotypical Slavic melodramatic personality type, constantly demanding in lesser and greater degrees of anger and regrets, the due recovery of homeland Ukraine her rightful owners and descend to, like himself, It was almost as if he could see what he as presaging when it all did come through as it would for himself and others of his nation, when it did actually happen 40 square meter and Ukraine, under both the arraign of her own people and international pressure did become again an independent country.

Alex’s mother, on the other hand, lived in a land of eternally imperturbable calm. Alex too, but unlike his mom, whose calm was natural and self-induced, Alex’s calm was marijuana induced. However unlike my Harvard classmates who used marijuana for bizarre lascivious escapades in the name of ‘personal liberation’ and acts of civil terrorism in the name of ‘build new democrat’, Alex used pot to keep himself calm in a wall of nightmares carried over from the horrors of the old world where sanity was an unknown commodity on any of the world’s markets, Marijuana allowed him to get along in a family where horror had followed horror so closely death as one of the high cards; he used it to study for his BA, get meet, for his Ph.D. and get, go by train every week three times to go to class at McGill and satisfy his professor to the point he could get his prestigious degree and enabled him to court the beautiful bloom Canadian girl of his dreams despite the fact her father disposed immigrants and ethnics when Alan Grossman refused to take my phone calls after me and Alex and other ethnics had won the election for him and Margaret Campbell rising stat in the liberal party had offered me a job as her executive assistant and as incentive to me, offered Alex a full time union job in the Ontario liquor board moving boxes, he took it ALEX’S putative father in law had refused to let his daughter marry Alex unless he had a good paying job, preferably a union job] it enabled Alex to marry the girl he loved, produce a healthy son with her he helped raise and care for all his life it enables him to keep the job Margret had gotten for him in the liquor board all his life, without complaining and retire at 65 with a good pension.

It had enabled him to buy two houses, one on northern lake where he lived with his family till he could afford a better one, now down in the city; it enabled him to enjoy his retirement working with his brother on a collection of Kleist books, about his father, his father’s family, and the dangerous country he had given up for a less colorful but far better life on his new, own country, Canada. When I met Margaret Campbell and agreed to work with her in the early ’70’s it never really bothered me that I was using the tools I learned under the conservative republican party in Pennsylvania for a now very liberal party, Because the different parties were in different countries, with vastly different circumstances led me to believe and I still believe the circumstances of their polity were so entirely different they need also different tools to solve the problems of these different parties in different ends to solve the problem and achieve the working democracy of free enterprise and freedom, both personal, social, political and economic.

The much higher percentage of social benefits handed out to her citizens but the govt [including full, no strings attached medical care] can be explained by the very considerable harsher living conditions in Canada than the US. For one thing and most importantly probably the weather with weather that runs in Toronto for example with 11 months of the year only August can be considered warm with any degree of certainty, AS FOR THE OTHER MONTHS OF THE YEAR THEY VARY FROM VERY COLD, VERY COLD TO UNBEARABLY COLD, wherein the ordinary winter months of Nov-Feb temperatures can go down to minus 50, causing the house pipes to freeze with little hope of getting away from the weather without living the country. In all months from June to April snow is possible, in regular very cold winter or fall. spring months from September to June snow is very likely.

In at least 6 months out of the year or more, it’s too cold to work outdoors, so all construction work, for example, comes to a complete half at least 6 months of the year.

Because of the miserable cold climate, large companies with many job openings are reluctant to open branches Because large companies depending a steady reluctant workforce able to get to the office regularly to implement and work a full year and such a workforce is not available in Canada is another reason large companies don’t want to relocate in Canada, as their yearly revenue would be greatly reduced.

People may ask then why does the US not object Canada’s financial situations as her closest neighbor? The reason is just for that reason-as a committed free enterprise, a democratic country Canada is America’s ideal neighbor in her northern border. The United States is happy to have Canada on her northern border as a matter of grave national security The US views any problems of weather, employment. etic divisiveness as purely Canadian internal problems and is confident Canada is doing her best to solve this problem both for sake of her national security, US’S and al members of military alliances in which Canada is also a member Thus when Margaret asked me to be [President of Toronto Multicultural Association] on her behalf and on behalf of the Liberal Party of Ontario she told me my main task was to interview all the head of Ontario’s ethnic groups and get from them both complaints possible solutions for young people of ethnic background to get jobs suitable to their educational qualifications and to get back to her about it.

One of the big-ticket items I worked with Kim Sing on in middle and rare ’70’s Nixon’s trip to China which he undertook on Henry Kissinger’s advice to reduce China’s influence in the world and hence China’s AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOR Toward S us and other countries of the world. The idea however of the possibilities that Nixon’s trip to China would open the arms of warms when irresponsible liberals and other uninformed people and members of the public might clamor giving china diplomatic recognition and perhaps cause ROC in Taiwan to lose diplomatic relations with us and the miserable economic, political, education and benefits that went with our diplomatic relationship with them.

This stick like a crow in Kim sing’s throat and mine too for we felt diplomatic recognition with China would inevitably mean scotching diplomatic recognition with Taiwan, not only deprive Taiwan of the much-needed benefits she received from us as diplomatic part but also opening the door to false communist ideas Anton the mind and academic curriculum of naive liberal egghead professors and perhaps the most spoiled generation of youth ever seen on the planet who already took every opportunity to attack the authority and be the devil’s advocate on every issue no matter what the cost.

I remember my Harvard classmates justifying their outrageous sexual escapades on the basis it gave them the ‘sexual freedom’ given as a gift to the Chinese people by Mao Tse Tung. THIS WAS MY LAST big project with Kim Sing. Near the age of 60 his frail and delicate frame, suffering from years of malnutrition, hardship, and war had begun to take effect on his system. He was in and out of the hospital all the time with complaints the doctors deemed serious but could not pinpoint the cause.

During the LATE ’70’S down to late ’80’s when he gets finally tragically passed from me and his son and all the people who loved him so dearly and all the earth, sun, moon, and stars we went frequently to Washington DC to stay with and work with Lord Michael Lindsay of Birker and his wife Hsaoi Li, Lady Lindsay the first Chinese Peeress in the history of Britain. At the outbreak of China’s war with Japan, Michael, a young Chinese scholar from Balliol college in Oxford went to teach English at Yenching University outside Beijing. As large Japanese began to close in, supplies of food medicine and radio parts for the students, teachers, and workers there became more and more difficult to get and Michael started smuggling them into the school from shops in Beijing, before long he was being watched and followed by Japanese secret police, the war was starting, Michael was warned by friends in the Chinese military [at that time the Nationalists and Communists got bit yet made their irreconcilable split. Students, not yet really Communists but leaning to the left advised him to flee to the nearest Chinese outpost, the caves where Mao TSE ting was ensconced 500 miles to the south, He would need a Chinese secretary, someone equally fluent in both English and Chinese, He hired his beautiful, adept student Hsiao Li, with whom he had already become entranced. With Hsaio LAI and several bearers Michael and Hsaio Li set of for Mao’s caves, before they had finished their 500-mile trek to the caves they had already married and the first of their three children to be born in Mao’s caves, was on her way.

When Michael and Hsaio Li heard of Nixon’s plan to travel to China or bring China out of isolation they were extremely turned, Although they had lived with Mao in his caves for years and seen him like a brother they had become more and more disturbed and upset by his words and actions, so different from his beliefs in democracy and freedom he had espoused to them in the caves, More and more his worse and actions lay far from the pulpit of the free and democratic leader he had seen them believe he would be during the time he spent with them in the caves, As information spread out from China about the great leap forward’ where millions died of starvation due to Mao’s dictatorial edicts and refusal to help those he had personally caused to die by his cruel, irrational and dictatorial edicts. When the cultural revolution came it was even worse and all hopes they had if China becoming a new modern, Chinese style democracy, lay entities.

The Lindsay’s wanted to speak out and they summoned Kim Sing to Washington to help them talk to the world, to disown themselves from his cruel and criminal activities as Chairman of the PRC and Chinese Communist Party, He wanted to retract everything positive about Mao he had been duped into saying, He wanted Kim Sing to talk to Taiwan for him.

For the next five years or so, till the time when Jimmy Carter was elected and then made the final cruel break with Taiwan Kim Sing and me were back and forth between Toronto and Washington and New York and Japan, and San Francisco, Even then although Kim Sing’s health was beginning to fail, he would be off to Taiwan himself when he would stay up to a month, Later after 1979 when Carter made his fateful decision and we heard people were crying and screaming in the streets in Taipei, Kim Sing did not go back right away as we were told it was not safe for anyone coming from America to be out alone in the streets at night.

Finally, about four or five months after Carter’s fateful decision things had calmed down enough for Kim Sing to go back again, He did not want me to go back with him, AN American woman alone in Taipei now was not a good idea, let alone an American woman being seen in the company of a Chinese man.

The next time he came back from Taiwan he didn’t talk to me, I tried to reach out to him, he didn’t respond, Finally, I understood

‘It’s the job isn’t it’

he nodded

They fired you, they fired you, why would they do that? how would they do that?

He turned his head away from me.

’THEY FIRED YOU, how could THEY DO THAT It was not our fault. How could they think you could have stopped Carter from recognizing Red China? How could you do something like that? That’s totally ridiculous, you’re not even an American!!

He didn’t answer, the days, weeks, months ahead we came into complete isolation, his ordinates in the Canadian Chinese paper he was editor of, didn’t call him. His pals, who went out with us regularly for dinner in Chinatown never called, the mail stopped too, the long letters in Chinese sent to him by the different government agencies he worked for in his job as a prospective ambassador to overseas Chinese stopped too.

Letters from his Chines half-sister in Hong Kong still came but now she never signed her name, we only knew it was from her by the return address in Kowloon.

A letter came from Los Angeles his best friend from army days had recently retired there to be near his daughter, married to an American soldier, It was in English, to me, JAE asked me to forget about Kim Sing, he was old and had to return, I was still young, I could make a new life for myself. I could get a good job in Taiwan , I could get a good job there at the CHINESE University where I got my Doctorate from, I could get a good job there for the rest of my life, I didn’t need Kim Sing any more, I could do it all myself.

I didn’t read Kim Sing the letter but I wrote right back to Wang, asked him to help Kim Sing do some business in Taiwan, I knew he was doing good business with airplane parts for the Taiwan air force because Kim Sing had told me, couldn’t the help Kim Sing do this same business too? He never answered me. I wrote to several other of Kim Sing’s friends from army days whom Kim had told were prospering on doing business with the Taiwan army, they too never answered me.

Meanwhile, Kim Sing was in and out of the hospital all the time. Again, they knew he was sick but didn’t know why they told me, finally one-day the American doctor in Taiwan hospital took me aside and told me, Kim Sing has an aortic aneurysm, that is a heart blockage in the vein leading to the heat, it is incurable and it is terminal. he doesn’t have long to live.

‘how long?’ I asked

‘Nobody knows, I advise you to make all arrangements,’

I swallowed hard, it couldn’t be true, there must be some mistake, I scoured the internet but found nothing, I still did not give up.

I came home from outside one day,he was wailing upstairs,the pain would not stop, I called ambulance that took him to St. Michel’s Catholic hospital, it was January 17th, 1989, In the morning the doctor came to tell me, he had died in the way to the hospital, they tried everything to revive him but his heart was, well, broken from a maieutic aneurysm, there was nothing they could do.

There was not then, nor is there now any words that could ever describe the devastation I felt, it was like all the clocks in the world had stopped, even the earth was not moving any longer, the moon would not come out at night, if there had been any way I could have followed him into the black hole of death I would have taken but I couldn’t, I still had to get our son through college I hadn’t even started, let alone finished my writing a phone came later that day from Kim Sing’s best friend in Taiwan, he had arranged a job for me at the Chinese University there, I would be teaching students English, it was life time job but in the meantime he had a job for me at the California state university long beach California. it will start in two weeks, be there, he said, after that, you will come to Taiwan, it is all been taken care of.

Everything that had happened to me after that was unreal, the funeral with friends from Harvard, relatives from Philadelphia, mom, and dad, sister and cousins, the wake. the burial, all unreal.

I would take my son with me to long beach hoping if he agreed he would come with me to Taiwan and he would go to the American school there and from there go on to Harvard, he did not free, he went back to Canada, I went to Taiwan, where my life as a teacher, professor write, and hardened Asian traveler would be begun to take me to where I am today, Kim Sing is always with me, he is in my heart but I don’t dare think of him as I will only start crying.

After I had been reaching university in Taiwan I went back to see my mother as I did every year during long college holidays, she asked me what I had written to her nothing I said, I have writer’s block, I cannot write anything, I am totally blocked. nonsense she said just sit down and write, when you are finished, send it to me, I would like to see it.

’OK I said; when I got back to Taiwan I did as she said I sat down started to write, the words flowed out, the novel wrote itself off like it was an egg sitting in a follicle for a thousand years, waiting to be hatched, in two weeks LOSING PLUM BLOSSOM was written, I sent it back to my mom to read, she wrote back ’and said, now sit down and write another one, from that time forward 1991, I have written at least one book every year and got a lot more up my sleeve before I am finished.