Linda Arrigo, I think, was invited for her active involvement with Xindian cemetery among her other interests. Liu Family owns the largest private cemetery in northern Taiwan and Dr Liu currently accommodated some 100 abandoned tombstones until they are found a home.  Masami Kondo   近藤正己 leading the panel discussion on Dapinglin Shisizhang ( 十四張   ) and Liu family land reclamation and management process and influence. Sun Ta-chuan  孫大川 (Also known as  Paelabang Danapan  in the  Puyuma language) leading panelist of Taiwan-Old-Family presentations.  'Taiwan-Old-Family' refers to a private group I was invited to join in 2018. Members are descendants whose ancestors contributions to Taiwan, during Qing and Japanese rule, are documented in official written literature. A two-days conference on Dapinglin Liu Family  大坪林 劉氏家族   was held at Academia Sinica as the result of a pioneering collaboration between Old Family and leading academic institu...

Taihoku Higher School class magazine hand-drawn cover -  on the eve of World War II.  George H. Kerr taught in Taihoku Higher School in 1938-1940. Lee who taught in Yanping and Lim who studied in Yanping  several decades apart.   (Source Freddy Lim Facebook Page.) Speaking in fluent Japanese in 1994 to Ryōtarō Shiba ( 司馬遼太 郎 ) , a Japanese writer best known for his novel about historical event in Japan , President Lee Teng-hui ( 李登輝 ) said, “I was Japanese until I turned 22.” When Lee was 22, Tokyo’s surrender brought an end to World War II, and also to Japan’s fifty-year colonial rule over Taiwan. Lee’s passing on July 30, 2020 marks a closure for Taiwanese people's memories of Japanese rule. Lee took his Japanese name Iwasato Masao ( 岩里政男 ) in 1940, the year Japanese government announced a name-change ‘Japanization’ policy to eradicate identity of their colonial subjects. It was Lee’s father, however, who first brought the Japanese surname Iwasato into his fami...

The first time I went to Dr Liu's 'Taiwan Roots' office in Xindian -  New Taipei some three years ago, these mobile clinics caught my attention.  I later found out the story of Taiwan Root 台灣路竹會 began with remote (by the standard 25 years ago) indigenous villages in the mountains. What prompted me to write this post is very simple - My plan to join a couple of more voluntary missions with Taiwan Root   during 2020 has officially and decisively been cancelled due to pandemic covid19. And an opportunity does not seem likely until well into 2021 and who knows ...  I therefore thought I ought to keep notes of the special experiences I had, in an organised manner for my own records at the least, and not attempting to bank on an unforeseeable 'next'. T aiwan Root 台灣路竹會  (since 1995)   http://www.taiwanroot.org 路竹 in Chinese means 'road bamboo', Dr Liu explained in ‘Readers' Digest' of 1999 January issue "Simply because during mountain visits of indig...