Tales of a Taiwanese Man Who Only Wanted To Come Back....

Well, here it is folks, I decided to finally update this long stagnant part of my page by putting up an e-mail that Tom sent me a while ago. The pictures have finally arrived, and I've started putting them on the page. They're on the bottom of the page. By the way, that's Tom up in the tree.

This photo was taken on the last weekend Tom spent in the US before he left for Taiwan.

Noriel,

Let's see here,

Things that I did when I was back in Taipei, Taiwan...

We got a new national holiday when I got back... It's called 2-28. It commemmorates the massacre of thousands of Taiwanese when Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek sent his 300,000 troops to Taiwan, after an almost losing battle against the Communist Chairman Mao Tse-tung. The Kuo-mingtang, the Nationalist Party of Taiwan was the controlling regime in China before the Communist takeover. We, KMT, were the revolutionaries that threw out the Dynasty(Ching). Under the guide of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, KMT gained much popularity, but after the death of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, and Chiang Kai-Shek's rule rise to power, KMT was 'run' over by Communism. (something I learned that I will research more on soon)

Riding around town, in my friends 125cc scooter, I began to realize that that the air was really polluted, *phew*. It's not just the carbon monoxide from the cars, but the dirty trash that doesn't get picked up. The roads are bumpy, it is overcrowded, and suppossedly it's been an improvement from previous years...

For Chinese New Year, it was fun...

We have a God of good wealth and prosperity... Well, they have a tradition where someone dresses up in Dynastic cloths, wear a mask of the God of wealth and walk into neighborhood stores and bows and prays until people give him hung-baos, or red pouches filled with cash. Someone like that came into LoneStar Bagels on the third day of celebration. I had never seen anything like that. The store manager told me to just ignore him. Some superstitious Chinese folks would then give him those hung-baos and be on his way. I told them that next year, I would invest in a costume and go around town getting wealthy off of the rich people. Haha

See next E-mail for more stories...
I'm going to make this installments until you get back... Maybe then you will try to make it back here soon...

Ciao, bello...

Thomas Kuo

Stolen Images From a Dream of the East

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Stay tuned for more stories of Tom's adventures and follies in Taiwan.