On weekends, chauffeured cars would be lined down the block from the curb of our family home, rotating clusters of teenagers through our living room. Not once did my parents complain about the loss of their privacy or the cost of refreshments, they only asked to know the background and parentage of the visitors. As it turned out, my parents knew most of the parents; these teens were the second generation of the first generations of hardworking immigrant Fukienese Chinese who had ascended from rags to riches in banking, manufacturing or imports of foreign goods. Mother spent her hard-earned money on me buying bolts of fabric to take to the seamstress for flouncy petticoat dresses. We would thumb through magazines for a party dress pattern so that I would not look too shabby next to the elaborate outfits of the other girls who never wore the same dress twice to a party. But after the first heady months of parties, I decided that school work was more important and stopped taking phone calls on week nights and declined most parties except the most enticing. Instead, I chose to stay home, did homework, and worked on the school paper while listening to the popular radio stations that broadcast song dedications over the air. Some of my Filipina classmates became more attuned to how many dedications I racked up each night over how many of my grades were "A’s," or the journalistic quality of my school paper columns; these ‘qualifications’ lead to them socializing with me more at school. I was even invited to the birthday of a Filipina classmate which I found was not half as lavish as the Chinese social gatherings. Word transmitted quickly through the network of the 4 elite boys’ schools, and the next day I received calls from the Chinese boys gently chastising me for going to a Filipino party. Though the graceful Filipinos were even better dancers than the Chinese, and I came to appreciate their other qualities, I decided it would be poor judgment for me to cross that ethnic divide and never attended another Filipino party again.

By all appearances life was stable for me and my family in the Philippines. And then, in early 1956, Father, at work at the embassy, received an elegant, gilt-edged "Invitation to Invest in Freedomland" from a Filipino adventurer by the name of Tomas Cloma. Father's phenomenal memory and expert-level familiarity with geography alerted him that there could not be some other habitable island within the Spratly chain of islands and that “Freedomland” must in fact be Taiping Island (太平島), an ancient territory of China, which Cloma was trying to rename. Father fired off an urgent telegram to the home office for verification. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs replied immediately by telegram that the Nanjing Government records listed Taiping Island as the only habitable island within the Spratly Islands and under the sovereignty of China. Father perceived a significant ‘threat’ to China’s interests over the South China Seas which included Taiping Island in the chain of the Spratly Islands. A flurry of communications followed trying to resolve this issue between our government and the government of the Philippines.

In December 1955, Uncle Chow had been recalled from Manila to the Taipei home office and placed in the position of Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. Chen Chi-Mai, the new ROC ambassador to the Philippines, instructed Father to manage the Taiping Island matter. It was fortuitous that Uncle Chow’s important position enabled him and Father to prioritize this issue to Foreign Minister George Yeh (葉公超).  Minister Yeh was quick to elevate this matter through the chain of command up to President Chiang.

On Aug. 22, the ROC dispatched 7 ROC naval vessels to the Taiping Island.  As Father pointed out, any military movement by ROC during the tense Taiwan Straits Crisis with the Mainland, 1954-58, had to be supported by the US Pacific Command and approved by the U.S. administration of President Dwight Eisenhower. The superpower of the USA navy quietly shadowed the 7 ROC vessels to Taiping Island.

In May 1956, I had begun college at Santo Thomas University. At Santo Thomas, to my great relief, I was not required to take Tagalog anymore. Even though I was a Chinese and the only non-Filipina among 100 girls, I was elected class president. Over the following months, I developed close friendships with the Filipinas and coalesced a tight knit group of girl friends to have lunch with and chit chat. We had subdivided ourselves into groups of "brains," "babes" or "babies" meaning the smart ones, the pretty ones and those more helpless. We promised to help each other in an informal sorority of sisterhood and often gathered for coaching from the "brains" on school work or advice on beauty trends or boys from the "babes." 

On my first day at Santo Thomas, I hurried into the lavatory and encountered a smell and row of unfamiliar urinals. Taken aback for a moment, being used to a girls only campus in high school, I realized that I now shared a campus with guys and had inadvertently wandered into “the men's room.” On the shared but segregated university campus, we females were not to speak to the males even as we passed each other in the hallways though we could hear each other through the walls of our single-gender classrooms. On the occasion of necessary interaction with the male students, as president of my class, I was the spokesperson and connection to the male freshmen class. My school and social life were for me, uncommonly harmonious. At Santo Thomas University, I finally felt at ease in both the Chinese and Filipino communities.

In the summer of 1956 when Father was recalled to the home office in Taipei, Father was gratified that in his last months of service in the Philippines, he had been able to help fulfill one last contribution to his country with the restoration of Taiping Island to the ROC. I loathed though leaving my newly established comfort zone. Unlike the previous peripatetic 12 years of hopping across 7 cities in 4 countries, I had spent 5 continuous years in one city in one country enjoying uninterrupted, fulfilling high school years and coming of age to college. I very much wanted to remain, but my parents were unable to support me staying on for college and I was unwilling to be married off, as some of my classmates had upon high school graduation, so I reluctantly packed up my belongings with a heavy heart.

My parents were extravagantly feted at a series of farewell parties by grateful 華僑 who recognized the fulsome efforts of both father and mother. I was also given a series of "despedida" (‘farewell’) parties by my friends and the fraternal associations who had voted me their "Muse." The airport was jammed with sad well wishers for my parents and me.

During the previous summer, the foremost Filipino artist Anita Magsaysay-Ho, cousin of President Ramon Magsaysay, had given my parents an oil portrait she painted of me as a 16-year-old. I was dressed in a white chi pao旗袍 with a red shawl over my shoulder, looking confidently into the eyes of the painter. In October 1956, as we boarded the plane for Taipei, I clutched that portrait as closely to me as the gift of the doll to me from my parents’ admirers when we left Nagasaki. We were off to yet another unknown destination and destiny and I certainly did not feel as self assured as the young woman seemed in Auntie Magsaysay-Ho’s portrait.

Parents, Austin and Philip during Father’s  2nd tenure in Manila

as charge affairs  and minister, 1964.