Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

As the Dragon Boat Festival long weekend nears, there is a sense of uneasiness that there might be a travel frenzy that would exacerbate Taiwan’s COVID-19 outbreak.

From President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) plea: “If you love your hometown and your family, please stay put,” to the popular Internet post: “If you go home to worship your ancestors this year, you’ll be the one worshiped next year,” public figures and other Internet users have expended a great deal of effort persuading people not to travel during the holiday.

Twenty-one years ago, I telephoned former Presidential Office adviser Huang Tien-lin (黃天麟) to invite him to write an opinion piece for the Chinese-language Economic Daily News.

At the time, Huang had just retired as chairman of First Commercial Bank and I had just been hired by the newspaper. Huang later told me that the invitation marked the beginning of a new chapter in his life as a writer.

I met Huang in 1979, when he was a manager in the bank’s overseas department and I was a journalist at the Chinese-language United Daily News.