The following are memories of Taiwan shared by the TASers who attended the Washington Metro Area 50th Celebration in Rockville, Maryland, on April 15, 2000.

One of the original TASers remembered the first school: All of the students (there were 9 then, in grades 1--6) were taught in one room located in the basement of a church.

School memories include:

Senior Island; Slave Day; Sadie Hawkins dance, Sweetheart Ball

Soccer at Morrison Academy in Taichung

Basketball games on Friday night-- in the rain--in a gym so small that in a fast break, the guard would run out into the tennis courts and get wet, after making a lay-up.

Basketball Games in Okinawa (Parents' concern for us flying on Chinese Air Force plane--the Chinese Communists didn't know that there were American kids on the plane)

Proms at the Grand Hotel

Green Lake after the Prom--who went skinny dipping and jumped off the bridge?

Sights and smells of Taiwan:

Man relieving himself at the side of the road

Mother nursing baby

Babies strapped to their mothers' backs

Men squatting in front of their homes, smoking cigarettes, and talking with neighbors

Little kids wearing pants with splits in the crouch

All the bicycles and pedicabs

Coolies in straw hats carrying buckets hanging from poles extended across their shoulders

Huge pigs being carted to market in bicycle-drawn wagons

Chinese buses, tipping to one side, filled with passengers, some carrying live chickens

Sulfur smell at night

Honey buckets

Chinese operas at the Big Tree in Tien Mou

Being "fire-crackered" when you moved in to your new home

Officers' Club:Those balmy spring/summer evenings when Walter, Laidlaw, and a bunch of others of us would watch the movie at the O' Club pool, bribing the waiter to bring us 25-cent San Miguel--and the first guy who had to pee paid for all!

Snack bar and swimming pool were the unofficial teen club

French fries loaded with ketchup, dancing to the jukebox in the snack bar

Japanese rock singers imitating Elvis and other U.S. rock 'n roll performers

DEBS sorority:

Hell night

Taking orphans to the zoo (located on the river across from the Grand Hotel)

Volunteering as nurses aides at the Seventh Day Adventist Hospital

Pool, bridge, and dancing at the teen clubs in Tien Mou and Taipei

Crowding into the little Fiat taxicabs

Green tea and hot towels served on the train to Taichung

Hitch-hiking from Tien Mou to Taipei

Pedicab races and rides in the rain with the covers down and the traffic noises all around; haggling over price and bargaining with American cigarettes

Chinese movie theaters:

Sitting in the balcony to escape having debris fall on your heads

Subtitles Chinese National Anthem with film showing the military forces--ships, planes, and soldiers--and propaganda about taking back the mainland

Discovering when I returned to the States that the version of Rio Bravo that played in Taiwan had been edited

Buying Chinese records in "Haggle Alley" and trying to de-code the song titles in "phonetic" English

Learning to use chopsticks by trying to pick up peanuts

Amahs and fond memories of those who became part of the family:

Ginny Bristow Meyer '65 remembered: "While in Taiwan, our Amah and her husband (our cook) had a baby . . . he lived with us for two years and when we left for the States, it was like leaving my little brother behind."

Typhoons:

Walking through flooded yards and roads after a typhoon (we must have been crazy!)

A flooded house due to Typhoon Billie in July 1959 . . . the rattan rug floating on the rising water . . . the beds and furniture being raised up on big potato chip cans to prevent their being soaked

The mud slide and boulder which hit the back of our house in New Hillside Village in Tien Mou

Hiking though rice paddies (and slipping in).

Benjo ditches:

Bob Suessmuth's headlong dive into benjo ditch

This reunion dinner on April 15, 2000, has been a wonderful occasion. Seeing all the old gang was such fun. Bobby Sun came around to our table and said he was going to stir up some "sh--." So, I decided to do a "one-up-man-ship." In my freshman year to TAS, I was coming home from a field trip with the class. The girls all decided they had to go, so the bus stopped near a rice paddy. We all scattered to do our thing, in the pitch dark, I was the one who fell into a cess-pond in the field. I was pulled out, and no one wanted to sit next to me on the bus all the way back to Taipei. At the MAAG compound, I was disinfected in the infirmary and sent home. To this day, it is one of my most "unmemorable" memories. So Bobby, the next time you want to stir up some --, talk to me, I was up to my arm pits in it. We certainly are an unusual group of people, and I hope we will always stay in touch. Fond regards to all. Karin Jacob, Class of "59.

Perhaps Karin's comment that we were an unusual group of people is an under-statement. In addition to the good, fun memories of new and immediate friendships in an interesting, somewhat primitive, foreign land, there are also memories that reflect the serious side of our experience:

Being told not to do anything which would reflect badly on your father's record and walls have ears.

Tamsui beach and watching the shelling of Quemoy and Matsu.

Chinese army guards patrolling beach and dunes.

Sneaking our Chinese TAS friends past the guards by hiding them under beach bags and towel in the back of the bus (challenging fun for us, but what would the consequences have been if we we'd been caught?).

Hearing the gunfire at the nearby military firing range.

May 1957--being confined to house and school when we went into enforced martial law . . . the Chinese military arrived by the truckload to guard the housing compound, scaring the amah who thought for sure that the Communists were coming (again).

Disappearance of the Blue Goose (a PBY) over the Taiwan Straits, with two U.S. military officers and two Chinese military officers on board. They were on a payroll flight to the offshore islands (Kinmen and Matsu).

The book, A Pail of Oysters by Vern Snider being passed around the foreign community in a Catcher in the Rye book jacket.

Listing to Radio Peking.

Bomb shelters installed in our yards.