Sabbatical Year in Taiwan

The Tu family of five left State College, PA for Taiwan in late June, 1986. On the way over, they made a stop in the San Francisco Bay area to visit friends and to see the birthplaces of Ben and Leslie. It was Leslie and Kimberly’s first flight, and, at age 9, Ben’s second since, at just over 2 months, Yen-Sheng had boarded a Taipei-bound plane with him to meet relatives from both sides of the family. Now, all three children were making the journey that would take them halfway around the world to where their parents had grown up.

We arrived in Taipei on July 2 and stayed downtown at the San Polo Hotel (now San Want Hotel) for two nights before moving into a new apartment across the street from the research institute at Academia Sinica in Nang-Gang, Taipei. Our apartment was on the third floor with windows overlooking the exercise field of Hu-Shih Elementary, where the kids were enrolled in grade school: Ben in the 4th grade, Leslie in 2nd, and Kimberly in 1st. Their home was a three-minute walk from the front entrance of the school. Yen-Sheng oversaw the timely completion of the children’s homework assignments not only from Hu-Shih but also from Radio Park Elementary School, back in State College. The children excelled in their respective classes at Hu-Shih Elementary School and gradually adjusted to a new culture and surroundings.

Overall, their year abroad was a great experience for all members of the family. It laid the foundation for understanding Chinese language in the Tu children. We all spent quality time with both sets of grandparents and especially Great Grandma Tu who, at age 95, was delighted to see the great-grandkids and communicate with them. She would pass away after an accidental fall which broke her leg in 1988.

Both Yen-Sheng and Chen-Pei made many new friends and re-connected with old classmates from every stage of their schooling and young lives in Taiwan. It was also a rare, exciting professional opportunity for Chen-Pei. Under the leadership of Professor James C. Wang from Harvard University, he joined a group of colleagues and friends on a mission to establish a first-rate research institute in molecular biology at Academia Sinica. Professor Wang was a brilliant scientist, a wise administrator, and an insightful leader. As a result of his leadership and the support of many others, the Institute of Molecular Biology in Academia Sinica is today well established on the world map of prominent research institutions. Ben, who was 9 years old when he first met Professor Wang in 1986, later became an undergraduate research student in Professor Wang’s Lab at Harvard in the summer of 1996.