by Joseph Bosco
"It's so close!" the Xiada post-graduate student said excitedly, gaily, of the little island inhabited only by men with guns and binoculars. She was right; it had taken less than 45 minutes to chug slowly out of Lundu Harbor and then traverse some 3 kilometers to Little Jinmen, the closest territory to the mainland still under Taiwanese control. And as tour boat 007 made two slow passes across its southwestern shoreline it all seemed close enough to touch: The steel and reinforced concrete defenses that bristled from every inch of the rocks, cliffs and narrow beaches of this still living relic-shrine, perhaps-to geopolitical irrationality.
"Wave hello to the soldiers," the tour guide said over the loudspeaker.
"There is one!" Someone yelled, as if spotting a celebrity.
"Where?" Someone else cried out. Soon it was a chorus: "There!" "Over there!" "I see them!" "There are two of them!" "Yes!" "They're all over!"
"The soldiers—they're watching us watch them," with binoculars to my eyes, I quietly said to Yang Jie, my student and invaluable assistant from the English Department of Xiamen University. She nodded silently, taking it all in-the surrealism of the ominous island set in the middle of a peaceful bay, the dead-serious KMT soldiers, but especially our disparate boat companions and their reactions to it all.
For all of them it was just a fun boat ride, a festive Sunday afternoon excursion to a place of anachronistic curiosity provided by Mr. Lin Yong Qing, the proprietor of the Wonderful English Chatting Pub in Xiamen. This activity was the first of many bilingual, bicultural events he has planned to promote good will between his patrons.
"It's too close," the post-graduate student said.
"Close? Yes, but also so very, very far," I said quietly into the wind. How could I explain that for me it was a trip that had begun almost 50 years ago and spanned many thousands of miles. How could I explain that though I had never been there before, it had changed my life—that in the course of that short boat ride my life had come full cycle?
How could she understand that what happened there almost fifty years ago could have so affected a middle-aged Loawai from Ocean Springs, Mississippi, USA? Jie knew, of course, which was why she was also carefully watching me along with her keen observations of the enveloping spectacle.
I would have had to explain that the words I had whispered into the wind were words to my long dead father, who at that moment was once again at my side—and only a fool would try to explain such a thing to a stranger.
Frank A. Bosco, my father, was a writer, a scientist, a thinker, but above all, a teacher. Fifty years ago, when a little boy, on a black and white television set, the first one in the neighborhood, watched the flickering images of real bombs and real artillery shells exploding on islands then known as Quemoy, Amoy, Matsu, and wanted to know why, his father cared enough to tell the truth, starting a process that continued until he passed from this world some twenty years later.
He explained the truth, not the slogans popular with many men in the United States government he worked for. It was the same kind of truth that often got him into trouble, and occasioned more than a few concerns for the well-being of our family. He particularly explained why the most populous nation on Earth, the oldest, continuously governed and civilized nation in the history of nations, should not only be allowed to join the UN, but also to determine its own fate free of interference.
And every night during those months in 1954-55, and again in 1958-59, when the events of Quemoy and Amoy led the nightly TV newscasts in America with dire predictions of World War III, even of nuclear holocaust, he truthfully answered more questions, and suggested where together we could find answers to questions he could not answer: Books, first from his library, and when those were consumed, every public library within range of a curious, growing mind.
That was the beginning of a life-long dedication to objective, intellectual curiosity, fairness, and truth-even as perpetually elusive as it will always be. It was also the beginning of my life-long love for the People's Republic of China and the Chinese people. It is why I am now teaching at Xiada, and not Fudan, or Zhejiang University, or Tsinghua, or any of the other great schools in China that offered me and my wife a position. I came here, to Xiamen, old Amoy, where for me it really all began.
"Wave goodbye," the tour guide, speaking of the Taiwanese soldiers, said over the loudspeaker as 007 revved its engines and turned towards Xiamen.
"It's so close, I don't understand why we don't just take it back," the Xiada post-graduate student said rather blandly considering the complex enormity of what she was suggesting.
Pierre, a young man from France working here in Xiamen because of the scarcity of good jobs back in his country, and Kent, a young man from California here teaching oral English, had already lost any interest they might have had for the opportunity to see the "Front Lines" of the Taiwan issue—happily for all of us they were talking about more important things: the economy, dating, the value of learning about life in another country, another culture, than their own.
Joseph Bosco is an author and journalist who is currently a Visiting Professor of Literature at Xiamen University, P.R. China.