When I got off the plane in Taipei on my way to Hong Kong, I did not expect to see anyone I knew. I had asked the Chus not to meet me, knowing they were busy just then. But it ossible that they would get somebody else to e in their stead, so I was not surprised when an effit-looking man i western clothes approached me. "You are Mrs. Richard Nixon?" He said in English.
I had seen many photographs of the blonde Mrs. Nixon and never imagined I resembled her. Besides, he should be able to tell a fellow ese even behind her dark glasses. But with a womans inability to disbelieve a pliment altogether, no matter how flagrantly untrue, I remembered that she was thin, which I undoubtedly was. Then there was those glasses. "No, I am sorry," I said, and he walked away to search among the other passengers.
It struck me as a little odd that Mrs. Nixon should e to Formosa, even if everybody is visiting the Orient just now. Anyhow there must have been some mix-up, as there was only this one embassy employee to greet her.
"Did you know Mrs. Nixon is ing today?" I asked my friends Mr. And Mrs. Chu, who had turned up after all.
"No, we havent heard," Mr. Chu said. I told them about the man who mistook me for her and what a joke that was. "Um," he said unsmiling. Then he said somewhat embarrassedly, "Theres a man who is always hanging around the airport to meet Ameri dignitaries. Hes not quite sane."
I laughed, the under Formosas huge wave of wistful yearning for the outside world, particularly America, its only friend and therefore in some ways a foe.
"How does it feel to be back?" Mr. Chu asked. Although I had never been there before, they were going along with the official assumption that Formosa is a, the mother try of all ese. I looked around the crowded airport and it really was a, not the strange one I left ten years ago uhe unists but the one I knew best and thought had vanished forever. The buzz of Mandarin voices also made it different from Hong Kong. A feeling of ological fusion came over me.
"It feels like dreaming." And taking in all the familiar faces speaking the tones of homeland, I exclaimed, "But its not possible!" Mr. Chu smiled ruefully as if I had said, "But yhosts."
Mrs. Chu told me as we left the airport, "This is an ugly city, but the minute you get out of town it is beautiful."
They lodged me in a mountain inn. I got the Generals Suite, where the generals stay when they e uphill to report to the Generalissimo, who lives a few steps away across the road. The suite was reached through a series of deserted little courtyards, with its own rock garden and lotus pond. In the silehere was just the sound of the evening drizzle on the banana palm and ihroom a tap of sulphur water stantly running out of a stone lion mouth and splashing over the rim of the t tank. There were rattan furniture oami fl and a wardrobe and bed with stained sheets. I told myself not to be fastidious. But there were bedbugs. Finally I had to get up near dawn to sleep on the ledge of the honor recess, where in Japanese living rooms the best vase and picture scroll are displayed. The maid was frightened when she e in the m and could not find me.
It lain that the generals had feminine panionship while spending the night awaiting audieh the Generalissimo. I wo the ease of pr girls almost door to that Christian and fu founder of the New Life Movement. Surely it was unseemly with"Heavens tenanly a foot away,