The Importance Of Travel In Taiwan

In the 50s, travel considered as a luxury thing for most of the families in Taiwan. People hardly would go out of town and stayed in a hotel. Most of the time, during holidays we took a short trip by city bus to the urban area parks for the same day outing. The only private transportations were bicycles. When I was 15, I always dreamed I could take a trip outside the city Taipei where we lived in. Being the top student at the school, I was rewarded by my parents for a real travel to go to the Sun Moon Lake in the summer of 1954. It was the top tourist attraction in Taiwan and about 250 miles from Taipei. But, I have to go with an escort, Uncle Chen who was a fellow officer of my father to accompany me for the whole trip. Interestingly, this was also his very first pleasure trip. My father asked Uncle Chen to estimate a budget. At that time, people still not used to spend money for pleasure trips. So he made a tight budget to please my parents even though financially we had no problem to cover the trip. He would be the one to manage the money and most importantly kept an eye on me for safety. I was pleased with the arrangement and to me, the trip was sure a hard to believe dream come true. To save money, we took the regular slow train which has the lowest fare from Taipei to Taizhong. It stopped at every station and