Taiwan

Towards the end of the summer holiday, Vivian and I brought Euterpe to Taiwan for a trip.

It was the first time my daughter takes a flight, and, as expected, she was overjoyed. Both my wife and I had been to Taipei for several times. Nonetheless we joined a tour group to save the trouble of planning. The group was actually quite small: There were four families and a total of 14 persons - including five-and-a-half children. (One of the girls was close to sixteen. I consider her half a child.)

You may ask: Why do we bright Euterpe to start with Taiwan? For sure there are a handful of pragmatic reasons. But, above all, I have special personal interest in this lovely island. To me, it has become an experiment of nature and an insoluble puzzle of history: If you agree it has a certain degree of success (and, to me, very much indeed), is it the result of retaining good old Chinese tradition, the legacy of being ruled by Japanese by 50 years, or the adoption of modern party politics?