two entries in a row from my daily xanga update, from two people who both kinda grew up in taiwan:

matcheaven:

this entry is dedicated to madame Chiang Kai-shek, who pased away yesterday at age 106.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, you were always a example of what a chinese woman is like. Strong but gentle.

joytofu:

Chiang Soong Mei-Ling dies in NYC.

my dad's been talking about that all day. he does not like her. her husband, chiang-kai-shek, was a notorious dictator. my dad still has bad memories from that time when the Chaings ruled taiwan.

no brainwashing going on in taiwan it seems. i'm not sure what to make of madam chiang; the soong family seemed to be one of the most influential chinese families of this century, early examples of global beneficient chinese making their mark on the world. from what i remember, charlie soong, the father, was a rich plantation owner who lived in hawaii, and his kids all went to yale. one of his daughters married sun yat-sen, one (obviously) married chiang kai-shek, and one of his sons became in charge of the chinese economy under the guomingtang government and made some good things happen. the family was said to be all chrstian too; supposedly charlie soong wouldn't let his chiang kai-shek marry his daughter meiling unless he became a professing chrstian (which happened, again supposedly).

anyways, i don't know enough details to form an opinion. from talking to people in taiwan last year, they seem to have a love-hate relationship with chiang kai-shek, which seems fitting.

today is both kevin and karen's birthday and yesterday we threw a party for both of them. one of the teachers at my school brought a 1 month old puppy as a present to kevin, who was stunned into shocked silence pretty much the whole night. he decided that we shouldn't keep the dog, since there might be lingering clouds of distemper in our apartment from jiujiu and it wouldn't be healthy for the puppy, as well as simply not feeling up for keeping it.

overall, the routine of things here have started to move from comfortable to uh, routine i guess. just that kind of slugging it out feeling...hopefully i'm just pmsing and the feeling'll go away soon.