Between two worlds

Chang Bei-hai (張北海) took out his People's Republic of China passport to show to everyone at his farewell party. For the old leftist, the slim, red book represents how time and history have played with his drifting identities and life experiences.

In Taiwan as a guest of the China Times, Chang was entertaining one more group of friends before returning to New York City. He sat drinking whisky with Wuer Kaixi (吾爾開希), the former Tiananmen Square student leader who now lives in Taiwan. Wuer had just shown Chang his Taiwanese ID card. "I am a new New Taiwanese," he said, jokingly. Chang smiled. Tucked into his memory was the moment when Wuer began his new life, when Chang and other Chinese Americans picked him up at JFK airport after they fled China and the Tiananmen massacre.

Chang knows what it is like to live as an exile. He has done it much of his life.

Born in Beijing, he moved to Taiwan during his teens with the retreating KMT army. He immigrated to New York City in 1962, and was soon blacklisted by the KMT as a "leftist" troublemaker. Ironically, he was recently invited back to Taiwan by the China Times as an "Outstanding Mainland Artist", a title he thinks is "very amusing."

During his visit here, the 63-year-old writer caught up with old friends and spun tales about his paradoxical life, which brought him from China to Taiwan to the halls of the UN as a translator for the Chinese government. It was a journey that ultimately left him loved by neither country.

Recruited by the UN

In 1973, the UN held a first-ever worldwide recruitment for Chinese language translators, in preparation for switching recognition from Taiwan to China. The recruitment attracted thousands of overseas Chinese who agreed with the socialist ideals of China. Chang was one of the 30 applicants hired and he was joined by renowned Chinese authors Liu Ta-jen (劉大任), Chen Wen-hua and Yin Hui-min, who were all educated in Taiwan. Each had their passport switched to China.

Chang says he was never a political person, which can be proved by his 30 years of writings. He has been a columnist for the Seventies, a magazine of social change. Called Letters from America, the column covered topics from rock `n' roll and Levis jeans to subway anecdotes. The Seventies later became the Eighties and the Nineties, and Chang has moved along with it. A six-book collection gathers the columns written during those years, which were mainly about New York's architecture and urban planning, American culture and anecdotes.

The titles were often abstract, such as American Six Stories, In New York, American Post, America, America, Under the Skyline and Fax from New York, but Chang was described as "the best choice to write about the 60s and its related rock `n' roll" by critic and author Chan Hung-chih (詹宏志), now president of the Internet group PC Home.

When Chang joined the UN, he did so harboring hope for a strong and fair communist China

But his opportunity sprung forth from the tumultuous Cultural Revolution, when a whole generation of Chinese abandoned the learning of English. His naivete seemed to shield him from the true reasons he was needed, which would have undermined his hopes for China.

Back to China

Chang had his leftist illusions shattered in 1974, one year after he started working at the UN. "Twenty six years after I left Beijing, I went back to the motherland of my socialist dreams and I realized everything I saw there was phony," Chang said, his voice raised.