It was his reading of the Book of Job in the Bible that gave him the strength to deal with the grief of losing his only son, but the memory still makes him weep in his heart, former president Lee Teng-hui (
"Keeping the sorrow bottled up in your heart does not make you stronger," Lee said.
"It is important to put grief behind you and go out into the world to help others. I have no complaint against God for what happened, but since I was placed on this earth, I have a duty to carry on with his life," Lee added.
Lee talked about love, life, personal loss and his life's mission in the TVBS program True Feelings (
In this unusual insight into the private feelings of the former president, Lee spoke about dealing with the pain of losing his son to cancer, his love for his wife, his belief in serving his country and his indifference to how he will be regarded by future generations.
The loss of his son Lee Hsien-wen (
On the program, Lee also recalled the ways in which he toughened himself as a young man, volunteering for service in the infantry so that he would be on the front line of any conflict and to conquer his fear and confusion in the face of death.
He said only if leaders have experienced hardship will they understand the hardships of ordinary people.
When the interview turned to his love life, Lee said he had only ever been in love once, and that was with his wife.
He said that because of the conservatism of the times, it was not until after he had been engaged to Tseng Wen-hui (
"A relationship doesn't really need that much romance," he said.
While romance might not be a priority, Lee said he is partial to molding others, and said that Tseng sometimes got annoyed with his efforts to mold her to his own design.
Lee said that the qualities he most appreciated in his wife were her dependable and cautious nature, which did not change even after he became president.
As a young man, Lee had considered becoming a minister of the church and a painter, but finally decided to study agricultural economics because he felt it was a subject that would enable him to do the most good for Taiwan. Lee said that becoming president was an accident of history.
As for what he wanted to be remembered for, Lee said he hadn't really thought about the question.
"They should just forget it. It doesn't matter," he said.
Lee said his mission was simply to help make Taiwan a "normal" country and that he would continue to work toward the goals he had pursued as president.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater