A father’s deathbed wish has been putting his son on a plane from the US to Taiwan every month over the past decade to fulfill his father’s filial duty to his mother.
Several years after setting down in Los Angeles and becoming the father of two children and the chief financial officer of a local corporation, Tzu Chi Academy principal Tonny Hsu (許鴻裕) flew across the Pacific Ocean in June 2002 to spend time with his terminally ill father, who had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
Hsu planned to keep his father company in his last days, but his father fell into a coma after choking on phlegm one night.
Photo: Huang Li-hsiang, Taipei Times
However, an unexpected turn of events occurred when Hsu was whispering in his father’s ear to see if he would miraculously respond.
“I started by saying that I would be the pillar of the family, and there was no response, not even a twitch of his eyelid. Then I said I would take care of grandma and would come home every year, and yet still no response,” Hsu said.
“But when I said I would come to see grandma once a month, my father’s heart rate surged to 90 beats per minute,” Hsu said.
Hsu’s father passed away shortly afterward and Hsu believed that was his way of expressing his final wish.
Although his father’s death-bed wish was not conveyed to him through words, but through a heart rate monitor, Hsu still decided to honor the wish and care for his grandmother, who was 98 years old at the time. Since August 2002, Hsu has been flying back to Taiwan every month, staying for about 10 days each trip, during which he takes his grandmother to the doctor, chats with her or simply sits next to her while she falls asleep.
“Every time I come back to Taiwan, I can see a look of contentment and joy on my grandmother’s face, even though she keeps nagging me over making the trip regardless of my packed business schedule,” Hsu said.
Hsu said he hardly needed to adapt to the time difference between Taiwan and the US because he can deal with business affairs via e-mail during his visits between 2am and 6am in Taiwan, which is between 8am and 12pm US time.
“Sometimes, I only take a brief morning nap before spending time with my grandmother,” Hsu added.
Over the course of the past 11 years, Hsu has flown about 2.7 million kilometers.
To help pay for his long-distance travels, Hsu had to sell two properties after his father’s death and divide the money from the sales into two parts, one for the daily expenses of his mother and grandmother and one for his travel.
Hsu’s filial actions became known to China Airlines, which pledged to reserve a seat for him whenever he decided to leave for Taiwan, with some flight attendants sometimes preparing souvenirs for Hsu’s grandmother.
Hsu’s story also touched many students in New Taipei City’s (新北市) Yong Ping High School, some of whom even volunteer to keep Hsu’s grandmother company when he is not around.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods