After overcoming several challenges, a woman from Madagascar has finally met with her relatives in Taiwan, realizing her father’s dream of many years.
Her father, who is a member of the Amis community, which is concentrated in Taitung County, went to Madagascar in his 30s — about 40 years ago — with a Taiwanese mission to help with the development of agriculture in that country.
After he arrived, he married a local woman, according to Taitung police, who helped the woman to find her relatives.
Over the past few years, the man, surnamed Yang (陽), began to miss his family in Taiwan, but his poor health meant he was unable to make the long flight back, so he asked his wife, Razafzna, and daughter, Yang Yuh-jen, to go instead.
Carrying a letter from her father to his family members in Taiwan, the daughter arrived with her mother earlier this month, and they traveled to Taitung County to look for their relatives, police said on Tuesday.
They said they faced many challenges, because they were unfamiliar with the county and do not speak Mandarin.
They said they later decided to turn to police in the county’s Malan Village for help.
The police went through their records and found some residents surnamed Yang, who also had a relative who went to East Africa about four decades ago.
Seeing the letter and the genealogy presented by the younger Yang, a Taiwanese woman identified the man who wrote the letter as her elder brother.
The daughter was happy to have realized her father’s dream, police said.
After the man got married, he had returned to Taiwan only once, but did not get to meet any family members, because they had moved away from the area, police quoted the women as saying.
The two women have returned to Madagascar.
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) yesterday said it had deployed patrol vessels to expel a China Coast Guard ship and a Chinese fishing boat near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙群島) in the South China Sea. The China Coast Guard vessel was 28 nautical miles (52km) northeast of Pratas at 6:15am on Thursday, approaching the island’s restricted waters, which extend 24 nautical miles from its shoreline, the CGA’s Dongsha-Nansha Branch said in a statement. The Tainan, a 2,000-tonne cutter, was deployed by the CGA to shadow the Chinese ship, which left the area at 2:39pm on Friday, the statement said. At 6:31pm on Friday,
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) third aircraft carrier, the Fujian, would pose a steep challenge to Taiwan’s ability to defend itself against a full-scale invasion, a defense expert said yesterday. Institute of National Defense and Security Research analyst Chieh Chung (揭仲) made the comment hours after the PLAN confirmed the carrier recently passed through the Taiwan Strait to conduct “scientific research tests and training missions” in the South China Sea. China has two carriers in operation — the Liaoning and the Shandong — with the Fujian undergoing sea trials. Although the PLAN needs time to train the Fujian’s air wing and
The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) put Taiwan in danger, Ma Ying-jeou Foundation director Hsiao Hsu-tsen (蕭旭岑) said yesterday, hours after the de facto US embassy said that Beijing had misinterpreted World War II-era documents to isolate Taiwan. The AIT’s comments harmed the Republic of China’s (ROC) national interests and contradicted a part of the “six assurances” stipulating that the US would not change its official position on Taiwan’s sovereignty, Hsiao said. The “six assurances,” which were given by then-US president Ronald Reagan to Taiwan in 1982, say that Washington would not set a date for ending arm sales to Taiwan, consult
A Taiwanese academic yesterday said that Chinese Ambassador to Denmark Wang Xuefeng (王雪峰) disrespected Denmark and Japan when he earlier this year allegedly asked Japan’s embassy to make Taiwan’s representatives leave an event in Copenhagen. The Danish-language Berlingske on Sunday reported the incident in an article with the headline “The emperor’s birthday ended in drama in Copenhagen: More conflict may be on the way between Denmark and China.” It said that on Feb. 26, the Japanese embassy in Denmark held an event for Japanese Emperor Naruhito’s birthday, with about 200 guests in attendance, including representatives from Taiwan. After addressing the Japanese hosts, Wang
RSS