It's been 10 years this month since 45-year-old Englishman Mark Williams first learned of his Taiwanese roots, but he's still piecing together the strange tale of his childhood: how he was uprooted from his Taipei home and traveled to Hong Kong and New York dressed as a girl before being abandoned at 6 years old in England by his businessman father and a woman from Shanghai named In Chen (
When he was abandoned, he had no papers, could not speak English and missed his father and family. He did not understand why he had been dumped in a strange land. Though cared for by nuns at the orphanage, he pined for his father Cheng Shui-jr (
"Who am I? Where am I from? Who brought me here? And why? How did I get here? And, more importantly, where is my father and family?" Williams writes in a draft of his yet-unpublished book, The Accidental Englishman.
PHOTO: JULES QUARTLY, TAIPEI TIMES
Williams would find out nearly 30 years later that his father died mysteriously on his return to Taipei. His father is also rumored to have made a fortune in the opium trade, though Williams said he did not believe the rumors to be true.
He would also learned that the mysterious In was former US President Lyndon Johnson's translator and possibly the mother of the US president's illegitimate child.
Williams was eventually adopted by a British woman and became one of six adopted children who grew up mainly in London and in Spain.
He adapted to circumstances, learned English and did well at school, graduating in computer science and earning a master's degree in business administration before becoming a banker, marrying and having a son.
An uncomplicated life in finance seemed to beckon, but the pain and mystery of his abandonment resurfaced and Williams had an "itch that will never go away" to discover his roots.
The only clues to his past, however, were his faded memories and a certificate of identity issued by the UK immigration department giving his family name as Cheng and his given name as Tong-tong. His place and date of birth were Formosa, April 27, 1960.
It wasn't much to go on, but he took a banking job in Hong Kong and began his journey of self-discovery.
"I was once asked why I wanted to find my family. To me it was a curious question. Why do men climb mountains and sail the seas? There is no answer. But, if one loses one's family, one is obligated to find them," he writes in his manuscript.
A local TV company picked up his story through an international adoption agency, and Williams became a minor celebrity as families rushed to reclaim him as their long-lost son.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF MARK WILLIAMS
Eventually his real mother Huang Yu-ying (
That was 10 years ago, and since being reunited with his mother and four sisters he has found out that his father had another family and was a merchant seaman and trader. He lost an arm -- allegedly in a taxi accident -- and smuggled the young Williams to Hong Kong, since young men were not allowed to leave the island during Chiang Kai-shek's rule.
His family, however, could not help him find out much about what happened after that, and he has had to piece together the facts from photos his biological mother kept, small scraps of information and letters from the mysterious In to his mother.
"It's really difficult to find out about my father. My family doesn't know or doesn't want to say. It's kind of secretive almost," he said.
He now believes that his father met Lyndon Johnson's translator when Johnson visited Taiwan in the early 1960s as US vice president. Williams's father later met up with In in Hong Kong and dressed Williams as a girl to smuggle him into the US using In's passport.
In already had a child and then had another with Johnson, Williams thinks. This is why he was sent abroad to England, where In's daughter was placed with the same orphanage that Williams was sent to.
He believes this was done surreptitiously to avoid scandal.
"You look at my half-sister and she looks Eurasian -- everyone says so."
He has tried to contact In but without success. All he knows is that she lived on Fifth Avenue in New York until recently and was, for a while, a crime-fiction writer and was slightly reclusive.
His family cannot help him much more, and the trail is going cold.
On the way to unraveling the mystery of his childhood, Williams has uncovered more secrets and these are now the focus of his book.
"It's a mystery that only In can reveal," Williams said, but it should make for an even more interesting book.
email: mark@accidentalenglishman.com
http://www.accidentalenglishman.com
The breakwater stretches out to sea from the sprawling Kaohsiung port in southern Taiwan. Normally, it’s crowded with massive tankers ferrying liquefied natural gas from Qatar to be stored in the bulbous white tanks that dot the shoreline. These are not normal times, though, and not a single shipment from Qatar has docked at the Yongan terminal since early March after the Strait of Hormuz was shuttered. The suspension has provided a realistic preview of a potential Chinese blockade, a move that would throttle an economy anchored by the world’s most advanced and power-hungry semiconductor industry. It is a stark reminder of
May 11 to May 17 Traversing the southern slopes of the Yushan Range in 1931, Japanese naturalist Tadao Kano knew he was approaching the last swath of Taiwan still beyond colonial control. The “vast, unknown territory,” protected by the “fierce” Bunun headman Dahu Ali, was “filled with an utterly endless jungle that choked the mountains and valleys,” Kano wrote. He noted how the group had “refused to submit to the measures of our authorities and entrenched themselves deep in these mountains … living a free existence spent chasing deer in the morning and seeking serow in the evening,” even describing them as
The last couple of weeks spectators in Taiwan and abroad have been treated to a remarkable display of infighting in the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) over the supplementary defense budget. The party has split into two camps, one supporting an NT$800 billion special defense budget and one supporting an NT$380 billion budget with additional funding contingent on receiving letters of acceptance (LOA) from the US. Recent media reports have said that the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) is leaning toward the latter position. President William Lai (賴清德) has proposed NT$1.25 trillion for purchases of US arms and for development of domestic weapons
As a different column was being written, the big news dropped that Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) announced that negotiations within his caucus, with legislative speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT, party Chair Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chair Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) had produced a compromise special military budget proposal. On Thursday morning, prior to meeting with Cheng over a lunch of beef noodles, Lu reiterated her support for a budget of NT$800 or NT$900 billion — but refused to comment after the meeting. Right after Fu’s
RSS