Yu Peng (于彭), the 101-year-old former ambassador to Honduras, last month received an outstanding diplomatic achievement award from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Yu, who lives in a retirement home in the Maryland suburbs, on Tuesday met with members of the Chinese-language media.
He was accompanied by his son, Yu Chien-chung (于建中), who talked about his father’s work and recent donation of 18 calligraphy scrolls to the National Palace Museum.
Photo: Nadia Tsao, Taipei Times
As a diplomat, Yu Peng served in Peru, Jamaica and Honduras, in addition to managing the crisis after the severance of diplomatic ties between Taiwan and the Philippines.
Yu Chien-chung told reporters that his father helped resettle refugees of the Vietnam War and played a role in digitizing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ operations.
His father was content to do the work that brought the ministry into the modern age when other diplomatic officers were seeking assignments in overseas missions, Yu Chien-chung said.
Yu Chien-chung donated 18 calligraphy scrolls by his grandfather Yu You-ren (于右任) to the museum on his father’s behalf.
Yu You-ren was a prominent late-Qing Dynasty intellectual who after the revolution became the Republic of China’s longest-serving Control Yuan president.
The scrolls were heirlooms that Yu Peng brought from the family’s residence in Nanjing, China, to Hong Kong and then to Taiwan during their flight from the communists, Yu Chien-chung said.
“My father believes those relics need to be preserved in a proper place and the National Palace Museum is a first-rate organization in preserving artifacts. It has experts dedicated to studying Yu You-ren’s work and a complete plan for building a calligraphy collection,” he said.
“Its expertise is the main reason [Yu Peng] decided to give away the calligraphy,” Yu Chien-chung said.
Yu You-ren’s calligraphy commands a highly visible presence in Taiwan’s popular culture: The restaurant Din Tai Fung’s billboards and the Tunghai University plaque are examples of his writing.
Yu Chien-chung said his father wishes him to convey to the foreign ministry that it would be “inappropriate” for the donation to have any role in the decision to commend him.
“Yu Peng’s immense learning and great modesty are cast in the mold of his father, Yu You-ren. He is a generous mentor to young diplomatic officers and his fellows hold him in universal respect,” Department of North American Affairs Director-General Christine Hsueh (薛美瑜) said in a news release.
Asked to comment on receiving the honor, Yu Peng thanked reporters for traveling a long way to see him.
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