Dear Editor,

Sinorama is the publication I look forward to most each month. This was especially the case with your October 1997 issue's special report concerning the ups and downs of emigration to New Zealand, which I found very thought-provoking. Three years ago, I married my boyfriend of eight years, waved goodbye to my friends and relatives, and emigrated with him to the US. The vicissitudes of these past three years can only be really understood by another first-generation emigrant.

Taiwan's economy towers above those of many Asian countries, but some of our fellow countrymen have emigrated to other countries to provide an improved educational environment for their children. For many of my married friends their situation is, "wife in America" (the husband remains in Taiwan to work and the wife is in America looking after the children). Does such a situation really address all the concerns parents have about education? After all, these children are at an age when they are in greatest need of a complete family. When children suffer in the outside world, it is only the warmth of the family that can provide the appropriate emotional solace. In their physical and intellectual development, teenagers must face the completely new environment of the outside world alone. If upon returning home such youth have to face a grinding loneliness, then their situation is not any better than that of youth growing up in Taiwan who enjoy the blessings of family life. I really wish to inform those considering emigration that it is indeed a long road, all aspects of which must be thought through clearly before making the final decision. This is especially true for the wife: do not simply think of your children's educational environment and rashly take your children far away from home where they will live for extended periods away from your husband, their father. Such tests upon one's marriage sometimes exact a heavy toll; failure of the marriage and lost opportunity for the invaluable happiness of family life with one's children and husband.

When children spend a length of time abroad, the strong pressure to speak the local language may render them unwilling to speak Chinese when they grow up. Moreover, the next generation may not only be unable to recognize Chinese characters but may not even be able to speak Chinese. There may even come a day when to your consternation you discover your children and grandchildren do not even know the family genealogy. Their passport is not that of the Republic of China because they are Americans, Australians, New Zealanders. When I think of this cruel fact, in light of traditional Chinese thinking, it is indeed a tragedy. Only those who think through everything carefully, honestly facing all possible problems, are able to somewhat smoothen the road of emigration.

Time to See the Light

Dear Editor,

In summer, it gets light before five o'clock and dark again before seven. People usually start work at nine, which means that the sun has already been up for several hours. They get off work around the time it gets dark. They don't have the chance to enjoy a few hours of daylight after work. Actually, the only time they see the sun is on weekends. My question is this: Why hasn't Taiwan followed the example of many other countries and adopted daylight savings time? If you can think of a good reason besides the very old point of resistance to change, please do enlighten me.

Holger Jacobsen, Taipei