In 1923--that's the twelfth year of the Republican era in China or, more pertinently, the twelfth year of the Taisho emperor's rule--current ROC president Lee Teng-hui was born in Sanchih Village of Tanshui Prefecture, at the foot of Mt. Tatun.

During the Japanese era many important cultural figures hailed from Tanshui: Tu Tsung-ming, the first Taiwanese to earn an MD (at Imperial Kyoto University), and the musician Chiang Wen-yeh are two illustrious examples. Lee himself came from one of Sanchih's respected families. His grandfather, who was once elected headman of his ward, ran a store selling pork and other items, and his father Ching-lung was a much-respected policeman.

Yuanhsingchu, a typical Chinese-style family compound in Sanchih near Tanshui, is the birthplace of Lee Teng-hui. （photo by Vincent Chang）

A three-yuan children's encyclopedia

The Japanese rule of Taiwan had by then already passed through its early repressive phase, and the rumblings of war between Japanese and Chinese on the mainland seemed distant. During this peaceful age, in a family that owned small landholdings and ran small businesses, the hopes that parents would have held for their son's future are not hard to imagine.

When Lee was little the family moved repeatedly as his father switched precincts, allowing the son to attend better and better schools. Lee had gone to four different schools by the time he finished sixth grade. Finally, the Lees moved into town, so that Teng-hui could attend the area's best junior high: the Tanshui Public School.

Lee's Managing Greater Taiwan, which promotes his ideas for running the nation, recounts this anecdote: While enrolled at the Tanshui Public School, Lee's father bought him a children's encyclopedia that the boy had long admired. At the cost of three yuan--when the elder Lee's monthly pay came to just 12--it represented a lot of hard work. The son repaid the father by graduating second in his class.

Although Lee's academic record was excellent, Taipei's first and second high schools usually admitted only one Taiwanese a year, reserving the remaining places for Japanese. And Lee was further disadvantaged by the poorer quality of education in elementary schools outside the big cities. Twice failing admittance to the best Taipei high schools, Lee enrolled back home at Tanshui High.

Boarding there, he was well known for going into the bathroom every night to study by its faint light. The dorm supervisor was so moved that he asked the school to keep the lights on at night in one classroom so students could study there.

Lee's husky frame, attributed to his consumption of pork bone soup, also made a big impression on people.

Chou Ming-te, Lee's classmate at Tanshui High, recalls that his gym teacher once paired him off to wrestle with Lee. Lee easily toppled the puny Chou, knocking him out in the process. It must have made quite an impression on Lee, because when attending a local ceremony as ROC president some 50 years later, he recognized Chou at one glance.

In 1943 Lee Teng-hui was studying at Imperial Kyoto University in Japan. （rephotographed from From Yuanhsingchu to the Presidential Palace）

Striving in tragic times

Well-dressed and well-fed, Lee had a childlike concern for those less fortunate. A devout Christian, Lee once recalled in a sermon that the tenants of his family's fields would bring presents of ducks and chickens every New Year, hoping to renew their leases. Seeing the hardships of the tenant farmers, Lee developed in his youth a deep sensitivity to social inequities.

After graduating from high school, he went to study in Japan, majoring in agricultural economics. The choice allowed him to offer practical assistance to farmers, and it laid the foundations for his career. It shows his pragmatism.

"During the Japanese era, even amid the poverty and the tragedy of colonization, parents still wanted the best for their children, and the children studied hard, striving to make successes of themselves. Such was the 'Taiwan spirit' of those days," says Fan Chao-ming, who scoured Tanshui digging up information on Lee Teng-hui's childhood during the five years he wrote The Young Lee Teng-hui.

Fan also discovered that students at schools in Tanshui and its environs are curious about Lee and deeply admire him now that he is president. Local teachers hold up his burning of the midnight oil as a model of diligence for today's students.

As it happened, while Lee was switching from school to school in neighboring villages and towns, Peng Ming-min, who was also born in 1923 and is only half a year Lee's junior, attended four different elementary schools for similar reasons. It's just that these four schools were far more widely scattered, from as far north as Tokyo, to as far south as Kaohsiung. Before Peng even entered school, he had already traveled to mainland China. The scope of his experiences as a child far exceeded what most Taiwanese children could have imagined.

His father was a famous doctor, his mother known far and wide for her virtue and beauty. As a child, Peng Ming-min （second from left） had much to make others envious. （courtesy of Peng Ming-min）

Vitamins and disinfectants

Peng Ming-min was born during the Japanese era at Tejen Hospital in the Taichung County town of Tachia. The doctor who delivered Peng was the hospital director and a presbyterian minister who also happened to be his father. Growing up in a prosperous and modern medical family, Peng Ming-min's childhood deserves to be described as "especially blessed by heaven."

In The Young Peng Ming-min, which was compiled from transcriptions of Peng's oral recollections, Peng recalls the family rules: "Every day we had to eat vitamins and drink cod liver oil. Even if it made us so sick that we threw up, we couldn't get away without it. . . . And as soon we touched money, we had to wash our hands."

The hospital was on the ground floor, with the family's living quarters above. On the landing, Peng's mother would put pails of disinfectant and water, with which the children would have to wash themselves before being allowed upstairs. At a time of limited understanding of sanitary principles, when many Taiwanese children were malnourished, how Peng's childhood differed from the vast majority of Taiwanese!

Yet the greatest gift that Peng's parents gave him was making his educational advance as easy as possible.

When he was small, Peng's mother took him and his older brother and sister north, renting a house in Taipei so they could attend better schools. Relying on his Japanese--everyone in the family could speak it fluently--he was able to enter an elementary school almost exclusively attended by Japanese. And after Peng transferred to school back in Tachia, studying there for just a year, the Japanese headmaster (a mighty personage to the Taiwanese) took the whole school to the train station when he left for Japan on a trip with his father!

A little more than a year after leaving Tachia, the family moved to Kaohsiung, but before Peng could graduate from junior high school there, he packed his bags once again, moving this time to Japan. At Kyoto's Number Three High School (which was, along with Tokyo's Number One, one of the nation's best) and the Political Science department of Imperial Tokyo University, he performed brilliantly, laying the groundwork for later doctoral studies at the University of Paris.

At home in a farmhouse near Sun Moon Lake in Nantou County, Lin Yang-kang was born in the second year of Hirohito's rule--that's 1927 or four years after Lee and Peng were born. "The Taiwan spirit" was well in evidence in his childhood as well.

In this 17-year-old groom, can you see the Lin Yang-kang of today? On the left is Lin's wife, Chen Ho. （courtesy of Lin Yang-kang）

A class president who read the classics

In his authorized biography Sincerity, Lin recounts that his parents let him, the oldest male in his generation, be adopted by his father's oldest brother so as to help carry on the burning of incense for their ancestors. This brought him the good fortune of special treatment within the family. In a small village public school, Lin was first in his class for six years running and was always class president. Country-side grade schools didn't prepare their students as well as those in the city, and Lin wasn't accepted at the Taichung First Junior High School, but having raised some funds for his education, his family sent him to study in Japan. He was just 13.

Unlike Lee and Peng, Lin comes from a poor remote area. There Japanese control was weak, and the elder generation couldn't even speak Japanese, but their roots in Chinese culture were firmly planted. His fourth uncle was the teacher at the privately supported village school. And so when Lin was four he began to memorize the Three Character Classic (a traditional primer of Chinese schools), and he would develop a special liking for the Four Books (The Great Learning, The Doctrine of the Mean, The Analects, and The Book of Mencius).

When they got older, Lee Teng-hui came to admire the works of such Western philosophers and writers as Kant and Goethe, and Peng Ming-min read his favorite French authors in the original. Lin, on the other hand, who studied in the night program of a Japanese high school, never missed a single lecture his old Japanese principal delivered on the Four Books.

Between 1928 and 1937, while Taiwanese youths were working hard to advance themselves academically, hoping one day to become a teacher or doctor and rid themselves of "second-class citizenship," China was in the midst of its campaign to rebuild the recently reunified nation. Events unfolded at a relentless pace: On September 18, 1931, the Mukden Incident occurred, and the following year the Japanese invaded Manchuria. Outright war between China and Japan loomed. The Nationalist government was torn between "repelling the extercal threat" (fighting the Japanese) and "achieving internal security" (fighting the communists).

Guess who I am? This pudgy child in military uniform, scrunching his eyes up as he smiles, is Chen Lu-an, who has recently announced he is running for president. （courtesy of Chen Lu-an）

Son of an illustrious family

In 1936 disaster was narrowly averted during the Xi'an incident, note of which was made the following year in the name of a baby boy: Chen Lu-an. The character for peace ("an") was in memory of the safe return of the baby's father Chen Cheng, a staff general to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek.

Chen Lu-an, whose name is tied up closely with modern Chinese history, has an extremely distinguished family.

During Chen's childhood, because the war frequently took his father far from home, the burdens of housekeeping and child rearing fell to his mother Tan Hsiang, daughter of Tan Yen-kai (former Chairman of the Republican Government) and "adopted daughter" of Madame Chiang Kai-shek. Known for running a tight ship at home, she was very cautious about her children's friends, sometimes even going to their schools to check on their grades and conduct. Very little is written about Chen Lu-an's childhood, as might well be expected: Illustrious families don't like to call attention to themselves.

Jan Kuang-yin, who served as the general's aidede-camp for a long time, watched Chen grow up. He says that the war forced the Chens to move frequently during Chen Lu-an's childhood, from his birthplace in Lushan to Hubei, to Chongqing, to Nanjing after victory over the Japanese, and then on to Shanghai. The family hired a tutor to keep the children from falling behind in their studies.

This old aide-de-camp recalls that the eldest son Lu-an was clever and well behaved, and helped his mother take care of his three brothers. When he saw beggars out in front of their house, he would tell his mother and prepare some food for them. Well known today for espousing Buddhist doctrines, he was just one year old when his mother had him adopt the Buddhist faith and take his Buddhist name "Tse-ming" (kind and brilliant).

Chen Lu-an's graduation photo from America. （courtesy of Chen Lu-an）

A captain's son

Though likewise the son of a military man, Wang Chien-hsuan, who was born after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in Anhui, presents a stark contrast with Chen in terms of family status. His father was truly poor, a clerk in the military with a low salary and little chance for advancement. From entering the service in the mainland to retiring in Taiwan, 30 years had passed and he was still only a captain. His father's rank is the source of Wang's self-description: "A captain's son."

Before Wang moved to Taiwan at the age of 11, his family bore extreme hardship under the constant strain of war. Wang's frugal character is rooted in his experiences during this time.

In the latter part of World War II, the Taiwanese stifled tears for their tragic fates and sang Japanese army songs as they watched their sons or older brothers sent off to fight for the Japanese. Many would go to the South Pacific, never to be heard from again. Among them was Lee Teng-chin, the older brother of Lee Teng-hui, whose fate caused the president's family great anguish. After the war ended, with Japan in ruins, Lee ended his studies at kyoto and returned home to enroll at National Taiwan University. Lin Yang-kang, who failed to get admitted to university in Japan, also returned to enter NTU. He chose to study government, a field that would have been off limits to him when Taiwan was a Japanese colony.

Peng Ming-min's experiences during the war were unusually traumatic. Under great pressure at Kyoto University for refusing to "volunteer" for military service, Peng left his studies. On the way to join his brother in Nagasaki, an American bomb severed his left arm. For a lover of baseball (he had played on the Kaohsiung High School team), it was a loss whose pain can not be put into words. He was only 22.

（above） When Wang Chien-hsuan was a student at the Taipei College of Business, he had the callow look of a boy next door. （courtesy of Wang Chien-hsuan）

War changes a generation

In Nagasaki, recovering from losing his arm, Peng witnessed the aftermath of the atomic bomb which turned tens of thousands to ashes. As someone who had always enjoyed the privileges of high social status, Peng had never imagined that his youth would end on such a bleak and tragic note. And the future was completely uncertain.

Elsewhere, victory did not make the days pass any easier. China became embroiled in a civil war between the nationalists and the communists, and with the KMT's old soldiers--including generals such as Chen Cheng--tired and war--weary, they suffered defeat after defeat. Chen Cheng was then ordered to go to Taiwan and assume the responsibilities of provincial chairman and help Chiang Kai-shek resume his duties as president. Chen Lu-an and his siblings soon came to Taiwan so the family could be reunited. During the same period, Wang Chien-hsuan's family hurriedly boarded a ship and followed Chiang to Taiwan.

It wasn't until then that all of the current presidential candidates lived on the island.

After things began to settle down, Chen Lu-an entered junior high at the school attached to National Taiwan Normal University, where he studied for six years.

"Even in the stormiest of weather, we would have to take the bus or ride our bikes. We were not allowed to use the family's government-provided car. This is one of the Chen siblings' most frequently told anecdotes about their childhoods. Chen's father insisted that the children could not enjoy special privileges. Not only would Chen not be spared the rod when he got into trouble at school, but because he was young and small for his age, he was often bullied by his classmates.

But Chen was good at Chinese chess, and every year at Christmas the whole family would go to President Chiang's home to celebrate. With his high-school regulation crew-cut, Chen would sometimes play with Chiang, who would praise his prowess.

This tall and thin fellow is Wang Chien-hsuan in his days at National Cheng Kung University. （courtesy of Wang Chien-hsuan）

American PhDs

In 1954, the Ministry of Education announced that it would allow high school students to go abroad to study, on condition that they obtained full foreign scholarships and had served four months of their military service. That year, Chen took advantage of the new policy to go to America, and he didn't come back for 15 years. The policy was changed two years later after 300 students had used it to go abroad. From then on, men would have to complete two years of military service before they would be allowed to leave. Today, some describe the short-lived policy as the "Chen Lu-an clause."

Recently Chen has said publicly and with great regret that leaving the country at such a young age was not necessarily good for him. Though he is very familiar with American civilization, his roots in Chinese culture are weak. UP until very recently, when he was serving as Minister of Economic Affairs, he was "ashamed that he could not read the Chinese classics," and he specially asked an NTU professor to make a reading list, whose books he perused with great dedication.

When studying abroad at the age of 17, how did Chen divert himself from his loneliness? Chen Feng-yi, the former secretary-general of the Control Yuan who worked under Chen Lu-an for many years, reveals that Chen "went through a very lonely period in America, when he often stared blankly at the stars all night long." But because he was far from the strict oversight of his parents, he could partake in leisure activities of the young and wealthy, such as horse racing and diving.

Relying on his book smarts, Chen made smooth progress in his studies, and after graduating from the electrical engineering department at MIT, he and several of his classmates formed a computer technology company. Then he entered graduate school at New York University, earning a doctorate in applied math. It was the same year that Lee Teng hui, 14 years Chen's senior, earned one in agricultural economics at Cornell university.

As a youth, Hsu Hsin-liang had much the look of a budding scholar. （courtesy of Hsu Hsin-liang）

"The MP"

In contrast, Wang Chien-hsuan, who began his studies in Taiwan in the fifth grade, found the road of academic advancement a rockier one. After finishing sixth grade, he was only accepted by the junior high school program at the Taipei College of Business. If it hadn't been for his determination to make high marks that would allow him to transfer to stational Cheng Kung University's accountancy department, Wang might today just be a small businessman.

Even if his academic record wasn't anything special, he worked to help support his family. He was quick at making chicken cages, and early every morning would wash and shell the dried fava beans that his mother bought at the wholesale market and sold from her front door outside the military dependents' village.

"The truth is that there aren't any legendary stories from Wang Chien-hsuan's youth," says his wife Su Fa-chao. "He's a simple man. What you see is what you get."

For a poor family like the Wangs, with their captain father "who had no concept of how to seek personal advantage," no great sums were available for the children. There were no highfalutin and expensive hobbies, and, other than text books, few books at all. Wang's favorite books are still the Bible and books about finance and economics.

Wang's wife Su Fa-chao, who comes from a family of scholars, can't help but laugh when she describes Wang's ineptitude at playing chess or bridge. Wang's upright and pure character and his "image as representing the man in the street" are perhaps reflections of his down-home childhood.

And the aspects of Wang's character that are far from ordinary--his intense disdain for wrongdoing and support for victims of injustice--can also be traced to his youth. Su Fa-chao says that when Wang Chien-hsuan was studying at the Taipei College of Business, he'd act on his own initiative to keep people from cutting in line. Such behavior got him known as "the MP."

While Wang was transferring to a university with the idea of getting a good job and helping improve the family's finances, the Hsus, who were only slightly better off than the Wangs, thought Hsin-liang was crazy for listing National Chengchih University's Department of Political Science as his first choice. Why would such a good student, they wondered, not want to study medicine at National Taiwan University?

The wedding photo of Hsu Hsin-liang and Chung Pi-hsia. In the sixties weddings were simple affairs. How the photo brings back memories of small-town life in those days! （courtesy of Hsu Hsin-liang）

Leading the oxen

Let's go back to the latter stages of the war, amid the disorder caused by continuous military operations. That was when Hsu Hsin-liang was born in the Hakka village of Kuoling in Taoyuan County. Hsu hasn't forgotten his roots. In the Democratic Progressive Party primaries, which Hsu lost to Peng Ming-min, Hsu made frequent reference to being a "poor boy." Not long after he was born, the Americans began bombing Taiwan, and the family began passing their days listening to air-raid sirens and seeking safety in air-raid shelters.

When the war was over, before the Hsus could even pause to catch their breath, the KMT arrived and instituted land reform (starting with the "37.5 percent policy"). With most of their holdings taken from them, the Hsus, who had been small landlords, became farmers, and every member of the family had to work in the fields just to make ends meet. The family carried much pent-up anger.

Nevertheless, Hsu's wife Chung Pi-hsia points out that even if Hsu grew up hearing his father curse the KMT for the family's fall in fortune, Hsu, a youth with a great sense of righteousness, was a fervent supporter of policies such as land reform that helped the poor and the weak.

Growing up in a remote farming village, Hsu very early on showed his individuality. For example, ever since he was very young he enjoyed reading The Romance of the Three Kingdoms and All Men Are Brothers, looking up to the Robin Hood-like heroes of the wild lands.

Even more unusually, ever since Hsu Hsin-liang was in fifth grade "his ambition was to become president." On the back of one of his photos, he even wrote with big strokes the Chinese characters for "president." Such childish behavior made the rest of his family laugh. Yet now, 40 years later, Hsu has shown his persistence in regard to that ambition.

Hsu comes from roughly the same social level as Wang. But unlike Wang, whose assertiveness comes from having grown up amid mainlanders in a military dependents' village, Hsu shows the reticence of a farm boy.

He recalls that upon entering Chungli High School (after finishing second on its entrance exam), his school hat was damaged on the first day by the pressing throngs on the train. In school the head of student discipline chided him for being sloppy and looking bad, and did his best to make Hsu's life difficult. In contrast to Lee Teng-hui's early displays of musical talent and Peng Ming-min's genteel character, Hsu Hsin-liang frequently got failing marks for music and art. As a youth, he dreaded having to get up on stage to perform.

Before the mayoral and provincial gubernatorial elections held late last year, Taipei was a sea of party and candidate flags. With so many candidates running, for whom will you cast your ballot in the presidential elections to be held in March of next year? （photo by Vincent Chang）

Tolerance and working together

But for a child who appeared so unanimated, there was a vast realm of excitement inside. After graduating from Hsinchu High, Hsu was accepted at his first choice, the political science department at National Chengchih University, and during his freshman year he joined the KMT, much to his parents' displeasure.

At the university he became a devout Buddhist, and was torn between the Buddhist teaching that "everything is nothing" and government's concern for the teeming masses.

"Eventually, Hsu Hsin-liang worked it out," Chung Pi-hsia says. "The answer he gave himself was 'Buddhist thought, Confucian action'--which means doing things for the people with a merciful heart." In this respect, Hsu shares a lot with Chen Lu-an.

Of course, there are too many human variables, and growing up is only one phase of life. As the author Po Yang puts it, people aren't purely physical objects, and there's no way to define their responses chemically, to achieve a certainty like "blue plus yellow equals green." Still, youth provides the base color, and though adulthood may water it down or paint it over, a careful look will always reveal some of the original paint.

These presidential candidates grew up at different times and in different places, with different family backgrounds, but fate has led them to compete on the same stage. There are clear differences between their ideals, but these perhaps just prove that Taiwan is indeed a diverse, democratic society. No matter if one was born at the bottom or at the top, no matter if one is a Taiwanese or a mainlander, everyone has the right to run for president.

As for the voters (regardless of their likes or dislikes or for whom they vote) knowing about a candidate's childhood--a time of life that's hard to gloss up or put a spin on--should at least give them greater understanding and acceptance of those who don't get their votes.

[Picture Caption]

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In this class, who would get noticed most? Who would set the best example in his studies and behavior? And who would become president of the ROC ? Probably no one would have known at the time. Fourth from the left in the back row is Lee Teng-hui. (courtesy of the Huwei Cultural and Historical Workshop)

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Yuanhsingchu, a typical Chinese-style family compound in Sanchih near Tanshui, is the birthplace of Lee Teng-hui. (photo by Vincent Chang)

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In 1943 Lee Teng-hui was studying at Imperial Kyoto University in Japan. (rephotographed from From Yuanhsingchu to the Presidential Palace)

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His father was a famous doctor, his mother known far and wide for her virtue and beauty. As a child, Peng Ming-min (second from left) had much to make others envious. (courtesy of Peng Ming-min)

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In this 17-year-old groom, can you see the Lin Yang-kang of today? On the left is Lin's wife, Chen Ho. (courtesy of Lin Yang-kang)

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Guess who I am? This pudgy child in military uniform, scrunching his eyes up as he smiles, is Chen Lu-an, who has recently announced he is running for president. (courtesy of Chen Lu-an)

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Chen Lu-an's graduation photo from America. (courtesy of Chen Lu-an)

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(above) When Wang Chien-hsuan was a student at the Taipei College of Business, he had the callow look of a boy next door. (courtesy of Wang Chien-hsuan)

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This tall and thin fellow is Wang Chien-hsuan in his days at National Cheng Kung University. (courtesy of Wang Chien-hsuan)

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As a youth, Hsu Hsin-liang had much the look of a budding scholar. (courtesy of Hsu Hsin-liang)

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The wedding photo of Hsu Hsin-liang and Chung Pi-hsia. In the sixties weddings were simple affairs. How the photo brings back memories of small-town life in those days! (courtesy of Hsu Hsin-liang)

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Before the mayoral and provincial gubernatorial elections held late last year, Taipei was a sea of party and candidate flags. With so many candidates running, for whom will you cast your ballot in the presidential elections to be held in March of next year? (photo by Vincent Chang)