Dear Editor:

In the April issue of your magazine, you had a series of articles on "Children from the Mainland in Taiwan," including one on "Li Yi of Ilan." Well, he's my grandson, and I sent a copy of the issue back to the family on the mainland.

I just received a letter from my son (Li Yi's uncle) expressing his thoughts after reading it. It isn't easy for people on the mainland to get hold of official publications from Taiwan, but what my son says shows what our fellow countrymen on the mainland think of your magazine. It's feedback I think you and your colleagues will be glad to hear.

I've enclosed a photocopy of the relevant part of his letter.

Li Tze-kuang Ilan

". . . the magazine (Sinorama) is very good. The layout is quite distinctive, and the reporting is thorough, objective and fair. It's not like a lot of magazines that just skim over things superficially and after you're done you can't remember a word you've read. That two seasoned reporters spent three hours of their time interviewing for an article of something over l,000 words with two photographs shows admirable dedication. Competition overseas must be intense, and it's not easy for a magazine to be held in esteem both at home and abroad. A couple of years ago I escorted a newspaper reporter to the factory housing area to interview a family of model workers, and he went into just as much depth as a dragonfly skimming across the surface of the water. I wound up asking more questions than he did, and in less than 15 minutes he took off.

The report on "Children from the Mainland in Taiwan" covered 14 pages, with complete information, a fine layout and an engrossing text that answered the concerns many readers must have had in their minds and went on to suggest some things that might happen in the future. The titles of the articles and the skill of the photographer matched the thoughtfulness of the reporters. Putting "Li Yi of Ilan" at the end made it seem like the piece de resistance. Some of our forebears in the Li family were quite well-known officials for a time. Just mention Li Hsiao-hsien and everybody knew he was from Hotung in Ho County, but his fame was limited to just a few hundred miles around. Now, thanks to a report in the news media, thanks to this fine article and the photographs that go with it, readers around the world know about our "Li Yi of Ilan" from Ho county in Kuangsi. If our ancestors knew about it in the afterworld, they would certainly be gratified . . ."

Dear Editor:

Thank you for the copies you sent me of the May issue, Chinese-English edition. Please note that there are two mistakes in the third column on page 129: "Mori Rokujoh" should be Mori Rokuzou, and "Haru Sadao" should be Aoyama Sadao.

Hibino Takeo Japan

Dear Editor:

Thanks to the Voice of Free China I seem to have started getting your wonderful magazine on a regular basis as a subscriber. I'm happy to have got one more source on China, and that from the place that was forbidden for the Soviet people to know since the end of the Second World War --Taiwan.

I could have shown you a small collection of my letters and postcards sent to Taiwan in intervals in the previous years--but all sent back from Moscow International Post Office with a seal "No delivery possible due to the absence of postal connection with Taiwan." But I am glad to know that the ban on contacts and visits between both our peoples have finally been lifted of late. The fruit of that step is the fact that I can freely write to the Voice of Free China now and read your magazine.

You know I've been interested in China since long ago. My parents joke that is because I was born in Khabarovsk, a city not far from the Soviet-Chinese border. I have practically all the books on China issued in the Soviet Union though some of them are too scientific and specialized, as I see now.

Will you accept Soviet rubles as means of payment? I plan to buy all your bound volumes of back issues and the majority of your brochures.

And finally my propositions. I've read about the life of Chinese in Japan, looking forward to your reports about the Singapore Chinese. But what about the Soviet Chinese? There are thousands of them. Have they managed to survive with their Chineseness, their language, customs, faith and contacts with mother China intact?

My other, unfulfilled yet dream is to find pen friends in Taiwan. (I'm also a philatelist and a postcard collector.)

Eugenij Kovaljov

A/R 455, Lipetsk 35, 398035, USSR.