That year, the world was still reeling from the first oil crisis, and there was a recession, but our economy quickly recovered to show 5.2% economic growth.
That year Yen Chia-kan was President, with Chiang Ching-kuo as Premier and Y.S. Sun as Minister of Economic Affairs, and the Ten Major Projects were in full swing.
That year, Mao Tse-tung died, the Gang of Four fell, and the disastrous "Cultural Revolution" came to an end.
That year, 1976, Sinorama was born.
In the past fifteen years, we have passed through major reforms like lifting martial law, permitting the establishment of new political parties, and permitting family visits to mainland China. Today, the embryo of party politics is in place, and exchanges are developing between the twosides of the Taiwan strait.
In the past fifteen years, out national income has increased seven times over, foreign exchange reserves have become the highest in the world, and electronics has replaced textiles as the leading export item. Southeast Asia has replaced the United States as the main export area.
In the past fifteen years, Taiwan's popular culture has waxed and waned among Chinese abroad. The movies of "Two Lins and Two Ch'ins" and the songs of Fong Fei-fei and Liu Wen-cheng swept Southeast Asia. Later Hongkong films, TV, and music took over; and only recently has pop music from Taiwan begun to resurge.
In the past fifteen years. . . .
In the past fifteen years Sinorama has gone from a slender 36 pages introducing the major events and construction in the Taiwan area to an international publication published in six editions and distributed in 165 countries and areas in the world. Today Sinorama is:
--The Taiwan publication with the broadest publication network;
--The most-subscribed to Chinese language publication in the United States;
--The domestic publication with the highest rate of reprinted stories in the international media.
In the next fifteen years, Sinorama will continue to keep its finger on the pulse of Taiwan society, to record the changes in overseas Chinese society, and to carry on the essence of Chinese traditional culture. Our perspective-will become even broader, our concern deeper, and our contents more diverse, and we will go even farther.
This issue, the "Sinology" series introduces the background to Sinology in Hungary and interviews Professor Endre Galla, head of the Faculty of Chinese at Budapest University. This is the first relatively comprehensive report on Eastern European Sinology to appear in Taiwan.
"Home Thoughts from Abroad" is a new series that has been long planned. It is a series of works penned by renowned Chinese writers abroad. The first will be Chang Ning-chin's "In the Eyes of Stone Lions," from Paris.
This month the national six-year development plan begins implementation. This will be of major importance to Taiwan's future development. The quality and efficiency of the civil service will have a decisive impact on the implementation of the plan. This month's special feature, "Facelift for a Venerable Career" explores the various challenges and transformation of this industry with 530,000 workers--the civil bureaucracy.
With Chinese New Year approaching, the "Trademarks of the Chinese" series this month reports on that New Year's Eve pasttime--mahjongg. Chinese are no strangers to mahjongg to be sure, but few know where mahjongg comes from, how it got its name, why the playing tiles are marked with East, West, North, and South Winds. . . . This article gets you the answers from authoritative sources.
Starting on January 11, every Friday night from nine to ten o'clock, Sinorama has a date to meet you through the airwaves of the Taipei City Broadcasting Station, on 93.1 MHZ or 1134 KHZ. The magazine's contents will be given a voice to communicate with you through a new channel. This is another gift to celebrate Sinorama's fifteenth birthday.
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Starting from January 11, every Friday night Sinorama will come to you through the airwaves. This is another gift to celebrate Sinorama's fifteenth birthday.