Kenneth Whiting (AV 14) - Naval Cruise Book

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FORMOSA A 30-lcol statue ct Generalissimc Chiang FCcii-Shck dctnir.jtes the drenched city square in the heart of Taipe From the air or from the sea, Formosa looks as peaceful as paradise. Opalescent waters edge her shore and break on her beaches m ivory foam. Water-covered rice fields flash their facets in the sun. Silvery riv- ' - ■-• ' •- • - roa and southward to the limit :: . jh mountains wrapped in gr-. : . :nty heads cloud-covered. This was Taiwan yesterday, is today, and will be tomorrow. An island 230 miles long and about 90 miles wide, it is situated about 100 miles off the South China coast. Shaped like a tobacco leaf it is flanked by the Formosa Straits in the west and the Pacific Ocean in the east, and is located halfway between the Philippines and the Ryukyus and is a short distance from Hong Kong and the Portuguese colony of Macao. We aboard the Kenneth Whiting discovered 11 had a lovely landscape and the most miser- able climate imaginable. The name Formosa is Portuguese for pretty or beautiful, and was given the island by Portuguese sailors who, m the sixteenth century, were the first Europeans to visit it. While the world has known the island of Formosa ever since, it has never been accepted officially by the Formos- ans themselves; they and the Chinese call it Taiwan. 52

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THE GROTESQUE, YET BEAUTIFUL, TIGER EALI4 GARDENS— Tiie li er paqoda (right lop) built for deccraticn only, cost $250,000. This fabulous garden, statues mostly, represent some figures in history, both fact and fictitious. The name came from the animal ' s fat, prepared in a balm. This wonderful panacea, so the Chinese believe, is a sure cure for gough, colds, headache, rheuma tism, neuralgia, gout, sciatica, lumbago, sore throat, toothache, asthma, scorpion and other insect bites and slings, cuts, cramps, and all chest complaints. Founder cf the garden, Mr. Aw Boon Haw. a millicnaire philanthropist, selected and erected all statues so as to purify his countrymen from sin. The gardens cover eight acres and cost $3,000,000. Even if a visitor to Hong Kong never ventuied beyond the city streets, he would find much of interest. The shops display almost everything that mortal man could desire . . . from a pair of nylons to a refrigerator; from a priceless jeweled clasp to a suite of blackwood furniture. But like all things, our stay had to end. And as night fell, and Hong Kong put on its diadem of lights, it transformed the already beautiful into a veritable fairyland of colored lights; and there were few of us but felt a stirring of the emotions. For here was not only beauty, but a symbol of what man can achieve if he has the will to create. The next morning Mount Victoria smiled down and bade goodbye . . . We peered back and bade goodbye. Rounding the bend in the river we all went back to cur individual jobs and began to think cf cur next pcrt-o-call . . . Formosa. — P y 0;viS :;« • ' HONG KONG AT h ' IGHT — A veniai ie iairyiand ol colored lights. .ft.i.d

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WE TOURED (when not raining) What little tune we were aitorded to tour the island we saw that it is a strange mixture of modern and the aboriginal. The major cities — Toipeh, Keelung, Kaohsiung — are an overlay of modern western architecture on simple and frequently shoddy buildings of Chinese and Japanese design. But, except for electricity, the modernity is confined to the coastal plains and the foothills of the high and rugged mountains, many as high as 13,000 feet, that form the physical backbone of the island. Here, in the interior, the aboriginal natives of Formosa still live much as they have for centuries. The only difference is that they no longer engage in headhunting. Many of us looked for the oppor- tunity to travel high in the mountains to photo- graph these unusual and colorful people, but the time afforded during our three trips deemed this impossible. The one of the many don ' ts imposed on us by regulations that was the most noticed, yet the most justified, was that we were not allowed to eat or drink food and water in native establishments. A few of the restaurants have excellent food and have been approved by the U. S. Medics as a safe place to eat. To these the Whiting sailors flocked in droves, for the Chinese are the best cooks in the Orient. Native Formosan food is rather unimagina- tive. Their ideas of hygiene are a far cry from our own. It is easier, they believe, to do the entire day ' s cooking in the morning, and then serve it as required. Imagine how the Formosan flies can make a morning-fried egg look by evening. Undoubtedly Formosa — especially around the major cities — is the noisiest place on the globe. Many of us thought this of Hong Kong, but after one hour in Keelung or Taipeh, Hong Kong seemed I by comparison likened to a mon- astery for Chinese mutes. It matters not whether any accessory works on the thousands of autos — mostly taxis — so long as the horn will beep. And beep it does, too, 24 hours every day. We found that a single ride in a taxi was sufficient to render us to complete exhaustion and near .. ' z -— SUPREl.lL :.... . ,:,,■.. -.lERS BUILDING — Located in the hocrl cl Taipei, it is ihe seal ol the Chinese Nationalist Government. gg fSBBtb Port Control Building guarding the narrow channel entrance oi Kao-Hsiung. Wilson takes a tour of the sprawling Kao-Hsiun j Stonecutters hewing granite bloclcs outside of Keelung. Seeing Kao-Hsiung the hard way. !S: