In Loving Memory of Longway Tsai. Thank you for taking a few minutes to remember his life.

Longway grew up in Taichung, Taiwan with his mother, father and 4 siblings. As the eldest, he had the responsibility and the pressure of bringing their family up from their impoverished state to a better life. The vehicle for that change, in Taiwan in the 1950’s, was education. For his generation, academic achievement was the only path to success and stability. Doing well on the college entrance exam in Taiwan was the key to unlocking that path. Longway would share that decades after taking the entrance test, he would still wake up in the middle of the night terrified about needing to do well on that exam. Longway would eventually get into medical school and become a physician. However, the stability he thought would be there as a physician fluctuated as Taiwan’s place in the world changed in the early 1970’s. Most of the world turned on Taiwan and refused a formal relationship. Longway made the difficult decision, as many sons and daughters of Taiwan did at that time, to come to the United States. For Longway, this move was meant to be temporary. He planned to receive more medical training in the US, apply for permanent US resident status, and then move back to Taiwan. If the geopolitical climate in Taiwan destabilized further, he and his own family, now a wife, Fumei, and a son, Gene could flee to the US if needed. He could also eventually bring over his family of origin to ensure a better life for them as well. Longway, Fumei, and Gene ended up on the east coast of the US, later joined by another child, Jared. They eventually settled in Pennsylvania. Longway worked as a physician at a local hospital after his training. Longway would try to make the move back to Taiwan in the late 1970’s. However, after about a year, he realized that his kids were having difficulty adjusting to their new life in Taiwan, particularly in school. He worried about the future of his children if they stayed in Taiwan. Could his kids make it in Taiwan? He made the difficult decision to move back to the US. As a compromise, he relocated the family to southern California where he could feel more at home away from his native Taiwan. In southern California, he started and grew his own medical practice. He made many friends from Taiwan and friends from all over the world. People just like him who left their home country for a better life. He and his wife raised their kids and worked…..and worked….they worked a lot! When they were finished with their day job of running a medical practice, they had a second job of running their own restaurant at night. They owned a fast-food Chinese restaurant in a local mall long before there was any Panda Express. Despite the long hours, they enjoyed working and would refuse any recommendations to take time off or go on big vacations. Longway was also able to eventually bring some of his siblings and their children to southern California. He knew firsthand the difficulty of children adjusting to a new life in a different country. He would work closely and tirelessly with his nieces and nephews to help them adapt to being a student in the US. Nearly two decades later, after Gene and Jared graduated from college and were set with their careers, Longway and Fumei would make their long-awaited return home to Taiwan. Longway took a position at the Beigang Campus of China Medical University in Taiwan, as an attending physician for one of their teaching clinics. Longway and Fumei enjoyed their time living back in Taiwan for a year. However, Longway started to miss his life back in California. He realized that the Taiwan that he missed and longed for all these years no longer existed and that he had changed too. This time, the decision to move back home to California was much easier. Not long after moving back, Longway and Fumei were blessed to welcome to the family a daughter-in-law in Yenmay after she married Gene. Longway also became a Christian soon after that. Then, three granddaughters, Isabel, Abby, and Penny soon followed. In retirement, Longway had the chance to help take care of his grandchildren, instilling in them a deep fondness for many things Taiwanese. To this day, Taiwan is still a country without significant geopolitical stability. Like so many others, my dad’s story is a microcosm of Taiwan’s story, a story of searching for a place in this world. Toward the end of his life, Longway discovered a faith that finally gave him a sense of belonging and being loved. Experiencing this love helped him to continue loving his family, his friends, his adopted home of southern California, and his native home of Taiwan. Like many in his generation, Longway never stopped being a son of Taiwan.