Word: taipei
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...Year's on Formosa, the beginning of the Year of the Sheep. All last week, places of business, including the newspapers, were closed in observance of the holiday. Along the streets of Taipei (pop. 500,000) firecrackers popped among the red-brick buildings from dawn until dusk. Pedicab coolies in conical straw hats and straw raincoats lounged by their carriages, inspecting their bare toes as they waited to take Formosan families on New Year's calls. A soft fog ringed the lush, green hills, throwing a grey blanket over the palms, the camphor trees and the sweet-potato...
...reaction among the Nationalists was one of gloomy foreboding, frustration, resentment. Said a Taipei lawyer: "When are people going to realize that appeasement of the Communists does not pay?" A broadcasting official: "I feel numb when I think of what is happening." A merchant in Hong Kong: "I just can't wait to see the day America will be 'liberated' by the Communists. They haven't been hit hard enough to see what's coming for everybody." Formosa's new troubles lent added weight to a psychological campaign which the Reds have been waging...
...bright, sunny day in the East China Sea. There was a tang in the air and a stiff breeze; the water was choppy but not rough. A good day it was for yachting, a reporter in Taipei sardonically observed. There were plenty of surface craft in the sea off tiny (little more than a half square mile) Yikiang Island, but they were not yachts. The Chinese Communists were successfully invading Yikiang -their first combat seizure of a Nationalist-held island since...
...defend, the Nationalists hold four groups of small islands, scattered along 400 miles of the Chinese coast: the Tachens, the Nanchis, the Matsus and the Quemoys {see map). The Tachens are the hardest to defend, since they are almost out of combat range for Nationalist planes from Taipei. Conversely, they are much too far from Formosa to be steppingstones for a Red approach to the Nationalist stronghold: their principal value is as an early radar warning post for air attacks from the North. The Pentagon considers the Tachens "valuable but not vital." They have one small airfield which cannot...
...Some high-placed military men in Taipei advance this explanation: the Reds know that if they send planes over Quemoy, the Nationalists would try to stop them by bombing the mainland air bases. The Reds would then have to retaliate by sending their own planes to Formosa to bomb the Nationalist bases. This the Communists could not do without "running over"; the U.S. Seventh Fleet and its aircraft. In other words, no Communist could fly over Quemoy without risking direct conflict with...