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I first met my longtime friend Nan Shiong when we were teenagers in the early 1950s. He and I were roommates and students at Chang Jung High School, a private boys’ Christian boarding school in Tainan, Taiwan. We both came from nearby counties - I grew up in Silo Township in Yunlin County to the north and he grew up in Kaohsiung City in Kaohsiung County to the south. We quickly became close friends, sharing a love of food, rugby and a good laugh.
One of my favorite memories of Nan Shiong combined all three. We played on the same rugby team, where we were both forwards. After our afternoon games, we and our teammates would head to the Sakariba street food stalls in downtown Tainan. We’d usually be starving post-game so we would eat bei da - meaning we’d eat dishes from eight different food stalls. The dishes included home style frog legs, stir fried squid, stir fried eel, stir fried shrimp, eel noodles, dan dan noodles, fish ball soup and “coffin bread,” a thick slab of toasted or fried white bread that is hollowed out to hold a seafood stew inside and covered by another thick slab of bread. On top of the bei da dishes, we’d also share a bowl of sashimi.
One day after one of our post-game meals, Nan Shiong, another teammate from Taitung City and I were goofing off and decided to ride back to campus on Nan Shiong’s bicycle. Nan Shiong was seated in the middle on the bicycle seat, I sat in the front and our friend was sitting in the back. Back then, Nan Shiong and I both weighed around 175 pounds, while our friend was over 150 pounds, so you were talking about 500 pounds being carried on this one bicycle. Well, we didn’t make it very far, because one of the bicycle tires burst under our collective weight, to the laughter of all the passersby on the street.
We went our separate ways after high school. Nan Shiong went to Taiwan Normal University in Taipei to study physical education and I studied law at National Chung Hsing University in Taichung. In the late 1960s, I emigrated to the US for graduate school in Missouri and eventually settled in New Jersey. Nan Shiong later emigrated to the US as well and lived in Nevada.
But although we never lived near each other again, we remained close friends and would stay in regular touch, talking on the phone every few months. In fact, I now realize that I hadn’t seen him in nearly 30 years, the last time being his daughter Sherry’s wedding in Manhattan’s Chinatown in the 1990s. But I still felt closer to him than the friends I saw on a regular basis because very few friends knew me as well as he did.
I’m deeply saddened that Nan Shiong is gone. It’s still hard to believe that I won’t be able to call him anymore to catch up, reminisce and laugh. At the same time, I feel incredibly blessed to have had him as a close friend for more than 60 years. Not everyone is able to have lifelong friends, but I’m happy to say I was one of the lucky ones.