八十自述-哈得遜河畔隨筆

作者陳仲欽

序言

2008年3月我和內人返台參加當年的總統選舉，順便回到新竹故鄉探訪伯達堂叔。他今年已經高齡95歲，是我父親那一代還健在的唯一長輩。很意外地，他把那本失蹤多年的陳家分支族譜手抄原本交給我，吩咐我保管。他說：「你是我們陳家學歷最高的一位，有能力將這本寶貴的家譜保存好。」我非常感激他這番獎勉的話。

這本族譜是祖父於1933年根據曾祖父叔寶公於1882年撰寫的原稿加以編輯的，一直由我的父親保管。家父於1973年逝世前，曾經繼續稍加補充。不過等我參考使用後，終於會把此一珍貴的繕本存留在台灣，因為在美國出生長大的子孫很少能看得懂中文，文言文更不用說。所以我特別在這本自述裡花了很大的篇幅，追溯陳家祖先的源頭和歷代祖先的延續，並且把它連接到我這一代。我在台灣出生長大，然後來美留學定居，無可違言的，我是台美兩邊親屬的溝通橋樑，希望我的中英文自述能幫助大家互相認識。

我感覺我有很重大的責任應該善用這本家譜，來告訴子孫後裔有關他們祖先的過去，由何地而來。更重要的事是我要給大家分享一些我個人如何由台灣出生長大和旅居美國的生涯，跨越東西文化。就像我們的祖先在兩百五十年前，從中國福建坐帆船渡過台灣海峽中的「黑潮」急流遷居台灣一樣，五十年前我乘遠洋貨輪橫渡太平洋來到北美洲新大陸。二者長短距離雖然不同，時代背景有異，但是無懼人生地疏，離鄉背景的勇氣精神是相似的。在我之後，不斷地也有不少親戚移居美國，這都是象徵著在地球村上尋求較好的地方，較好的生活和機會的陳家歷史的一部份。

在過去五十多年，我曾經在美國的不同城市做事居住，也到過很多地方開會或旅遊，遇到許多不同背景的人，有不少值得回憶的生活點滴。人類歷史乃是人與時空交織的記錄，每個人在地球上走過的，多少都會留下一些痕跡。我一生中也見證到正好發生的一些重大歷史事件。我將這些人與事寫下來以對照我當時正身處何地。

我於2010年開始起草這本回憶錄，中間停停續續，一直到2013年初才先完成英文初稿，距離我從全職退休後剛快十年。為了住在台灣親戚的方便，我又費了一年的時間將它翻譯成中文，並整理舊照片。這些工作，尤其是中文電腦打字，真費時費力。對我來講，中文最難的地方就是異字同音和四聲。為了方便查字，我甚至於先自編了有三千個常用漢字，一共有九百個國語注音的八頁小册。我很高興我終於在年屈八秩時，完成了今生最後的一件重大任務。

2015年春於美國紐約州首府區寓所陳仲欽

作者簡歷

1935年出生於台灣新竹市

1959年國立政治大學政治系畢業

1965年獲美國柏克萊-加州大學都市計劃碩士

1965年至2003年在美國從事都市與區域計劃

專業三十八年，歷任：

米蘇里州堪薩斯市計劃局助理都市計劃師

印地安納州馬利恩郡大都會計劃局資深計劃師

紐約州首府區區域計劃委員會首席計劃師，執行長

On the Banks of Hudson River

Preface

In March 2008, my wife Heidi and I returned to Taiwan during the presidential election. I paid a visit to my uncle, Po-Ta Chen (陳伯達）in my birth place and hometown, Hsinchu. At age 95 now, he is the only surviving elder among the relatives of my father’s generation. Unexpectedly, he handed me the original hand-written copy of the Chen’s family registry (pedigree) when we met and asked me to be its custodian. He said, “You are the one with the highest level of education in our family and capable of safe-keeping this valuable family registry.” I was very grateful for his words of praise and encouragement.

This family registry was written in hand brush and edited by my grandfather in 1933 based on the early version written by my great-grandfather in 1882. It was passed down to my father for custody. My father had updated it a bit until he passed away in 1973. However, I intend to turn this valuable book over to my family in Taiwan eventually. I believe that it should be kept in Taiwan since very few of my own descendants who grew up in the U.S. would be able to comprehend Chinese writing, especially the classic Chinese.

I feel a great sense of responsibility to make good use of this family registry to tell our children and posterity thereafter about their ancestry and whereabouts they came from. Therefore I made a special effort in this memoir to trace the origin of the ancestors in mainland China and how they passed down from generation to generation until the present. As the one who was born and grew up in Taiwan and now has been living in the U. S., I believe that I am the best bridge between the relatives living in both sides of the world. I hope this memoir, in both English and Chinese, will help them all connect to one another better.

More importantly, I want them to know also about my early years in Taiwan and how I made the journey to the United States. Like the ancestors who sailed across the swift “Black Current”（黑潮）of the Taiwan Strait from Fujian Province, Southern China to Taiwan in 1770s, I sailed across the Pacific Ocean from Taiwan to North American Continent 190 years later. Despite the differences in distance and time, the audacity of both voyages was similar. There were also more relatives who migrated to the U. S. after me. These were the testimony of the long journey in our family history to seek a better life and opportunity in better places within the global village.

Over the past 60-plus years, I have met many people of various different backgrounds, who have lived in Taiwan as well as different cities of America, and traveled to many places within the U. S. and abroad. Human history is the records of people encountering with time and place. Everyone will leave some traces on the earth where he or she has passed through. There were some significant events as well as interesting anecdotes that I happened to witness and encounter during my life. I described them in this journal to reflect where I was when they occurred.

I started to write this memoir in 2010. With frequent interruptions, I finally completed the English draft in early 2013. It was about ten years after retirement from my full-time job. For the benefit of those relatives living in Taiwan, I spent one more year to complete the Chinese version and to assemble the photo pages. These were time-consuming and cumbersome tasks, especially typing Chinese characters with personal computer. The Chinese edition in book form is scheduled to be published in Taiwan in June 2015. I am glad that I have finally finished this important and the final project of my life at age 80.

Chungchin Chen Spring of 2015, Latham, NY, U.S.A.

Author Resume

Birth:1935 in Hsinchu City, Taiwan

Education: National Chengchi University, Taiwan BA in Political Science (1959)

University of California at Berkeley, Master of City and Regional Planning (1965)

Employment: Assistant Planner (1965-1967), City Planning Department, Kansas City, Missouri

Senior Planner (1968-1969), Metropolitan Planning Department, Marion County, Indianapolis, Indiana

Principal Planner (1970-1973), Deputy Director (1974-1979), Executive Director (1980-2003), Capital District Regional Planning Commission, Albany, New York

Chief Administrator (1994-2003), Capital District Youth Center, Inc., Albany, New York