Sixteen-year-old high-school student Jess Hu (
"Please take care of yourself, or else my elder sister and I will endeavor to abolish the mayoral system," the young man wrote in a card written to his workaholic father, Jason Hu (
But the 54-year-old man, who has spent little time with his family since he won last December's election by a landslide to become mayor of Taichung City, let his son down.
PHOTO: CNA
Soon after leaving for the US on a business trip on Aug. 9, Hu started suffering from severe headaches and dizziness. After a night in a San Francisco hotel, Hu went to a hospital for a three-day intensive health checkup, and was advised by the doctors to postpone his return to Taiwan.
In Taiwan, speculation abounded that Hu had suffered a stroke. But in several press conferences in the US, the mayor denied this, although he would give no details about his illness except that doctors had told him to rest.
But those close to Hu know that his lifestyle is almost certainly to blame for his illness.
"He is passionate about work and can't stand being unoccupied," Lin Mu-hung (
Although Hu's aides have arranged an average of 10 functions a day for the mayor, Hu sometimes shows up at some functions not on his itinerary.
Hu himself admits that he works too hard, to the extent that he has stopped playing his favorite sport of basketball since he became mayor of the third largest city in Taiwan.
"I've stopped playing basketball over the past seven or eight months since I became mayor. I simply stopped playing it regularly," Hu said during an interview with the Taipei Times yesterday, one day after he returned to Taiwan.
"This is why I got into all these troubles," he said.
Hu's love of work was even caricatured by the January issue of Compass, a Taichung-based bilingual entertainment magazine, as a horse-riding dragon slayer, a heroic image Hu said reflected Taichung residents' expectation of him as the city chief executive. "They wanted me to get rid of all the evils in the city," he said.
But the dragon-killer in the caricature has had his ups and downs in real life despite his glamorous career in the then KMT-led central government as foreign minister, Taipei's de facto ambassador to the US and government spokesman.
Hu has a Ph.D from Oxford, where he was under the supervision of renowned scholar Hedley Bull. But his road there was a bumpy one. He attended three universities in the US and the UK to earn his master's degree.
He first went to the University of South Carolina in the US, where he completed two years before his father became ill, forcing him to return to Taiwan in 1973.
Hu then failed to pass the qualification exam at Lancaster University, UK, on his second attempt to complete his master's studies before eventually obtaining his master's degree from the University of Southampton in 1977.
Hu then made it to the distinguished Balliol College at Oxford University and spent seven years studying for his doctorate. He submitted his Ph.D. thesis on the last day of his seven-year registration as a student there.
In his book entitled Pursuing Dreams in the City of Spires -- My days at Oxford (
"Failure could be merely an interlude in the progression of one's life. As long as one doesn't give in easily, one will always have the opportunity to choose the outcome," Hu wrote.
But even before falling sick in the US this month, Hu had had another unforgettable experience fighting severe illness.
While serving as foreign minister in the summer of 1998, Hu made a one-week trip to five of Taiwan's allies in Africa. On his way back to Taiwan, he began suffering from a fever and was hospitalized. However, malaria experts in Taiwan could not find out what the problem was.
"It was alarming to me," Hu recalled of his illness a few years ago.
"At that point I knew I should pay attention to my health," he said, while admitting that he forgot his promise after getting absorbed in his work following his he recovery.
This time, Hu has said he would slow down, although the press treated this promise with skepticism when they met with Hu in Taichung yesterday morning.
"They said it's impossible for Jason Hu to slow down, but I'll have to prove it," Hu said.
Even his close aide held some doubts about his promise.
"I don't really believe what he said. Once he feels better, he'll get down to work. It's a question of one's personality ... He is a perfectionist," Lin said.
"But it's our subordinates' responsibility to adjust his itinerary for him," Lin added.
When he was sick, Hu also came to realize how important his family was to him.
"If you don't endeavor to spend time with your family, you may find it's too late and you don't have the opportunity anymore," Hu said, a reflection his son Jess would definitely agree with.
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