A white haired, distinguished looking old man walked into the 2009 TELDAP annual exhibition venue carrying a fashionable laptop, the combination of “youth” and age seeing a little incongruous. He went to the TELDAP 成果入口網 booth and asked” Do you accept calligraphy?" Of course we have calligraphy amongst the 300 million digital archives on the TELDAP achievement portal website. Using the contents guide I can easily find a large amount of information the old man might be interested in.

 “Do you have any by Pu Xin-she? Any by Wang Wang-sun?(The two are famous Chinese artists in modern China) The old man wasn’t satisfied with seeing and being able to enlarge the pictures and continually asked about the names of the artists whose works were in the archives. Luckily, by inputting the name of the artist into the search box of the Union Catalogs you can find out quickly if an artist’s works are in the TELDAP digital archives.

 
The saying goes “People now enjoy the shade of trees planted by people before”. Thanks to the units that established the digital archives and the Union Catalogs I was able to quickly “enjoy the shade they provided” and let the old man view the works and read the story of Wang Wang-sun and “Jiu Wang-sun” Pu Xin-she. It seemed that the Taiwan of the 1950 that I am not familiar with but the old man remembered was recreated before our eyes. This old man has devoted himself to researching Chinese traditional calligraphy and contemporary painting after retirement and is a successful art dealer. He has good relationships with many major art galleries and auction houses in the Chinese cultural sphere, Taipei, Shanghai, Beijing and Hunan etc, and also is very familiar and is also on good term with the same in New York.
As an art dealer the old man knows all about the artists and I believe that he personally lived through the times described by novelist Bai Hsian-yong. Perhaps next to a lotus pond or in an old Japanese style house in Taiwan there was a calligrapher or painter still working in the oppressive heat of summer so different to the summers of his homeland, expressing his life experience through his brush. The sorrow of these rootless, somewhat noble, exiles is very different to anguished and sadness of oppressed local Taiwanese artists in the same era but is equally moving.

   
 “Are the Union Catalogs on DVD?”he suddenly asked after telling me interesting stories of members of Qing Dynasty nobility in Taiwan after 1949, bringing me back to reality with a start. 
“Uncle, all you have just seen and much more is on-line. You can see it when you go home.” I gave him the website address and told him that there was no need for him to carry a DVD with him on his travels because now is the era of cloud computing and he can see the paintings and calligraphy works he wants on- line.
“Cloud computing?  I know, I know” saying the English name correctly, showing that he is well in step with the latest technology. It seems that the service we provide really matches his lifestyle.

The old many walked out of the building carrying a piece of paper with “TELDAP results portal website” and the website address on it, seeming to have a lighter step than when he walked in, disappearing into the crowded Taipei streets. I think that is the last time I will see him, however, I hope, wherever he is in the world, when he has time he will turn on his PC and admire the works of Pu Xin-she and Chang Da-chien etc on-line and will relate his fascinating memories of time past to another young person.