For fifty years, ritualistically, he had been repeating the same jokes, laughing at them because they were so infantile and stupid

Premier Chiang Ching-kuo (left) visited two cooperative farms and a tidal land reclamation project in Yunlin County in south-west Taiwan March 18. He talks with a farmer in Taiwan dialect through an interpreter.

Can I bum a cigarette off you?

He remembers Milly's childhood fear of being deserted and the terror she experienced at the first bloody sign of womanly/wombly maturation: "Her growing pains at night […]