52 alumni-voice.nctu.edu.tw
A Eulogy to Edward T. Yang
By Patrick Y. Yang
Edward Yang
was so much more than the famous film director celebratedby many in Taiwan. To me, he was the special young man with a very lively heart, a zest for life, and a love of creativity.
It is hard to believe such a gifted, intellectual, vigorous man is suddenly gone.
Ed visited me in the Bay Area in March 2005 and promised to return in a year to shoot a cinema project involving a high tech Chinese-American struggling, but also thriving between two cultures. I hadn’t seen Ed much since we left Hsinchu. Had I known that was to be our final time together, I would have spent more time with him, I would have paid more attention to everything he said, and I certainly would have regarded our time together that b r i g h t s u n n y s p r i n g day in South San Fran-cisco as very precious.
I showed Ed how we made genetically-engineered medicines u s i n g r e c o m b i n a n t D N A i n l i v i n g h o s t cells to fight cancer, among other diseases. I i n t r o d u c e d h i m t o several of my distin-guished Asian
August 2007 53 5 8
can colleagues. He was happy that he had a dose of what high tech felt like in California. He spent half a day at Genentech, the oldest biotech company in the world. Although he was already a household name in Taiwan then, he was still every bit the same curious, thoughtful, creative young man as when we were together in NCTU in the 1960s. He shared his ideas for the new film he was contemplating and the potential lead actor and actress. It was quite apparent that he was not a mass producer of films for entertainment, but a devoted artist crafting the details of his next masterpiece. Ed was special.
Although we were schoolmates, Ed and I actually didn’t know each other very well until our junior year when we were both in the Naval ROTC training center in Southern Taiwan. We had been assigned to hours of guard duty one evening at the gate of the Naval Training School. We found that not only did we share the same last name, but also the same height, weight, and even nerdy look-ing eyeglasses. Later in 1969, we worked together on our yearbook. Over a dozen classmates contributed, but the energetic and dedicated Ed did most of the artwork. Along with Tom Wu, I was one of the photographers, and I got my first peek into Ed’s amazing creative gift. From the mass of photo images he received, Ed was able to select and organize them into a succinct few pages that captured our youthful days in Chiao Da.
I remember another time I was impressed by Ed. This was when he articu-lated the inner vision he lived by. Ed and I jointly delivered a seminar at NCTU in 2001 on "Science and Humanity." The idea of this joint seminar came in 2000 when we got together during the New York Film Festival at the Lincoln Center in New York. I lived in New Jersey and worked for Merck then. Ed had just helped put the Taiwanese cinema on the global map by winning such big tro-phies as the Cannes best director for "Yi Yi." But Ed found time to share simple, yet profound, advice:“Follow your heart,” he told the audience. Develop the courage to follow your passion.” That was what Ed did in a spectacular way.
I don't know what more I can say about such an immense loss, not only to the industry he richly contributed to after leaving the electronics/computer field but also to us, who cherished him as a friend. There is a vacuum in me, still unable to digest the reality of his passing. There is an unspeakable anger in me as well, for cancer has once again beaten me by taking Ed mercilessly.
I will miss his expressing the very essence of the youthfulness, creativity and liveliness of our 1969 class at NCTU. Rest in peace, Ed. You will live on in our hearts.
54 alumni-voice.nctu.edu.tw
5 8
August 2007 55 5 8 2 0 0 5 Genentech Genentech 1 9 6 0 1 9 6 9 2 0 0 1 2 0 0 0 1 9 6 9
