I’m sorry: this episode’s script was finished, but I caught a cold. You can probably hear my stuffy voice, so I am taking a week off. Thank you for understanding. Meanwhile, let me recommend two Taiwanese folk songs I love; may their beauty brighten your day.

I first visited Taiwan in 2012 with great excitement. Taiwanese music, film, and literature had nourished my youth and enlarged my imagination of spiritual life. Near National Taiwan University I found Yin Haiguang’s former home at Lane 16, Alley 18, Wenzhou Street. During his final five years he endured attacks; his wife Xia Junlu even felt his ceaseless work after serious illness expressed a wish to hasten death amid despair.

In Yin Haiguang’s Final Words, published in 1970, we see a man once passionately devoted to Western life returning to Chinese tradition. This was no cheap, fashionable reversal. He felt deep responsibility for humanity and his nation, and equally profound sympathy and compassion for individual lives.

At the residence I saw a letter to Wei Zhengtong:‘A scholar amid this desolate heaven and earth, sober while all are drunk, repeatedly feels an indescribable chill. A lonely traveler on the long road longs to see a household fire by the way—a little teahouse where the soul may find comfort.’People call Yin harsh, but he was not unfeeling. A bright flame of sincerity burned within him and inadvertently scorched those who misunderstood him.

In his final years Zhang Shangde asked, ‘Teacher, will you study religion?’ Yin answered yes:‘But not in the traditional or ordinary sense. My God has no concrete object. It is love, sympathy, and harmony between humanity and nature, like Einstein’s faith.’