Li-Chang Kuo’s Father
written by Li-Chang Kuo
People always astonished that “Why could Li-Chang Kuo easily resurrect a famous doll toy to be the world’s first with his techniques of 13-year-old?” The answers is very simple, because I have an idealist-inventor’s father—Kuo, Kun-Cheng.
In 1949, Chiang Kai-Shek--one of history’s most tyrants who fled to Taiwan to catch Communist-spy, my father rescued the victim and subjected to backfire and fell into a litigation of thirteen years—the period just during in the womb to my graduation of primary school. My father who was afraid to implicate innocents, he had given the equipments to his employees and arranged their way out or helped them to start their businesses, and closed his flourishing career since 1945; he fought the inexplicable war alone.
My father’s all incomes had to pay the cost of litigation because he did not understand Mandarin—so-called “National Language”; each summon always made him angry till paralysis in the corner, then, he went out to find someone to give his new invented equipments away, so that often impoverished by my grandmother’s skinny hands holding a bowl of rice to feed our brothers, and that also made my father declined to lead the ridicule by my Tainan’s relatives, who laughed at him: “Not only poor, but also stupid!”
Nevertheless, when the days were no summoned, my father would reinvigorate to invent those automations by the simplest tolls such as Brass-Stripping, Aluminum-Smelting, Shoe-Making machines which far-reaching impact the future generation. About 1963, my father suddenly said that “Every household will have a TV in the future~” And put it into practice for a Mutual Fund to raise NTD ten thousand to make an automation, and to invent the processing method and the material of brass stripes; those days, I just came in and went out with my father, and I could make the simple precised Eyelet-Lugs alone before I finished my primary school in June 1965.
It’s said that “There is a Minister of Economic Affairs named ‘K. T. Lee’ who is building a Kaohsiung Export Processing Zone (KEPZ)~ ” I rode onto my father’s autobic to Kaohsiung to look for KEPZ from Tainan. However, after a couple of months, we could not find the KEPZ. In the Chinese Lunar New Year of 1966, my father returned Tainan to see grandmother who was in sick, and no wonder to be arrested maliciously into the jail, and my grandmother—an old foot-binding woman was broken the legs by those ferocious polices at the same time, grandma was permanent disability till died on the 25th day of October in 1970!
Those laughers ridiculed loudly, they thought that “This was the top-rich family of Tainan city finally be wiped from the face of the earth!” No one could image that “There is still a Sovereign God existed above the top of the human heads!” I applied what I only possessed skill of “Deep-Drawing” which leant from my father to make the Eyelet products and dealt with an American firm—Transworld Electronic Co., Ltd. in December 1966 to settle a purchasing order of NTD one hundred thousand in 5 days, and meanwhile, I earned NTD ninety thousand—the sum of money could buy the land approximate 11,000 sq feet at the side of Park Road.
In the Chinese Lunar New Year of 1967, my family eventually had a better new year, yet grandma’s legs could not be healed by money eternally! I discovered my father’s invention of powerful inherent energy, so that I worked closely with my American customer, and a few years later, my customer was in the name of AVNET back to the United States for listing on the NYSE successfully.
I started building new plants almost every year since 1968; my father became a local gentry, an object of everyone sycophancy. And he opposed my mass production, always pointed out to the pile of Bakelite wastes like mountain and said “People should have a social responsibility; you are proceeding an unfair competition! You should abandon the business, and you will harm the world if continued!”
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In early 1979, the day of Taiwan-US diplomacy severed, I arrived New York and to go around Seattle, Chicago, San Jose, Orlando and etc to try realizing what caused the energy crisis. Some American heard “Li-Chang Kuo” and “Cheng-Kuang Precision Industrial Co., Ltd.” they all reacted that “We switched our career because of you!” I realized that I accidentally wiped out my abroad competitors.
My father used his rest of life to protect against the tomorrow empire I planned to build, and the evil ones took advantages that made me think: “Is this the one who dared to rescue the victim as the tyrant caught the Communist-spy in Taiwan?” At last, I dropped out of my career in Tainan to Taipei to rescue a dying doll for proving that “Technologicalization of Traditional Industry” and it’s very easily resurrected to fly up into the branches to be phoenix. And this doll company—an American firm who got Taiwan’s plant shuttered without mercy to make thousands of unemployment family, and brought my offerings to the cheap-labor power’s country for highly profits, I saw the event and could not help to think of my father’s words: “People should have a social responsibility~ ”
My father proclaimed “Cooperate and sharing” in his entire life; finally, his example changed me to emphasize on social responsibility investment (SRI), try hard for prevention of the foreseeable economic plague. Although, I’ve been besieging by the entities of corruption for the commercial interests of my fruit that postponed the best timing of avoiding the mankind disaster; but one day, the world will be changed by my initiatives.
To promise me that he has prepared to live for one hundred years old, and by means of the technology of power chip to develop new aircrafts, my father suddenly died on the fourth day of January in 1999. So far thinking about my father, there is always a feeling of deep pain at the bottom of heart; especially, during the New Year and the feast-day.
Recall that the age of reigning by the tyrant; my father’s pocket was always with some fragmentary sheet of paper and a small pencil, relied on them to create the necessary techniques of Taiwan’s Precision Industry, also to leave an industrial bible in my mind-----
Father of a small pencil
Always with him
And some fragmentary paper
He intently drafted up
To build the automation
Father of a small pencil
Jail could not lock his mind
Even the plots of evildoers
To trap him by iron-bar
Pencil still penetrated out
Father of a small pencil
Contributed Taiwan’s Industry
Deeply influenced his son
To create precision components
To reveal the miraculous signs
*Author Li-Chang Kuo is called “Pathfinder” who contributed the way of rebuilding the global economy at APEC CEO Summits.
E-mail: richtwn@ms62.hinet.net
