THE YEAR was 1970. I was stationed in northern Taiwan. Our mission was in support of the war, but we were a good thousand miles away from it, and lived a life of relative comfort.

My wife had joined me over there. We were a young couple in love, and because I was a sergeant, we could have her come join me. We had to pay her way, but she came over and joined me after I had been there five months.

We lived in a 3-bedroom apartment for which we paid $65 a month. It was among the Chinese/Taiwanese people, your average neighborhood, and we were the only Americans in our building. Another American military couple lived in the next building over, a lovely Mormon couple from Utah named Jeff and Peggy Hansen, with their little girl, Shari.

In those days, Taiwan only had one television station, and it was only broadcasting five or six hours a day. Every broadcast day began and ended with a long, long tribute to warfare against mainland China, the People’s Republic of China, which we called Red China in those days.

THE SHOWS on Taiwanese TV were all really bad. There were Chinese dramas based upon ancient story lines, which were essentially the equivalent of English and Spanish Soap Operas. The commercials were cheaply produced and blasted the product name over and over. That is where I first saw and heard TO-SHI-BA!

One of the TV shows we did like to watch was an old 1950s American television show starring Cesar Romero. It was called Passport to Danger. The show was about Romero, as the main character. He was a diplomatic courier, taking important messages all over the world for America’s foreign policy interests. Intrigue. His passport took him to DANGER.

The funniest thing, however, was the way the show was advertised and promoted. Someone mistranslated the title, and they always called it Passport to DANCER. It still makes me laugh, thinking about that title. The show would have Chinese subtitles, but we could hear the original dialogue spoken by the English-speaking characters.

ANOTHER SHOW we loved to watch, also in English but with Chinese subtitles, was the famous family western show, Bonanza. We saw the earlier episodes, and there was one important difference. All references to the Cartwright’s cook, Hop Sing, were removed and he was removed from all scenes. The Taiwanese government, then still run by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek Kuomintang party, apparently did not want those images seen.

I grew up with television in the 1950s and 1960s, and even though we only got one channel in my East Texas town, we still got current programs 18 hours a day. So, the next time someone tells you “there’s nothing on TV,” tell them about the time I had only old black and white reruns of Bonanza and Passport to Dancer.

© 2008, Pappy Moore, All Rights Reserved.

Pappy Moore is a humorist, a native son of East Texas who still makes the piney woods his home. oaktreefm58@hotmail.com