On December 7, 1988, a major fire in Wu's Wenchow Street neighborhood destroyed Wu's life's collection, but blazed a path of unanticipated fame. Now, sitting in his living room in a dorm at National Taiwan University, on the one hand he regrets the papers lost in the fire, a collection of data from four or five hundred years of Fukienese.
去年十二月七日凌晨，台北市潮州街的一場大火，燒去吳守禮居住四十餘年的宿舍，燒掉他多年的研究心血，也燒出他始料所未及的名氣。