What was going on when I was born?

Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. said today that relations with the Chinese Communists faced ''a very worrisome specter'' over the question of American military sales to Taiwan. In a candid statement about the difficulties the United States faces in its relations with the Chinese Nationalists in Taiwan and the Communists in Peking, Mr. Haig told an audience in Palm Beach, Fla.: ''In the period ahead it is going to be essential to both Peking and the United States to handle this particular question with great sensitivity and care.'' Warning From the Communists The Communists have warned that, if the United States supplies the Nationalists with advanced fighter planes or other modern equipment, this could lead to a deterioration of relations. As a sign of disquiet, Peking has delayed sending a military mission here to discuss possible arms purchases of its own. According to American officials, the Chinese Communists have said that they will not do so until the United States makes known what it will do about supplying military equipment to the Nationalists.

What Howard E. Rollins Jr. remembers best was the moment when he came in for the second screen test and met O.J. Simpson coming out. He had already passed through three auditions at director Milos Forman's apartment, two readings with other actors, and an initial test for the part of Coalhouse Walker Jr., a part which is to the movie version of ''Ragtime,'' which opens Friday at the Coronet, what a mainspring is to a watch. And all the time he knew, deep in his gut, that the role of the fiery black turn-of-the-century piano player who is willing to kill and to die to retain his dignity was going to go to somebody else, because Howard Rollins was nobody at all, except for maybe ''Who was that guy who was so good in that Off Off Broadway thing we saw a couple years ago?''

NEWARK THE board of directors of NJ Transit, the state's mass-transit corporation, is scheduled to vote in two weeks on whether to impose another round of fare increases and service reductions on all its bus and rail lines this year. At its regular meeting last week, the board discussed the need to close a projected budget gap caused by decreased ridership and further cuts in Federal aid, but it postponed a decision until Nov. 24 to give it time to get a clearer picture of the Federal cutbacks. Two days later - on Thursday - the House-Senate Appropriations Conference Committee voted to cut NJ Transit's operating subsidies for the 1982 fiscal year by $1.5 million, or roughly 3 percent. That is significantly less than the 12 percent across-the-board cut that President Reagan had asked for in September.

On the perimeter of Fort Allen, where the inexorable tropical vegetation tries to take back its own, vines ease over the barbed wire and thick vegetation hides the old military installation from view. Grass grows knee-high in the shady gardens of the abandoned officers' quarters, and there is a certain lushness in the midst of the isolation and decay. In the four compounds that hold 778 Haitian refugees, however, there is not a blade of grass, not a tree, only asphalt shimmering in the heat and wire fences topped with shiny new rolls of barbed wire. For shade, there are dormitory tents of canvas stretched over plywood frames. For seating, there are cots inside the tents. Since Aug. 12, the Haitians have been waiting at Fort Allen for the end of the odyssey that for many began months earlier when they fled Haiti in small boats. As the delay grows, so does the sense of desperation and the conviction that they have been forgotten.

ROSLYN HARBOR In 1969, Nassau County acquired 145 acres of land here for $3.5 million and termed it the William Cullen Bryant Preserve, since it was near Cedarmere, the Long Island home of the widely respected newspaper editor, essayist and poet. Five years later, in a 25-room brick Georgian mansion on the property, the county established the Museum of Fine Art, where today it presents large art and sculpture exhibitions. Now 19 acres remaining from the original parcel of land, which comprised the former estate of Childs Frick, the multimillionaire paleontologist and art collector, are being eyed by developers as a site for new houses. The property, along the northern side of Northern Boulevard, is between Glen Cove Road on the east and the Roslyn Viaduct on the west.

A TIARA of lights 325 feet above the roadway of the Bayonne Bridge glowed majestically last night as the 1,675-foot-long span marked its golden anniversary. But the official celebration - partially eclipsed, perhaps, by the hooplah that accompanied the George Washington Bridge's 50th birthday on Oct. 25 - will not be held until tomorrow. One of three bridges linking New Jersey and Staten Island, the Bayonne was dedicated on Saturday, Nov. 14, 1931, but did not open to traffic until 5 A.M. the next day. (The others, the Outerbridge Crossing at Perth Amboy and the Goethals at Elizabeth, were already in service.)

-------------------------------------------------------------------- Jonathan Friendly is the press reporter for The Times. By JONATHAN FRIENDLY Early in the movie ''Absence of Malice,'' Megan Carter, a court reporter for The Miami Standard, is confronted at her desk in the newsroom by a fellow named Michael Gallagher. Miss Carter (Sally Field) has just written a front page story naming Gallagher (Paul Newman) as a key suspect in a red-hot criminal investigation. He would like, he says angrily, to tell his story. Any reporter worth her press card would jump at the chance to interview a suspect in a criminal inquiry. But Miss Carter's response is a hasty dash to the lawyer's office to find reasons for not giving Gallagher a chance to reply.

FINALLY, the high cost of money is sending tens of thousands of the businesses that borrowed it down the road that so many of the experts said it would to a cleaner called bankruptcy court. All it took to send them there was a recession. The last big decline was the one in 1974 and 1975. That was the inventory recession. Companies, anticipating ever-rising sales, had crammed their warehouses with materials and supplies and products, only to watch them languish there when the economy stopped buying. Those that couldn't cope shut down or sold out. This is the interest-rate recession. Before it began showing up in the data that depicted a slide in the overall economy, it had crippled two of the most rate-sensitive industries, automobiles and housing. Now it is sweeping into many other industries.

TRENTON THE easy passage of all eight public questions on the Nov. 3 ballot does not mean instant change in the issues they addressed. Indeed, additional work and uncertainty, including at least one lawsuit, stand in the way of quick implementation of six of the eight. The hurdles are as follows: - The three bond issues, which total $500 million, require legislative enactment of appropriation bills. These measures have to be squeezed into a busy lame-duck session that will be preoccupied with Congressional redistricting, raises for judges, no-fault automobile insurance, cigarette taxes and, possibly, enactment of the business-tax cuts that were the underpinning of the economic recovery plan put forth by Thomas H. Kean, the Republican (and apparently successful) gubernatorial candidate. - All of the casino-tax revenues for this fiscal year already are earmarked for existing aid programs for the elderly and handicapped. Questions abound about where the money will come from for new, voter-approved medical and transportation programs for them in the fiscal year that starts July 1. - Any sharp reduction in former tidelands subject to state ownership claims still faces the possibility of a suit challenging the constitutionality of an amendment, also approved by the voters, that takes away the state's right to those claims.

Twenty-six years ago, Walter P. Reuther, president of the United Automobile Workers, addressed the merger convention of the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations in New York and laid out major goals for the labor movement. Unions, he said to enthusiastic applause, must organize the unorganized: workers in the chemical industry, particularly the giant E.I. du Pont de Nemours & Company; the textile industry, including plants that had been shifted from the Northeast to the South; construction workers; teachers; white-collar workers, and state and local government workers. Tomorrow, as 900 A.F.L.-C.I.O. delegates assemble for their first convention in New York in 18 years, they will carry forward the work of a federation that still has failed to achieve most of those goals. Some Gains, but Short of Goals While gains have been made in government and teaching, only a small minority of textile, construction and chemical workers belong to unions, and only now is a serious bid being made to organize Du Pont, with a vote set in early December involving 14,000 workers. Perhaps more important, labor experts say, there is evidence not only that the movement is having trouble organizing workers in the new high-technology industries, but also that labor leaders have little understanding of how to approach the problem.

WHITE PLAINS ANEWLY passed property-tax assessment bill, which had been repeatedly criticized by Westchester County's 13-member state legislative delegation and by the Board of Legislators as ''unwieldy'' and ''deficient,'' was vetoed by Governor Carey last week. Mr. Carey's rejection of the legislation, which was approved by the State Legislature on Oct. 28, will give the county and other local governments another chance to lobby for a bill that will keep homeowners from facing huge tax increases as the state complies with court orders that all property be assessed at full value. Before Mr. Carey's action, the Board of Legislators, acting on the recommendation of the county's Special Task Force on Reassessment, had decided against seeking a gubernatorial veto of the bill and instead sent a message to Mr. Carey asking that he consider amending the legislation. Copies of the message were also forwarded to Assembly Speaker Stanley Fink and the Senate majority leader, Warren M. Anderson. ''We do not feel there should be an outright rejection of the bill, because it took six years to get this bill approved,'' explained Legislator Edward M. Gibbs, Republican of Peekskill and a member of the special task force. ''We thought it would be faster if the Legislature moved to amend the bill.''

TRENTON THE close contest for Governor of New Jersey, which will not be resolved until after a ballot recount, has pointed up some weaknesses in the way election returns are handled in the state's 21 counties and could lead to some revisions in the election law. The weaknesses were always there, of course, but they were masked by the fact that a candidate usually won by a comfortable margin and an exact, accurate vote count was not important. By the time the state's Board of Canvassers met on Dec. l to certify the results, the election itself was a fading memory, and few people took note that the final figures were far different from those reported in unofficial tallies on election night. In the election at hand, however, with seven-hundreths of a percent separating the contenders - Thomas H. Kean of Livingston and Representative James J. Florio of Runnemede -every vote is important, and the fluctuation in the totals has been a source of irritation to many voters. They cannot understand why it is so difficult to determine who won on Nov. 3.