Taiwan Characters Sketch: a Chinese mainlander's first trip to Taiwan （2 out of 2） 台湾人物素描 ： 一个大陆人的首次台湾行（二之二）

In my three decades of living the in the US, I have had opportunities to know people from Taiwan. Most of them are professionals, such as educators, scholars, business people, and even monks and nuns. Most of them I got to know a lot through repeated exposures.

So for my first trip to Taiwan in the March of 2025, I was eager for some, and even many, scattered and surface level connections, and used these to enrich, even just a little bit, my understanding of the communities and their people.

Here are my verbal sketches of some individuals I ran into, my grouping of them, and what they helped me understand.

Street and small eatery vendors

My first lunch was in a small eat-in in Dan Shui. Character A, a man in his 30s, stood next to the boiling pots cooking. Character B,  a woman in her 60s, moved through the tables to take orders. Character C, another elderly woman came in and out of a backroom, carrying pots and vegetables. By seeing how they interacted with each other, I figured out A was the son, B was the mother, and C was the sister of B.

A few days later, I came back to the same eatery, expecting to see the mother-son pair again. Stepping in, I thought I was at the wrong place. 

Around the pots was Character D, an elderly man. 

Around the tables was Character C, the elderly women who were washing vegetables last time. 

Character E, a woman in her 30s-40s, sitting in a corner of the restaurant eating area, nursing a baby. When our eyes met, she looked shy, a bit startled, which made me feel that she was a stranger to the restaurant, needing a shelter to feed the baby.  When I was eating, she sat diagonally from me, remaining in the same crouching posture that made her look like a bit helpless.

Then, I saw Character F, a boy around 10-years old with a backpack coming in with a friend, and sat down. They did not order, but Character D, the man at the pots seemed to know what they wanted, and brought them each a large bowl of steaming noodle soup, and the two friends started to eat comfortably, chatting about some school stuff.

Then, entered Character B, the elderly woman who served me the first time I came in. She went straight to Character E, the younger woman and picked up the baby from her.

Then Character E stood up, looking like a frozen person loosing up. She walked to Character D, the elderly man around the pots. They started to talk about food. In a matter of a few minutes, Character E emerged to become a center of the place. She put on an apron, walked to the back room, came out with a big bottle of soy sauce, and moved to Character F, the boy eating with a friend, and asked them how the food tasted, and said proudly "我要做卤肉”, while waging the large bottle of soy sauce.

I felt like I was watching a play unfolding, one scene after another. At the end of the meal, more satisfying to me than the tasty food, was that I figured out this was a family and who was who. Two elderly parents, plus the wife's sister, plus their son and daughter in-law, operate a small eatery that fed customers, and the family of three generations (the baby being nursed and Character F were the third generation).

It was a fresh experience to me, because, in mainland China, and the US, most the places I go to eat, running around the tables are employees, and behind the scenes are the owners. 

My experience the next 10 days, told me that family run businesses seemed to make up the majority of the small businesses I encountered.

I was standing in front of a fruit stand. A few steps away from the fruits, I saw two ladies in their 70s, each holding a lunch box, moving food from one's own container to the other's container, and sometimes almost to each other's mouth. A scene you would see at someone's home. By their facial features, I could tell they were sisters. As soon as they saw me, a customer, one of them came to me, and introduced the fruits, weighed my selections, took my money, as any gracious and efficient vendor would do.

My friend Jia Ru took me to a breakfast eatery in Zhu Wei. A mom, a dad, and their son. After standing on the line for a long while, we got our Dou Jiang and You Tiao and sat down to eat. Next to us, the middle-aged mom was pushing a big bag of flour on the floor forward. We grabbed the chance to ask her how long they had been there in business. "26 years. We started here when he was born." She pointed to her adult son, busy packing food in bags for customers. "

I ate at a Yu Yuan snack place, a sister and brother were busily serving customers. I asked them whether they'd be open for breakfast, the sister smiled and said "no" with no hesitation, as if they had never thought of serving breakfast.

The next morning I went to the same streets. The bustling scenes of the previous night were replaced with one of being sleepy. I finally found an elderly woman standing in front of a pot serving 蚵仔面. I got a bowl from her. 

"Why are there so few places for breakfast?" I pointed to the closed stores.

She looked a bit surprised by my question. Then, she said "This area has good 机能 Ji Neng. If all of us started serving breakfast, the business would be hard to do. " 

It was the first time in my life, hearing an elderly lady, a street food vendor talking about the Ji Neng of a community, meaning how the community functions as a wholistic organ.

After eating my breakfast noodle soup, I went up the hill to visit Dan Da. On my way returning, I wanted to see her again for another bowl. Standing in front of the pot, intently stirring the pot, was a young man. It's the son's shift now. By then, I had learned enough to figure this out quickly.

When I commented on this in front of my friend Nancy, she said very quickly "Of course it's a nice way to do business. You can discuss business any time of the day. You can never break up with your partners."

At the end of the trip, I felt that I had been fed and served by families. Although I lived in both villages and big cities in China and the US, this was such a new experience for me. 

It dawned on me, that this business scene, must have been one that existed in Chinese communities for hundreds of years, even thousands. To have kept this muscle of the economy going, a society as an organism needs to be relatively stable and healthy. 

Mr. He, the Returning Student of Dan Jiang University

My quest for traces of influential figures in my life led me to the Shepherd's Lawn on the southern end of Dan Jiang University. There sits a simple rock memorial of Li Shuangze. After sitting next to the rock for a while reminiscing about his actions to start a creative movement of Chinese music and song writing, I decided that I had to take a photo with it.

The only person in my view was an elderly man walking a German shepherd with a stick in his hand. He was 10 yards away from me. Not to startle him, I walked toward him, paused at a distance from him, and asked whether he could take a photo for me next to the statue.

“我是一个游人。你能帮我照张相吗？" (I'm a tourist. May you take a photo for me?) 

I composed this golden line. It helped people immediately understand my request and why. He nodded with no hesitation and removed his white cotton thread gloves to reach for my phone. 

After taking my photo, he asked "你是一个人来旅游吗? (Are you visiting from out of town alone here?" I said yes and this exchange opened up a conversation after the photo was taken.

I learned that he graduated from Dan Jiang University in the 70s, majoring in engineering. He said, to his luck, Jiang-Jing Guo started the 十大建设 10 Major Infraustructure Projects. He lived in Taipei, working in the government engineering offices, got married, and brought up his children. 

"Now I have moved back to live next to Dan Da." He pointed to a direction off at the edge of the campus. "I've passed the exam for its MA program. This Fall, I will become a student here again." "What's your major?" I asked. "老年人护理学 Geriatric Care". "The courses are tough. It's not easy to pass the exams." He said with an evident look of apprehension but excitement.

Toward the end of our conversation, he asked for my last name, and told me his last name "人可何 Ren-Ke He" he said it while using his right hand to write on the white gloves of his left hand. I wished him enjoy his graduate study and he wished me a safe trip.

Mr. Cai, the Oyster Guy

The high speed train brought me from Taipei in the north to Jiayi (County) in the south in just over an hour. After a wait longer than that at the station, I got on a bus to Budai port, where I would take a boat to Penghu. When my bus arrived in Budai port,  it was dusk.

After walking through a few quiet blocks, it was already dark. On the roadside in front of a simple two story house, a man stood there handling something. Next to him were piles of oyster shells. I stopped to ask what he was doing. 

He opened his mouth, and explained to me in paragraphs, while his hands kept the same rhythm of actions. He made a thin plastic thread go through a small hole already drilled on top of a oyster shell, tied the shell to a fixed position on the string, then, tied the next shell to the string at a distance to the last shell. A few feet away, a squatting woman was busy doing something.

"I tie 11 shells to the string at an equal distance, then I tie 5 strings in a group. In the ocean, I fix a group on a tube standing in the water. (pointing to a thick bamboo stick about 6-feet long) I used to use this kind of tubes, but they rot easily. (pointing to a dark plastic tube of the same size) I now use this kind and they can stay for many years."

"Where do the oysters come from?" I asked with surprise. I always thought each oyster grew as an independent creature with its shells and flesh. 

"微生物 Microorganism. They become attached to the shell and grow. " He answered with no sign of having to think.

I learned his last name was Cai. Mr. Cai seemed to be in his upper 60s, with a tanned face and big and strong jaws. He would turn his head to initiate eye contact with me whenever he wanted to emphasize something. His eyes sparkled with peace. 

Mr. Cai told me, the next morning, he would first go on the market street to open and sell his harvested oysters, while his wife would go to the vegetable market to shop and make breakfast. Then his wife would come to take over, and he would go into the ocean to post the oyster shells in the ocean. 

The next morning, at 6:30am, I went to the market. There he was, sitting under a tent, absorbed in opening oysters in his hands. On a simple wooden board, to his left, was a pile of oysters with shells covered in dark-greyish mud; to his right was a small plastic container. He picked up an oyster from the left, cracked it open with some maneuvering of his hands, and carefully poked the flesh to make it drop into the plastic container. 

He told me his ancestors were from XiaMen. He had three children, all were grown up, one son working in hotel business in Tainan, one daughter married to another town, and one son I didn't catch the name for. One of his sons was 32, still single. Seeing a fleeting expression of worry, I said at 32 he still had a good number of years to find a spouse. Somehow that triggered Mr. Cai to talk about himself.

"When I was a young man, I did all the bad things, refusing to study in school, fighting on the street, frowning upon work...  When I got married, I became a different man. Now my children are all grown up, our mission is quite done. I make sure I take a one-day break every week. My wife and I would go to climb 阿里山 (A-Li Mountain) for fun. " He said with a content smile.

I bought from his a container of freshly shelled oysters with $200 NTW, about $7 US dollars. He treated it seriously, putting it in a plastic bag, adding another layer, and adding ice to between the two bags. 

Descents of 老兵 Lao Bing 

In 1949, about one million military staff, civil service staff, some of their family members, retreated to Taiwan with the National Party government. Among the 600,000 were military staff members, mostly soldiers, called Lao Bing (veterans) or Rong Min 荣民 (the honored citizens). Their lives, their children's lives, made up an important part of the recent history of Taiwan.

I've heard and read a lot about them. On this trip, I found myself connecting a lot of dots together. 

In Taipei, I visited 妈祖新村 Ma Zu Xin Cun with Nancy and her family. Nancy said "When I first saw these row houses and courtyard, I was nicely surprised and felt so much at home." 

Nancy is from He Nan, a province from northern central China.  Well, most of the buildings I saw in Taiwan were in a Min Nan (Southern Fujian) style, explaining why I felt I was back in Fu Jian.  But Ma Zu Xin Cun was built in a northern Chinese style, understandably, because so many soldiers were from northern China.

Nancy's husband Shun Huang pointed to several large, uniformed looking 8-story buildings near Ma Zu Xin Cun, and said those were where some of the Lao Bing's descendants had moved to. I looked at the buildings, but there was no way I could find one of them to chat. 

In Taichung, my experiences are different.

At Taichung airport, I needed to take a taxi to go to my idol singer Zhang Yusheng's tomb. I went to the first cab parked at the start of a long line.

A tall and grey-haired driver removed himself from the driver's seat, and came to open up the back trunk. I had only a small suitcase and a handbag. Seeing the driver standing there like a statue with no signs of motion, I picked up my luggage and put them into the trunk. 

Getting into the car, I was prepared to ride a long way with a somewhat lethargic driver. After learning that I was going to Da Du Shan Cemetery, he started the car.  I just kept my mouth shut and looked at the views outside the windows.

After about 10 minutes of drive, the driver said "你一个人来吆？“ (You cam here by yourself?) "Yes." I said.  "了不起！" I always got this remark from the locals, men and women, young and old. 

That invariably opened our conversation.

"我在大陆长大，生活在美国。” (I grew up in mainlands, and live in America now.) That was the second golden line I learned to compose for this trip. It explained why I spoke Mandarin, but with an accent, and truthfully revealed my American background.

"我爸爸也是大陆来的。" (My father was also from mainland.) A bit to my surprise, the locals always followed the "mainland thread" of my self-introduction.

"大陆哪里？" (Where in mainland?)

"山东。" (Shandong province)

"我是在山东长大的。" (I also grew up in Shandong.)

"你爸爸老家山东哪里？" (Where in Shandong?)

"好像是荣城。” （I think Rong Cheng.)

"你爸爸回过老家吗？" (Did your dad go back to his hometown to visit?)

"没有。" (No.)

"为什么？" (Why?)

After a bit of silence, he said "...... 他觉得没什么钱给亲戚。(He felt he didn't have any money to give to his relatives.) "

I immediately understood him. When some of these Civil War veteran went to mainland to look for their long lost parents, wives and children after >30 years of separation in 1980s, mainlander Chinese income level was very low and their relatives from Taiwan seemed to be so much better off.

I told the driver that he father should go as now mainlanders had little expectation to receive money from their Taiwanese relatives.

He became silent again. "他现在已经走不动了。” (He cannot move around any more.)

I learned his mother is 本省人 Ben Sheng Ren, residents of Chinese descent who settled in Taiwan before 1949. The driver knew Zhang Yusheng's songs but did not know he was buried in Da Du Shan. He carefully looked at the map I handed him, and drove me up the hills, stopping right next to Yusheng's tomb. 

He came out, stood there in silence for a bit, and went back to his car. 

Later the same day, after visiting Feng Yuan high school, I got in a cab with a diver, short built, short hair cut, round faced and much chipper. 

Upon asking and hearing my routine self-introduction "growing up in mainland and living in the US", he immediately said his father was from the mainland. 

He shared, his father was a single, in his 20s when he arrived in Taiwan in 1940s. It was only after 20 years, he managed to find a local Ben Sheng Ren wife, through the persistent work of some matchmakers. 

"My mom is 20 years younger than my father. After they got married, my father did not waste any time, and went to have five children in a row, one each year." He laughed.

When asked what food they ate at home growing up, given that Sichuan and Min Nan food are so different, he said he loved Sichuan food because his father cooked most of the time. 

"台湾本省人谁喝绿豆粥啊？我爸爸做绿豆粥给我们喝。还有腌小菜啊。"(Which Ben Shen Ren drinks mung bean soup? My dad made it for us. He also made pickled veggies.) He said with a tone that sounded like a show-off.

Now his dad was long gone, and his mother was 74-year old. "我们会去找四川餐馆，吃吃四川菜，回味一下小时候爸爸做的菜的味道。" (We will find Sichuan restaurants to eat, to remember the tastes of my dad's cooking.)

This driver dropped me off at my lodging inn for the night. 

Putting down my luggage, I went to the street to look for some food. In a mixture of bakeries, roadside stands, occasional small restaurants, one shabby looking eatery caught my attention with a big sign "外省面" (Out-of-province Noodles). 

I went in. The menu shows varieties of beef noodle soup, no seafood such as 蚵仔面 (Oyster Noodles)、小管面 (Squid Noodles). I ordered a 阳春面 (Clear Noodles) and dried tofu.

A middle aged couple with eye-glasses wearing greasy aprons were hard at work, moving between pots, sinks and tables. 

After the wife brought food to my table, the husband asked me where I came from. Upon hearing my mainland-US self-introduction, he shouted with evident pleasure - 

我爸爸也是大陆来的。(My father was also from mainland.)

大陆哪里的？(Where in mainland?)

福建。(Fu Jian)

你妈妈呢？(How about your mom?)

我妈妈是本省人。(My mom is a local.)

Moment later, their 12-year old daughter rushed in after school. A pretty, happy looking girl with long hair. She threw her school backpack onto a side table with lots of receipts and order tickets hanging, and started to talk to her parents about her class trip to a nearby city with great excitement. I would not be surprised if she rarely traveled with her family or classmates.

So, there, in Taichung, three of the few locals I got to talk to, two drivers and one restaurant owner, were descents of Lao Bing (Veteran Soldiers). 

For all three, fathers were from mainland provinces, Shandong, Sichuan, Fujian; for all three, mothers were locals, from the countryside, with Min Nan (Southern Fujian) background. 

For all three, I got the sense that they did not receive a high education, and life was tough for their parents, and not significantly better for them either.

When that reality dawned on me, I decided no longer to ask such questions - "Why don't your family visit mainland?" Let alone "Why don't you send your child to study abroad?"  

In Feng Yuan High School of Taichung, in the 1980s, my idol Zhang Yusheng, the then high school student, much disliked a Lao Bing who was a janitor on his campus. Yusheng felt he was impatient and rude. When one day he learned that this Lao Bing, and many of his fellow veterans that Yufeng found "low" and "strange", were heroes that protected China in World War II, he expressed his deep guilt and understanding through this song called 他们 (They) that he wrote in college.

他们满脸风霜 Their faces look battered with wind and frost

他们眼神迷茫 Their eyes look confused and lost

他们箕踞围坐 With others, they sit casually in a circle

他们孤独蜷缩 By themselves, they curl up alone at night

他们蹒跚的步履踩过整个中国  Their stumbling steps are made with feet that once covered the entire China

他们交叠的皱纹是历史的迹痕 Their wrinkles in all directions tell the history of our nation

他们黑黄的唇齿舔过泥泞雨雪

Their black and yellow lips and teeth once licked mud, rain and snow

他们颤抖的双手曾在炮火下穿梭  哦

Their trembling hands once shuttled to fight back under the cannon fire

。。。。。。

他们以前也念过诗书也谈过恋爱

They once read poems and books and dated

也拥有天伦拥有工作和自己的一片天空 哦

They once had families and jobs and a patch of sky of their own

他们今天有山上种树厕所收钱

They now plant trees on the mountains and collect fees in bathrooms

也有人卖面卖臭豆腐和自己的风烛残年 哦

They now sell noodle and sticky toufu and their remaining years

A large portion of the Lao Bing descents had very little social mobility. But they were mobile enough to still get to the larger cities.

In Penghu, all the people I talked to, were Penghu locals. When I asked whether they know any or know where the descents of Lao Bing lived, none of them knew any. One woman who was in charge of a craft store near the Du Xing Shi Cun Juan Cun  told me "They are long gone. One of my elementary school classmates moved to Taipei, we kept in touch for a while and I even went to Taipei to visit her!" She told me, with a look as if that was something in a very remote life.

I feel a bit sad. I felt the Peng Hu locals were left behind by the military population that was nourished by the islands, including being offered families like Pan An-bang's family.

However, the local Peng Hu people might not feel the way I felt. I felt they were left behind, but they felt they had stayed home, after a gust of wind blew past.

The local Peng Hu lady in the Peng Hu craft store graciously explained the products to me, many being necklaces, hats and scarves made with local seashells by local elderlies. “如数家珍"  Like counting the pearls they had, the locals told me about how each village had their own ports, how their ancestors fished, how each temple was built and used. The pride was mixed in with worries. They mentioned how villages dwindled because ocean resources were being depleted and younger people had been leaving the islands.

Gracious. Grounded. To me, the locals made a light shining on the island, allowing me to connect to a long-standing thread of Chinese culture.

Children of Taiwan

I ran into children on streets, in their family businesses, and the largest number was in Brocca. I was interested in knowing, even just a little of what they liked to eat, to do and their mannerism while doing little things in daily life.

Walking on the street of Bu Dai, a seaport, I stopped two children riding bicycle in the dusk. After getting the directions to my inn, I quickly threw a question at them "What do you like to eat?" We were standing right next to one of the largest seafood market of Taiwan, I was imagining some of those seafood turning into to dishes on family meal tables.

 "鸡腿! (chicken legs) 排骨! (spare ribs)"  They shouted out these two words, with great satisfaction, while racing away on their bike.

In Bu Dai, I checked into an inn called the Sun Never Sets. At the front desk, a 8-year old boy, thin faced, with a pair of big eye-glasses, sat at the main chair. Standing next to him was a middle aged man. 

I went to my room to put down the luggages, and left the room to see the town. As I came down to the lobby, by then, the man, the boy, and another woman, obviously, the mom, were already sitting around the only table in the inn lobby, eating their dinner.

I quickly and quietly passed them, not wanting to disturb. But something felt so unusual about the scene that I took a few peeks at them from the street through the glass windows of the lobby. A family comfortably eating in the inn they ran. How warm.

When I came back to the inn, the mom was sitting alone at the table where they were eating, moving around a few chess pieces of a chess set with a somewhat blank stare. A few feet away, the boy, sitting at the check-in desk, staring at something on the computer with an intense look.

I asked the mom about her son. She said it's hard to drag him away from the computer. That sounds familiar. She said they have a high school age daughter, living in a boarding school. "She likes to do things independently."

I enticed the child away from the computer, and we played a round of chess. He initially left the computer reluctantly, but soon became quite engaged in the chess game. After two rounds, it was time for him to go to sleep.  I proposed that he clean up the table and put back the chairs. He picked up a rag, and cleaned the tables again and again while his parents standing on the side watching with disbelief and satisfaction. At the end, they had to tell him to stop the whole thing and go to bed.

However interesting! Without knowing it, this child sensed my teacher's authority and attention, and responded to it quite positively! .

Brocca is an after school program in the Taoyuan area of New Taipei. Johnson, now in his sixties, has been working as an educator in after school programs since his 20s, after graduating from college. The space is located next to an elementary school. Between 3 and 6pm, I saw children from ages 7 to middle school trickling in, some accompanied by adults and some on their own.  

The teachers there are Johnson's wife, her two sisters, and one teacher. Children were doing their homework from their regular school, and once they were done, they got extra lessons on math and English from this after school program.

I stepped into their English lessons. The teacher stopped and introduced me. As soon as she said I was from the US, children looked at me with some expectation. I knew that look which I became familiar when I visited China - It says "You speak English? I wonder whether I can try..." So I started with my first ice breaker question - 

"What animals do you like? "

The first child said "Dogs, cats, and..."  The "dogs" and "cats" were discernible but the vowels were not quite there. 

"What food do you like to eat?" 

Rice, noodles, pizza, hamburger were the most frequent answers. 

"What do you do on the weekends?" 

"On the computer." "Playing games." 

All felt so familiar and so dear - not just the answers but also the intense efforts to speak an unfamiliar language, and all the sweetness and innocence that went with it.

Taichung Ladies who laughed at my "accent" 

I was buying breakfast on the street in Taichung. Three ladies handling the food asked me where I was from. I said mainland China, to be brief.

They broke into extra loud laughters. One of them shouted “怪不得口音这么重！" (No wonder your accent is so heavy!") 

I laughed together with them. Another proof that all is relative.

Before I went to Taiwan, my experience of the quite distinctive Taiwan Mandarin accent made me not to know what to expect when I spoke to everyday people there. Should I change my choice of words, grammar, or something?

After talking to people there for these days, I concluded that everyday people there speak Mandarin at quite a high level. As a small sign, I freely used four character idioms with street vendors and inn workers, with no issue. In return, they throw their four-character idioms back at me also with no constraint.

I envy the diversity of Chinese dialects people hear. In Taipei, for bus and train announcements at all stops, it's made in four languages, Mandarin, Taiwanese (i.e., Southern Fujianese), Hakkanese, and English. Then, in Yilan, the announcements were in three languages, missing Hakkanese. I asked people there, they told me that because the Hakka population is very small there, so they skipped it. How practical!

Dan Shui Man who picked up his ...

One afternoon, I was at an organic farm which I was led to by my friend Chia-ju, drinking a green colored and tasty "Veggie Mocca". The farm owner, a middle aged man, suddenly wrapped up his conversation with us, and said "我得走了，要回家去接。。。(I got to go home to pick up...)”  I completed the sentence in my mind with "..... child from school".

"... 我妈妈." (My mom.)

That was a surprise. 

"她快放学了 (She's about to get out of school.) " Seeing my surprised look, he explained.

"她上一个老年人学校” （She attends a senior citizen school.) 

A middle-aged son picking up his mom from school. I somehow wanted to end this essay with this moment.

But this morning, I saw this in the news, about the World Happiness Report released while I was in Taiwan - 

The Gallup World Pull found Taiwan ranked the highest in Asia for their Happiness Index. How come? "It turns out that sharing meals and trusting others are even stronger predictors of wellbeing (than health and wealth)", said Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, director of the Wellbeing Research Centre at Oxford University. In Taiwan, 5.5 dinners and 4.7 lunches were shared with others. 

"In this era of social isolation and political polarization we need to find ways to bring table around the table again - doing so is critical for our individual and collective well-being."

I'm glad to have witnessed, in action,  the recipe of happiness in Taiwan. Challenges aside, people there have grasped something fundamental. May they always get to hold onto it, challenges aside.