Qiao'ai Village, All Women and Children

After we reached Qiao’ai New Village the lorry took us to our new homes and everyone was pleased.

The husbands fetched keys from the management office. When they opened the doors, the size of the houses was nothing like the “homes with Japanese-style rooms” reported in Xinsheng Bao. We were all a little disappointed, but we had moved; we had to accept it.

Each house was only three and a half ping; the kitchen half a ping, room for one person. There was tap water at the back; two rows of twenty households shared two taps. Toilets were communal and a long walk away.

Houses came in types A and B. Families with more than three children mostly took the larger bedroom unit.

So when our nine families arrived we were split between two areas, not all together.

At first it was chaos. Only the grocery at the far end of the village sold daily necessities.

Vegetables, fish, and meat came at fixed times in a small van to the village gate. Later management settled down; the village gained a clinic, a management centre, and even a barber. Half a year later US aid relief began entering Taiwan—soybeans, flour, cornmeal, soybean oil, and the like.

The management committee chairman was a general officer assigned by higher authority. He cared about dependants’ daily life. In every home the husband worked away; only the mother raised the children. When we had difficulties we went to the chairman and he helped solve them.

The committee set up a volunteer mothers’ team. Early each morning they ground soya milk free for breakfast; from about six o’clock people could collect it, everyone lining up with pots. With more than six hundred households in the village, you can imagine how long one waited for a pot of milk.

Madame Chiang cared deeply about the lives of dependants of the three services.

She arranged for garment factories under the Combined Logistics Command to give dependants contract work on simpler service uniforms and sleeping trousers to supplement income. If you had a sewing machine and could sew, you could register.

After a trial piece passed, you could take work home.

Pay was two dollars and fifty cents per set. The shirt-style top was harder; trousers were simpler.

I was slow. After housework and minding the children, the time left barely allowed seven sets a day.

By then I was pregnant with our third child. Our second was just over one and had only recently learnt to walk; the eldest was over five and could play alone, so I was somewhat reassured. There was also handicraft contract work; once you learnt, under the Women’s Federation most families added a little income to help with expenses.

I remember one summer I was concentrating on sewing when I heard many people outside shouting that a child playing by the river had drowned and was being rescued—whose child? I thought of the eldest not at home; they said a boy of five or six. I was frantic, slung the second on my back, and ran toward the river calling my son’s name.

Many parents were searching for their children; it was chaos. After calling a long while the eldest finally ran out of the crowd, took my hand, and said, “Mama! I’m here!” I nearly cried. I set his sister down and told him, “Don’t go to the river again. If anything happened, how could I face your father? I would die of worry.” After that he never went to the river again.

Sometimes he stayed home with his sister so Mama could work.