Moving to Mingde Village

In 1958, a few days after the Dragon Boat Festival, with help from Mr Zheng, a fellow townsman in the supply section of the First Squadron where my husband worked, the unit sent a military truck. Driver Mr Gan drove to Qiao’ai Village to fetch us.

Mrs Chen and I said reluctant goodbyes to everyone and boarded the truck, leaving the village we had lived in for nearly two years.

Because it was a military lorry, the cab was a little wider. All of us, driver included—eight people in all—crowded in.

Mr Gan sat in the driver’s seat. Mrs Chen carried one child on her back and held another on her lap in the middle. I carried our third child on my back and held our second in my arms by the door. Our eldest stood between Mrs Chen and me. My husband and Mr Chen found places among the luggage in the back.

That was how we went from Taoyuan to Mingde Village in Shimen Township, Taipei County. The Tamsui–Jinshan Highway had not yet been paved with asphalt; it was a two-lane gravel road. The truck could not go fast and shook badly. We reached the village after seven in the evening.

Only a few families had moved in then. Warm-hearted Mrs Yang, seeing that I needed to make milk for the children, hurried home to boil a kettle of water for us.

We were allotted one-and-a-half rooms in the third row. The sound of our voices as we entered startled Mrs Huang next door.

She was doing her month’s confinement after childbirth and could not come out. From her room she called loudly for Mr Huang to draw water for our family. A stranger as a new neighbour, yet so kind on first meeting—I felt very fortunate.

In the new surroundings I began to get to know the neighbours.

Mrs Huang next door already had five children and was in confinement. Out of courtesy we visited her the next day and asked her to teach me what I did not know; she gladly agreed.

She said that if I had difficulties later I should come to her and she would help as best she could.

When we moved to Mingde Village our second daughter was nearly six months old and needed more and more formula. After her month was over Mrs Huang came to chat and saw me feeding the baby milk. She suggested that after seven months I could grind rice into gruel and alternate it gradually with milk.

I followed Mrs Huang’s advice. After seven months I switched to thin rice porridge, feeding her twice a day. The porridge was cooked with broth from pork ribs until very soft, then fed with a small spoon until she was a year and a half old and could eat normally with the rest of us.

I felt guilty that my daughter had no mother’s milk and that, with our finances tight, I could not keep her on Lactogen until one year and had to use supplementary food instead.

Of five children, only she had nursed at my breast—and only for three days.

To borrow the stone mill for rice flour, Mrs Huang took me to Aunt A-tiao’s house on Laomei Street. To ask to borrow something the first time we met was embarrassing, but the whole family, including the daughter Zheng Li-xue and son Zheng Geng-shen, were very courteous. Aunt A-tiao told me, “If you need help later, just ask—do not stand on ceremony.” I was deeply touched.

Once when household money ran short I asked Mrs Huang for help. She at once took me to Li-xue’s to see her mother. I pawned a ring and borrowed a hundred dollars, promising to repay in a month; Aunt A-tiao agreed immediately.

In the more than twenty years I lived in Laomei, Li-xue remained my closest friend.

On 1 September that year, our eldest 光華 entered Laomei Elementary School in first grade. Seeing him come home from school with his satchel calling “Mama,” I was truly happy.

There were thirty dependants’ houses in all—ten per row, numbers up to thirty. We were number twenty-nine; the Huangs were thirty. The last row had two houses split into three units: the middle one divided in half, half a unit per family—hence “one and a half rooms.”

The first two rows were one main room plus a small kitchen per household. Whoever designed it did not plan well: the front-row kitchens faced the back-row living rooms, so cooking smoke from the front often blew into the back. After the village filled up, some people even quarrelled over smoke drifting into their homes.

Between numbers twenty-one and twenty-four there was an open plot with a well for everyone. At first you tied a rope to a bucket, lowered it, drew water, filled two buckets, and carried them home to pour into the water jar.

At dusk when people came for water, the well was lively. Two years later a hand pump was installed and we no longer had to draw water the hard way.