My Flood Experience and Growing Up with the Senate’s 立法院 Little Allowance

Presidential Villa, Nanking

H.W. Brands says that if you jot down the most mundane events in your life, it will make you immortal, because when a historian wants to reconstruct an era, he relies on diaries or letters. Perhaps, this will help illustrate Taiwan’s survival story. My Flood Experience and Growing Up with the Senate’s 立法院 Little Allowance My mother registered me at school very early, so I became the youngest student in first grade. She once took me to a ballet studio to watch many dancers in their beautiful dresses and had to leave because she couldn’t afford the entry fee. My grandmother would give me 5 N.T. cash to buy books because my father was an army officer and could not return home easily. She would count the bills from the Senate envelope with its 立法院 red letters. Later, I also counted on the monthly allowance of 2000 N.T. from the Senate later in my first college year. So I always appreciated the little cash that the Senate dispensed, just enough to make a person have a little dignity. At the end of my first semester of first grade, the epic big flood came to Taiwan. I didn’t bring the textbooks home, so I asked my gentle second uncle to take me to school on his bicycle. We were detouring as many roads were flooded and the river cut the bridge off. Then, we were told to take turns, either morning class, or the afternoon, because there was a class shortage. The water came near the Japanese Tatami floor in our house, but never quite reached that high. The tree in our yard was uprooted by the flood and fell. With my sister, we went out to play mud paste games and it was thrilling. Then my eldest uncle found out, and used the broom to hit us, we were screaming. My mother was delivering and I felt that I was being abused. The next door neighbor Grandma Wang heard us, and she got us to her house and gave us cakes. I had a kindergarten teacher who loved me and rolled her head on my stomach. But my grade one teacher was very mean, and she was a Taiwanese who looked at us as if we were all evil. She once punished me by forcing me to hold up my chair because I forgot to do my homework. My grandmother was with us for a while, and then she left to go to Hong Kong. Then Dr. Zhu passed away. Grandfather was allowed to come to Taiwan. I went with him to the Senate, and those beautiful azalea flowers made the garden respectable. The M.P. always saluted at me and my grandfather as we entered. Because of the war, my family was skillful in packaging. My grandfather bought a beautiful peach rose leather suitcase for me to take to college in Taiwan, and my grandmother filled it with all sorts of things and love. Being a favorite granddaughter, a young virgin really knew next to nothing about people’s hearts, I lost my innocence to someone who didn’t have the same value ideology. Though many times for want of materials, I always was treated as a Cinderella princess when I was near my grandparents for a moment of fantasy life. One day my mother was chauffeured in the Nanking capital, and the next thing, she could be trying to make a charcoal fire in a stove to cook the rice. Many typhoon seasons I helped out to bring the water from the tower, and only half of the water in the bucket was left. When there is no water, then, you went to the river to wash. When my grandparents came to visit us, then we had the most beautiful chiffon dresses like princesses and my mother would have a mink coat which was made possible by Taiwan’s Kaoxiong special district for high quality exports. Many high class women had the same black mink coats. In a cold misty winter rain, I wore it to watch a play in ShiDa University, Teacher’s Model University. I swam in the river. One day, my little brother was together with other wild kids and he jumped into the river. Then, I realized that he was in pain with ashen face. He was badly hurt and his foot was cut by a Sake wine bottle. I carried him on my back and started to run as fast as I can on the rice field ridge to the military hospital. I remember my father told us that tetanus will make you die in very short time, if the wound not treated. My little brother was disabled from birth, with a hand that was not fully developed, possibly induced by birth control pills. I also witnessed that my mother was beaten and was thrown on the ground, and her hair was pulled by a Taiwanese dialect-speaking vendor who claimed she that owed her money, so this might have caused the fetus to be deformed, causing my brother's deformed hand. For life, I am proud of my strength to carry him and ran as fast as I can. He is always very good in Zen poems which I can’t bear to read. He wrote the poem for my parents’ tombstone. This helps my reaching to a closure. My tormented parents, yet, they were so beautiful and courageous to go through war and hardship.