In Part#2: "Shooting for the Stars," Lin Shu-Jing parlays her talents into becoming an early working-class entrepreneur. Even family tragedies cannot stop her career from reaching the heights.
Two deaths in the family within two years!
Lin Shu-Ling, my wife's sister, had another brother. He passed away at twenty-one. Lin Shu-Jing was just getting started in her career and the family ruptured. A few year later, at forty-nine, her mother passed away from the same illness, liver cancer; two years later!
Dear readers, could you imagine how broken up this Lin family was? I don’t have to; I was there, in far-away Taipei, falling in love with my sweet young wife-to-be, who when she got the call that her mother was going to die, had to rush home to Tan-Zih. I was there when the tears stopped. The hard life they lived had taught them enough.
Father started fading, closed his laundry business; he couldn’t go on without his son and his wife. Somehow, the Lin family carried on. Lin Shu-Jing carried on; she really carried on.
Two deaths in the family within two years!
Lin Shu-Ling, my wife's sister, had another brother. He passed away at twenty-one. Lin Shu-Jing was just getting started in her career and the family ruptured. A few year later, at forty-nine, her mother passed away from the same illness, liver cancer; two years later!
Dear readers, could you imagine how broken up this Lin family was? I don’t have to; I was there, in far-away Taipei, falling in love with my sweet young wife-to-be, who when she got the call that her mother was going to die, had to rush home to Tan-Zih. I was there when the tears stopped. The hard life they lived had taught them enough.
Father started fading, closed his laundry business; he couldn’t go on without his son and his wife. Somehow, the Lin family carried on. Lin Shu-Jing carried on; she really carried on.
Lin Shu-Jing had to move on; she asked father to let her use his shack down the street and turn it into a boutique; father agreed. Work commenced.
“Lights there will make the lingerie more beautiful,” said an interior decorator in a thin short-sleeved button-down shirt. “And these high-intensity lights will highlight whatever you put on these racks.”
“Wonderful! Let’s do it!”
My wife stood by her side. She agreed with the decision. Her sister was her hero.
My wife stood by her side. She agreed with the decision. Her sister was her hero.
“Yes, it will look fine with the rosewood veneer," said the interior decorator with the modern haircut. A carpenter took his pencil and wrote down ‘rosewood’ on the wall. A new lingerie boutique being built out of father’s extra space; it would be painted the woodwork done.
It was a grand opening; braziers, panties, nightgowns, delicate blouses, accessories, away from the west-facing windows which magnifying the setting Taiwan sun, changing clothes’ colors. The boutique would fulfill Lin Shu-Jing's dream; entrepreneurship, her classmate’s lingerie, spiced with items she’d purchased on trips to Hong Kong, the jet set, boyfriends waiting.
Dad didn’t need the space in the simple one-story frame flat with a second plywood loft. After the tragedy of his wife’s passing, it would keep his favorite daughter occupied and close to home. It would supplement her income teaching home-study classes.
Business took off like a rocket. Her students’ parents and fashion-minded Tan-Zih neighbors had a piece of Paris just down the street. The after-school bushiban classes and boutique put Lin Shu-Jing on the map in the world of business. She would make her first Taiwan million dollars before she was thirty years old. Quite an accomplishment for a dry cleaner’s daughter!
Lin Shu-Jing reached further into the limitless sky. She was on a roll. Next, a café was in her future; a café to serve the sophisticated tastes of young upward mobile western-leaning Taiwanese in the big city south of Tan-Zih; Taichung.
Dear readers, when you shuck your working-class roots for some foreign bourgeois ideals, all hell can break loose. Lin Shu-Jing felt she had to rise from her station in little town Tan-Zih; right? Her life as the eldest daughter of a dry cleaning farmer just wouldn’t do; not that there was anything wrong with cosmopolitan fashion, but it best be an embellishment, not a replacement for one's own heritage. Ms. Lin was heading full-throttle into a capitalist nightmare, a nightmare where money’s never enough even after you’ve climbed the ladder of success.
“Father, I was thinking about opening a café,” she said one evening as the family sat watching the news on TV, peeling lychee over the waste basket, spitting out the black pits.
“A what?” he said glancing over to her like he’d just eaten a sour one.
“How great! What a good idea,” her sister was ecstatic for her.
“The boutique isn’t enough?” father said as he spit the sour lychee meat out, picked out another, and started peeling.
“I have enough money to invest from the boutique and the bushiban. With three of my friends investing, I think the four of us could do it.”
“Like the café I saw on that American TV show yesterday?” said her sister excitedly.
“Right! Like that; dim lights, marble tables with candles, even an Italian cappuccino maker behind the counter. Lin Shu-Jing's bright aboriginal eyes twinkled with excitement at the prospect of having her own café.
“Well, I don’t know,” said father. “Running a restaurant is a risky business with keeping the food fresh and all.”
“My friends have experience,” she explained. “They know what to do.” She looked at her sister. “Can you help out?”
“Sure. What would you like me to do?” asked her sister excitedly, hoping to become a barista.
“Could you take over my evening class so I can be in the café?”
“Oh, that? Okay, but only temporarily,” she said dejectedly.
“And who’s going to watch your boutique?” said father sharply.
“Oh father, most of the business there I can do by appointment or over the phone,” she said assuming he knew what she meant. She’d never used advertising, anyway; business was all by word of mouth.
With that, Lin Shu-Jing had three ventures going at once; the home school classes, the boutique, and the café, all without having to borrow a red Taiwanese dollar.
Why did she do it? Most people would say because she was capable of doing it. A therapist might have a different explanation. She had just suffered through the sorrow of losing her mother and brother to liver cancer. Despite her meltdown in high-school, she had something to prove to herself and a reason to do it: escape.
The café on the Westside of Taichung, “Four Ladies’ Breeze,” was beautiful. The carpenters did a great job creating a modern western ambiance, and the four ladies had a select menu of French pastries from a local bakery and hot and cold coffee beverages. This was all before anyone in Taiwan dreamed of a Starbucks.
Lin Shu-Jing worked the counter herself with her three high school classmates. The boutique was put into mothballs, lingerie into boxes, and her sister took over the evening class at home, father’s dry cleaning apparatus having been removed from the space. But my future wife couldn’t stay long; she had her own destiny.
After she graduated from junior college, Shu-Fang got a job in Taipei, a receptionist at my after-school English center. That’s where we fell in love. Then the news of her mother’s cancer came. She was summoned home to help the family and be with mother. Reluctantly, her sister returned to Tan-Zih. Meanwhile, I got hepatitis, took my three children, left my abusive wife, and returned to the States, but that’s another story.
Back in Taichung, business at the café wasn’t going well. The café was an idea that was too soon for Taichung lifestyle. The area, now a fashion center, wasn’t hot yet for a café. Lin Shu-Jing’s partner had an idea.
“Dad, we’re turning the café into a pub!”
Lin Shu-Jing was shooting for the stars on that bright Tan-Zih night.
Lin Shu-Jing was shooting for the stars on that bright Tan-Zih night.
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