Lin Shu-Jing; The Brightest Star in the Tan-Zih Sky, Pt.#1: "First Star I see Tonight"

Lin Shu-Jing

The Brightest Star in the Tan-Zih Sky

          Of all the people I’ve met in Taiwan, Lin Shu-Jing is the most painful to write about. I’m on the verge of rage, and hope, every time I think about her. I never give up believing that one day she will shine like the brightest star in the sky, the only star visible in the night sky of smoggy Tan-Zih. On this chilly Christmas morning in Central Taiwan, I know Santa is looking for her. He wants to find her but even he doesn’t know where she lives. Perhaps she is hiding from him, too. But Santa never stops looking for the good boys and girls on his merry way around Taiwan. He wants to kiss Lin Shu-Jing on her brow and give her the biggest gift in his sack; the gift called “starting over from scratch.”

          Shu-Jing had always been the star in my wife’s family. The eldest of four children, she was the one destined to succeed. Endowed with a soft smile, easy-going happiness that she spread all over Tan-Zih, she was Lin Shu-Fang’s hero, indeed, the hero of the Lin clan. She was always number one in her classes in elementary and middle school, the most likely to succeed in life, her parents’ favorite child, to my wife’s chagrin; Lin Shu-Fang never got the recognition she deserved in her sister’s shadow.

          Then, somewhere in the pressure cooker that was every school-child’s nightmare in martial law Taiwan, through all the tests, all the teacher abuse, wall-to-wall homework and noodle-bowl haircuts with ugly coarse uniforms, Lin Shu-Jing blew a fuse. She had a nervous breakdown and no matter how much her parents wanted her to make the number one high school, all Shu-Jing wanted to do was dance, dance, and dance the night away.

          My wife, Lin Shu-Fang, used to be Lin Shu-Jing’s cover-up. She was paid well, as far as a child is concerned, for not letting anyone know that her elder sister was breaking curfew, liable to be arrested by marching soldiers who patrolled the streets of “Free China” as the U.S.A. had us believe; KM-Taiwan, more in fear of their own citizens awakening than an invasion from Mainland China that they said would one day be reunited with them by the Three Peoples’ Principles of Sun Yat-Sen. 
          Lin Shu-Jing broke curfew to go to underground dance halls, to meet young men, smoke cigarettes, and be modern in this stoic police state. So many late nights, way after her parents had gone to bed, Lin Shu-Jing would steal back into the Lin home and pretend to be back asleep. Little sister, Shu-Fang, would stealthily open the gate just a tad so Shu-Jing could crawl under and back into bed before anyone found out she was missing. My wife was sworn to secrecy, and received a cookie for her allegiance.

          Lin Shu-Jing didn’t make the list of fortunate students who would be placed in Taichung’s number one high school, and it saddened her father so; her mother, too. He had pushed her and pushed her to be the number one student. What went wrong? What happened to their bright daughter, their favorite child? Father wouldn’t believe that the teacher wasn’t always right, that the school system wasn’t always good, and that his children weren’t always to blame for all their failures. So he drank, he drank heavily and crashed his motorcycle into the glass showcases in his laundromat, lined the four children up against the wall and admonished them for being failures, for being the embarrassment of his life, indeed, for ruining his hard-working life. Shu-Jing would have none of that. She sneaked out as he snored to find a new clandestine dance hall, listen to banned music, to escape from the pressures of Taiwan and her family.

         Lin Shu-Jing parlayed her confidence into ventures that would get her out of her blue collar background. After a period of stuffing herself with comfort food to ward off the demons from her failed academic pursuits, she knew she was better than that. She would make it without being in the number one high school.

          Lin Shu-Jing had many friends and classmates in the clandestine night clubs she visited, young men and women who, like her, had rejected the stiff life reserved for them in this last of the fascist dictatorships; there was nothing ‘free’ about ‘free China.’ Everything from your hair length and style to your school uniform was regulated by the authorities, authorities that, to this day, place a military adviser in every public school. Listen to the metal taps on the boots of the brigades marching through the streets after nightfall. Feel the white terror of curfew Lin Shu-Jing tried to ignore and slip into the world of ICRT, the American military radio station with Casey Kasem’s Top 40 playing Philadelphia Freedom. Nowadays, the American CIA has learned more from the KMT white terror with its ‘see something, say something’ policy than they taught though ugly American occupation, the ‘R&R’ resort spot from Vietnam slaughter. In Lin Shu-Jing’s ‘Free China,’ noisy planes flew the sky at night dropping leaflets exhorting finders to bring such notes to their nearest police station to win a prize for fighting the evil communist terrorists. The western world seemed a lot more fun to Lin Shu-Jing with its rock and roll music, cosmetics, lingerie, and style. She brought this style home, secretly to her sister, my wife, who kept her secrets and internalized Lin Shu-Jing’s open mind.

          Her parents knew their daughter was changing. She wasn’t going to be a scholar at Taiwan University one day. Father led the way, begrudgingly, accepting his daughters’ westernization, to an extent. He punished her brutally when he discovered she was sneaking out at night to go to dance clubs, not because he didn’t like dance clubs, but he didn’t want the neighbors to know his daughter was breaking curfew and even worse, could be arrested. What a face-loser that would be!

          So when Lin Shu-Jing spent hours on the phone with her modern friends from the junior college, an extended high school, father let her; she was still his first and favorite child. One friend had gotten a job at a lingerie factory. That was exciting; western lingerie. Lin Shih-Ling herself had graduated from junior college and gotten a job in a factory but she didn’t like that.

          She had done well enough with school subjects in school to start a class, first in the empty store front of a friend and then in her father’s dry cleaning store front, teaching children after school. An early after-school teacher she was, way before the bushiban chains, and her knowledge and positively effervescent personality propelled her to success. The students stayed to learn, and more came. She convinced father to let her use the shack up the street to expand her school classes, and business was taking off. But Lin Shu-Jing wanted to get closer to the western world than merely teaching the English to Taiwanese children.

          This is where this story changes into a tragedy;

...to be continued