My Fight for a New Taiwan: One Woman's Journey from Prison to Power

2. Taiwanese Daughter

19 Chapter 2 Taiwanese Daughter When they were newly married, Father and Mother once came upon an old fortune-teller who, beckoning to them, offered to predict their futures. Father was skeptical, but Mother, who was curious about what the old man might say, wanted to give him a chance. Peering first into Father’s eyes, the fortune-teller said, “You have the fate to have one son.” Then he turned to Mother and said, “You have the fate to have three sons.” It was an unsettling prediction, but it turned out to be true. Over the years Mother ended up miscarrying two male babies, and my brother Chuan-sheng was the only son who survived. I was born amid the D-Day news on June 7, 1944. My arrival was certainly less dramatic than a military invasion. If anything, it was something of a disappointment; my parents had been hoping for a boy. They already had two daughters, Hsiu-ching and Hsiu-rong, twelve and fourteen years my senior; and then my brother Chuansheng , eight years older than me. If I had been a boy, the family would have been perfect in my parents’ eyes—​ two girls and two boys. My parents named me Hsiu-lien, or “graceful water lily.” From an early age I realized that I had let down my parents by being a girl. When I misbehaved, Mother let her disappointment show by saying things like, “Don’t be naughty, or I’ll give you away!” or, “Watch out or I’ll put you in a trash can!” I wanted to say to them, “You are the ones who made me; it’s not that I asked to come here.” We lived in the county of Taoyuan, in northern Taiwan, around 20 à Chapter 2 twenty-five miles south of the capital of Taipei. My ancestors came from the region of Zhangzhou in Fujian, China. Nearly everyone in the large Lu clan to which I belong is descended from Lu Ting-yu, who immigrated to Taiwan around 1860 with his newly wedded wife. Since then, our family has lived in Taiwan for eight generations and has produced more than seven thousand descendants. Mostly farmers, my ancestors were poor. My grandfather was a farmer, as was Father until he became a shopkeeper. Father sold salted fish during the Japanese Occupation of Taiwan from 1895 to 1945. In those days most Taiwanese couldn’t afford to eat meat, but a little salted fish went a long way when they ate it with rice. With talent for business and sincerity in his dealings with others, Father enjoyed a measure of financial success, eventually expanding the family business to three shops in different towns with the help of partners. Unlike many couples in their generation, my parents had married for love, rejecting the marriages arranged by their families. When they met, my parents had both already been assigned to their respective intended spouses. Mother was living in the same house with her foster family and husband-to-be. But after meeting each other, my parents refused to go through with marrying their prospective partners . It caused a big scandal, which is why I never heard the full story until both of them had passed away. I’m proud of this family rebelliousness . It explains how they endured years of hardship when our family’s fortunes later turned bleak. InthosedaysitwascommoninTaiwantogiveawayagirltobecome a simpua, or foster daughter, to another family. The girl helped with household chores until she was old enough to marry a foster “brother” in her household. To be a simpua was usually a miserable lot. The girl would have to fetch and carry things, labor like a maid, and act very meek and quiet, all from an early age. Several girls in my sixth-grade class of fifty had been adopted out or even sold to other families. With two daughters already, my parents nearly gave me away as a simpua, not once but twice. When I was almost two years old, a friend of Father’s wanted to adopt me because the man and his wife had no children. As a toddler I had big, round, pink cheeks, and because of Taiwanese Daughter à 21 that, people called me Ringo, the Japanese word for apple. The wife once saw me and said, “What a pretty girl you have! I wish she were mine.” Father responded half jokingly, “You can...