Hsiao Hsiu-chen
Hsiao Hsiu-chen was born on December 8, 1972, in Taichung, in a Taiwan still under Kuomintang rule and martial law. Her family spoke Taiwanese Hokkien at home and Mandarin in school and official settings. They kept a household altar with incense and offerings, and they treated temple visits and ancestor rites as part of the week and the calendar, not as a separate category of life.
Her father, Hsiao Chih-ming, left for work early in pressed shirts and polished shoes, a senior manager in a private firm during the years when factories multiplied and export orders pulled Taiwan’s cities into new routines. He carried himself like someone who measured time in deadlines and shipments. Her mother, Hsiao Li-juan, stayed home and ran the household. She managed visits, gifts, and the careful exchanges that kept relationships smooth. Hsiu-chen grew up without siblings, surrounded by adults. On weekdays her maternal grandmother, Huang A-ma, often arrived midmorning with a cloth bag of fruit—guavas when they were cheap, oranges when guests were coming. She spoke Hokkien in a steady stream, and she took charge of small things: keeping Hsiu-chen’s socks paired, checking her forehead when she looked tired, wiping the table twice.
The altar sat in a bright corner. On the first and fifteenth of the lunar month, Li-juan set out tea, a small dish of peanuts, and oranges. Incense smoke drifted up past a framed tablet with the family surname. Hsiu-chen learned where to place joss sticks, how to bow, and when to keep her voice down. Some evenings they went to a neighborhood temple, where she stared at the gold-painted faces and the rows of red lanterns, then tugged at her mother’s sleeve to ask questions that did not stop. She talked to strangers easily, and she treated every adult like a potential audience. At school events she pushed to the front, volunteered to greet guests, and narrated what everyone else was doing.
In the 1980s she attended school in Taichung as the city grew denser and louder. She did her homework at the dining table while her mother listened to radio dramas. She preferred group assignments and class errands. She could spend an hour arranging a class activity and only a few minutes reviewing a lesson she found dull. When relatives came over for hot pot, she darted between the kitchen and the living room carrying bowls, slipping in comments that made the aunties laugh. She learned early what words made people soften and what words made them stiffen.
Martial law ended in 1987, and by the time she was in secondary school political talk had moved from whispers to dinner-table arguments. Her father watched the news more intently, and her mother told her to avoid repeating family conversations at school. Hsiu-chen didn’t keep it all in. She talked anyway—at cram school, at temple fairs, at the night market—replaying what she heard and trying out opinions, then feeling keyed up afterward and unable to sleep. When her grandmother died in 1994, the rituals came with a weight Hsiu-chen had not known before: the mourning clothes, the formal bows, the incense that lasted through the day. She still remembered her grandmother’s hand on her shoulder, steering her toward the right place to stand.
After high school she chose a practical track and moved quickly into work that used her comfort with people. She learned office routines, order forms, and the rhythm of phone calls with suppliers. She liked the parts that happened face to face: walking clients to the door, choosing the right small gift, smoothing over a late delivery with a joke and a promise. Her father arranged introductions when he could. She called him to report small victories and listened for approval in his short replies.
She left Taiwan in 1998 and settled overseas, drawn by the combination of opportunity and distance. She found Taiwanese circles quickly—church basements used for community events, banquet halls that hosted Lunar New Year dinners, small shops that sold dried mushrooms and soy sauce brands she recognized. Hsiu-chen was not a woman people looked at twice on the street—her face was plain, her features unremarkable—but she drew attention anyway by talking first and loudest, by remembering names and making people feel noticed. She met David Chen at a gathering where people switched between Mandarin and Hokkien, laughing at the same old jokes about food and accents. He was attentive in public. He liked making plans. He also cared about status, about who was invited and who wasn’t. They married, and the marriage started as a shared project: steady work, papers in order, money saved.
By 2001 the conflicts sharpened. They fought about how long she stayed chatting with customers, about which friends she kept, about money that he wanted tracked his way. When she argued back, he moved closer than he needed to. On more than one night he shoved her against a wall and grabbed her arms hard enough to leave bruises that bloomed yellow and purple. She covered them with long sleeves and busied herself with errands. Once, after a worse incident, she packed a bag and stayed with her friend Lina Wu for several nights. Lina made sweet barley soup and talked straight. Hsiu-chen phoned a local community group and asked what help existed, then hung up before giving her full name. She returned home with a new private rule: keep the peace in public, keep the paperwork and the cashbox under her own control, and never let her mother hear details that would turn into family shame.
In 2003, SARS reached Taiwan’s headlines and then the world’s airports. She called Taichung repeatedly, asking her mother what masks cost, whether anyone coughed at the temple, whether her father still went into the office. The fear sharpened her habit of checking and rechecking. She made lists, counted inventory twice, and kept a small bottle of alcohol rub in her bag long after others stopped carrying it.
Her daughter, Grace, was born in 2006. Hsiu-chen used her Mandarin first with the baby and then softened into Hokkien when she got tired, the same way her mother had done. She kept the household altar even overseas, a smaller setup on a shelf: an incense holder, two cups for tea, and a plate for fruit. For Lunar New Year she set out tangerines and pineapple cakes, and she taught Grace to bow, then rewarded her with a red envelope and a dumpling made to look like a gold ingot. David did not hit her during the first years after the birth. He watched the child when he felt like a good husband. He also criticized when she did not meet his standard. Hsiu-chen learned to pivot, to redirect a conversation, to change the subject with a laugh and a quick pivot to the child.
She built a business step by step: Taiwan-linked consumer goods and specialty foods, first through small wholesale orders, then regular import shipments. She worked with a mentor from early on, Mr. Kuo, who taught her how to read shipping documents, how to spot a lazy broker, and how to keep relationships warm without giving away the margin. She liked it: early mornings checking messages from Taiwan, afternoons in the shop, evenings entering numbers into a ledger while a TV drama played quietly in the background.
The global financial crisis hit in 2008 and customers pulled back. She stopped ordering novelty items and filled shelves with staples people bought even when they felt nervous. She negotiated smaller batches with suppliers in Taiwan and pushed harder on payment terms. She also leaned into the part she understood best: community. She organized tastings, brought out trays of samples, and remembered which older customers liked less sugar. She set up an online storefront and answered messages quickly, even at night, because customers who got a fast reply came back.
Between 2008 and 2013 she expanded from trading out of cramped storage into a stable storefront and a steady online operation. She joined a local Taiwanese business association, then ended up helping run events: raffle tickets, seating charts, guest lists that had to satisfy everyone. Auntie Mei, an organizer with a sharp voice and fast hands, pulled her into leadership because she could talk to anybody without freezing. Hsiu-chen enjoyed the bustle of banquet nights, the clatter of plates, and the moment when a plan worked and the room settled into a smooth rhythm.
Her father’s health declined in the mid-2010s. In 2016 he died, and she flew back to Taichung to handle arrangements with her mother. At the temple she watched the incense curl upward and felt the same tightness she’d felt as a teenager after arguments: thoughts looping, sleep slipping away. As an only child she carried the phone calls, the bank forms, the decisions about what to keep and what to discard. She argued with David over how long she stayed, then returned overseas to the shop and the school calendar.
COVID-19 arrived and turned borders into rules and delays. Freight costs jumped. Some products stopped moving at all. Hsiu-chen adapted by changing suppliers, ordering earlier, and selling more through the website to customers who didn’t want to linger indoors. She taped new signs on the door, stacked boxes higher than before, and kept a mask in every bag. She talked to Ms. Patel next door about landlords and local regulations, and they traded practical tips without becoming close.
By 2025 she lives in the same overseas city, running the store with routines that leave little wasted motion. She still switches languages without thinking—Mandarin for official calls, Hokkien when she wants warmth, English for landlords and shipping agents. Grace, now grown, rolls her eyes at some of the temple talk and still takes the incense sticks when her mother presses them into her hand. On quiet mornings Hsiu-chen opens the shop early, boils tea behind the counter, and checks orders while the street wakes up outside.