My name is Yeh Jin-fu（葉進福）, I'm 70 years old, and I work as a taxi driver in Pingtung City, Taiwan（台灣屏東市）.
My parents couldn't read or write. My dad made a living selling fermented starfruit juice, while my mom did cleasing jobs for others. We were so poor that we could only afford one meal a day. When we got too hungry, we would catch and eat frogs, loach and crickets -- you can eat crickets after squeezing out their poop. My dad sold fermented starfruit juice at the night market. Every three years, he would take my eldest brother and me to Donggang for the Donggang Welcome Kings for Peace Festival（東港迎王）. It was a long and arduous walk of 30 kilometers.
One day, a middle-aged man came to our small business to buy some starfruit juice. His wife had recently passed away, and he needed some distraction. He saw my younger siblings wearing only underwear and squatting on the ground. So he knew he had to helop. He gave us NT$ 5,000 to start a self-serve restaurant.
It was a lot of money back then, so we were scared and suspicious about his intentions. My eldest sister even worried that he might have been looking for a new wife. However, he never made any request. As time passed, we lost contact with him. My parents were illiterate and didn't have his contact information. All we knew was his name was Lin Dou（林豆）. He lived in Xinying, Tainan（台南新營）, sold hardware and tools at the night market and owned a lot of land.
We started running a self-serve restaurant with my dad doing the grocery shopping, my mom and eldest brother cooking, and me wash dishes. It was tough work every day, but we were grateful to have enough to eat with leftovers, which allowed us to have three meals a day. I was especially relieved that my younger siblings grew up safe and healthy and didn't have to be sold or given away.
After finishing my military service, I got my professional taxi driver's license and became a taxi driver with my eldest brother's help, who gave me his rotating savings of NT$50,000 to purchase a used Yulon (裕隆) car, which made my father really happy.
Sadly, Dad was already in the terminal stage of oral cancer and passed away when I was 27, and before long, my eldest brother suddenly passed away after having a stroke. Probably because she was heartbroken, one day, my mom had a stroke and passed away, too. In just six months, I lost three family members. I was so devastated that my hair turned grey overnight, and I almost lost my mind. I had to be hospitalized for a month. After leaving the hospital, I wandered alone to Tainan because every day when I went home, I was reminded of my parents, and I couldn't stand living in that house anymore. I worked there for a year delivering gas. Eventually, I returned to Pingtung（屏東）and became a taxi driver. One day, I picked up a passenger who came from Xinying, Tainan. I asked if he knew someone named Lin Dou, who was a benefactor to our family and whom I had been looking for since I left the military and started to make a living. The passenger didn't know Lin Dou, but he worked at the Farmers' Association and could ask around for me. And he did get Lin Dou's phone number. That's incredible!
My siblings and I pooled NT$30,000 to buy some gold jewelry as a gift for our benefactor. We were afraid that he might not recognize us as we had all grown up now, so I brought along the only family portrait we had from our childhood. When we saw him, we all broke down in tears, and he burst into tears, too. Our eldest sister held the old photo, thanked him, and said, “Were it not for your help back then, our family might have been split apart. “ She then introduced each of us, one by one. Our benefactor patted our heads, like we were still those starved kids, and repeatedly said, “You've all grown up!” He told us that when he had seen our dad selling juice on the street and our younger siblings not even wearing shirts, he had been worried that it would be tough to raise all 10 kids. Therefore, he suggested that our dad sell self-serve buffets instead, so that at least we wouldn't go hungry. Ever since then, we have made it a tradition to visit him during the Lunar New Year. He passed away over a decade ago, and all of us siblings made sure to attend his funeral, except for me, because I was busy making money at the time. I still regret it.
Our family house has been unoccupied for a while, so we decided to place our ancestors' divine tablets there. My sister spent NT$600,000 to renovate the house. We all miss the days when we lived there as a family. Our house is near Pingtung Railroad Station（屏東火車站）and the land has become valuable over the years. Even though there have been so many people who want to buy it, we have already agreed not to sell.
I drive a taxi at the taxi stand in the railway station, and I go to pay respects to my parents every week. There are homeless people around the station, and sometimes they say they have no food to eat. I give them some money because I always remember how people helped me when I was a child. One day, a monk was begging for alms in the scorching heat, and I found two 50-dollar coins in my pocket. I gave one to him and used the other to buy a lottery ticket, and guess what? I won more than NT$20,000 dollars with that ticket!
*It's about US$163.
