Li-Hui: How old were you when uncle Tai-chin went to Green Island?

 

Yueh-Tao: Probably when I was in elementary school... when your uncle went to jail, I was only four years old. When your uncle was already in jail on Green Island, I was in the second or third grade of primary school. Life was very difficult at that time, so I wrote “what kind of society is this?” in the letter. Because of that sentence, your uncle was interrogated and asked questions like “who’s this person writing a letter to you?” “How old is he / she?” ... Then (your uncle said) she is my little sister, she is now about the second or third grade. Your uncle was interrogated and tortured for this, and I didn’t realize that until your uncle finished his 15-year-sentence, came back home and told me, all because I wrote “what kind of society is this” ...

 

Li-Hui: I went to view the exhibition site with the curating team, and the staff mentioned that the political prisoners used to make “shell-collage paintings” ... I didn’t think of it having anything to do with our family at that time.

 

Yueh-Tao: It did actually. when your uncle and his peers were in jail, they didn’t have any allowance, so they made these shell-collage paintings—the shell paintings weren’t very large, all in a small size, and mailed the paintings to me. I would sell them to whomever wanted them among my colleagues, collecting the money and then remitted the money to your uncle and the others...

 

Li-Hui: None of your colleagues / friends ever asked you why you had these (paintings) to sell?

 

Yueh-Tao: No... I got these things without stealing or robbing from someone else. They buy it if they like it.

 

Li-Hui: They also didn't ask you where did you get these?

 

Yueh-Tao: No... they just took a look of the paintings... we were all female workers working there...

 

Li-Hui: Where did you girls work then?

 

Yueh-Tao: At that time, we were female workers in Nan-Ya Plastics factory... your uncle and his peers were also looking for jobs, but they couldn't find any. After being released from the prison, they either carried rocks and bricks or did some hard labor on a construction site. Back then, I was still a female worker in Nan-Ya -New-Eastern factory. Sometimes your uncle had no money, since I usually earned a few hundred Taiwanese-dollars a month, I would save a few dozen Taiwanese-dollars from time to time... and this savings would help your uncle some when he didn’t have any money.

 

Li-Hui: Why did uncle... I knew that he was originally helping with farming, but why did he go to the construction-related job later?

 

Yueh-Tao: When he was in jail, there was a Pingtung technician who used to study in Japan. When the technician was in jail, he told your uncle that your he was still very young, when the he came back to society, Taiwan would definitely require...the (developing) construction industry—back then, there were all single-story houses, and not a lot of buildings—the technician was so nice that he told your uncle that when the night came and they were allowed to rest, he could use the time to teach them (your uncle and his peers) applied mechanics and structural calculation, and (by learning that) they could do the calculation of rebars and cement...

 

Li-Hui: So uncle learned that on Green Island?

 

Yueh-Tao: Yep... he learned that there. Once he came out of jail, he would have a skill to earn a living in society.

 

Li-Hui: And the reason why you know about structural mechanics and that (structural calculation) … cause uncle taught you these?

 

Yueh-Tao: Yep your uncle taught me these indeed. Then at that time, due to the fact that Taiwan was gradually developing, it started making buildings of 3 floors, 4 floors, 5 floors, and (even) 7 floors, all building construction requires knowledge of structural calculation, such as the size of rebar or the intensity of concrete. Your uncle taught me these, and I have known how to do the math since then.

 

Li-Hui: Wait ...you said that you didn't meet my uncle in person until you were 19... I always thought that you two met each other way before that, that’s the reason why others didn’t want to have any connection with you when uncle was released, because they already knew that you two were family. But if you were already an adopted daughter in another family, and you never met him before you were 19, why did you still (contact him) ...

 

Yueh-Tao: The two families were very close... the grandma in my adopted family was the mother of my birth mom, so there was a blood relation between the two families, and we were in contact all the time, so I was still close to my original family.

 

Li-Hui: There were some other people close to their family as well, I suppose, but they might deny the relation with the political prisoner in the family, because they didn’t want to get into trouble…

 

Yueh-Tao: That was not how we dealt with that at that time. The adopted family used to be very poor and often did not have rice for meals. On the other hand, the Lin family, which is my biological family, had farms to grow rice and vegetables. When I was a child, I went back to Lin family quite often. They would give me a few pounds of rice so I could carry it back to the adopted family to feed others. We (kids in the adopted family) often had to go to... the rice mill to get some rice, but we didn’t have money to pay, the adults dare not to go there themselves so they asked the children to do it instead. The owner of the rice mill would say to us, the money we owed him before hadn’t been paid back yet, why we were here again? I could just say that we didn’t have rice to eat ... what else you could do? That's the way it is. He had already told us that we hadn’t paid the money for the rice we took previously. Whether he was willing to give us some rice or not, there was nothing we could do about that, and it always ended up that he put our expense on account. Fortunately, I could go back to Zhongli (Lin family) to stay there once in a while and carry few pounds of rice back home every time.

 

Li-Hui: Why did my uncle ask you to sell the shell paintings for them instead of asking your other sisters to do that?

 

Yueh-Tao: Those two sisters had been given to other families long ago. They didn't grow up with the Lin family nor stay with us.

 

Li-Hui: You were also given to another family. Was it because that you visited the original family more often compared with the other two?

 

Yueh-Tao: Yes, those two sisters were given to others when they were young, and they rarely... (return to bio-mother's house)

 

Li-Hui: That was why uncle was not familiar with them?

 

Yueh-Tao: They were sent to two different families. And when your uncle was in jail, they didn’t write to him, and they didn’t have any (contact with him) ... It wasn't until he came back from jail that everyone had more of a chance to meet and contact each other again... He was closer to me because I was way younger than the other sisters.

 

Li-Hui: So… after working at Nan-Ya Plastics, the jobs you had after that were actually related to uncle's connections...

 

Yueh-Tao: Right, right, right ...

 

Li-Hui: And many of his connections were built at Green Island in jail.

 

Yueh-Tao: Right, right, right ... the connections with the architect firm and with Wang Quan-Mei (the maltose factory) were both built when he was in jail... but even with that, it was still very hard. We didn’t have computers to do the calculations at that time, so I needed to do all the calculations manually. I often did that until one or two in the morning, sacrificing my sleep time to do the structural calculations...

 

Li-Hui: So I could say if you hadn’t worked with uncle afterward, you would have worked at Nan-Ya Plastics all along, right?

 

Yueh-Tao: Right, if your uncle hadn’t encouraged me to go to night school again and then helped me find the job working for Wang Quan-Mei (the maltose factory), I could have only kept working at Nan-Ya Plastics...I needed to survive so I could only continue being a worker... in that case, I had to do night shifts at Nan-Ya, and I couldn’t go to night school ... do you understand what I just told you or not?

 

Li-Hui: Yeah, I got it ... what happened in order, was that my uncle went to Green Island, and there he learned structural mechanics from others (Yueh-Tao: Right) ... Then he came back and taught you that so you knew how to do the calculations (Yueh-Tao: Right). Overall the places where you worked later were actually related to uncle’s connections, and these connections were all related to Green Island.

 

Yueh-Tao: Yes, because we were all very poor then, and if we wanted to get rid of poverty, we had no other way but to rely on our own efforts.

 

Li-Hui: So you never had the thought that uncle as a political prisoner was very troublesome for you?

 

Yueh-Tao: Well ... what else could be done even if it was troublesome for me? He was my bio-brother and my blood anyway, not mentioning that he also cared about me so much...

 

Li-Hui: Okay, so what happened was more like that you were sent away when you were very young, and you had no memory of uncle. In fact, you developed your relationship with him when uncle was on Green Island...by writing letters...

 

Yueh-Tao: Right, that was what happened! Because of my letter, in that I wrote down “what kind of society this was?”, and then your uncle was interrogated and tortured, and for that he had a deep impression of me! After that he could not write back to me to explain what had happened to him. It happened that someone was released from the prison, so your uncle asked this person to go to the countryside to find me... he went to my adopted family to see me and told me to stop writing letters to my brother, because my words caused him to be in trouble... I lived in an environment that made me think why things worked like this—when I needed food or money, I didn’t have any, when the adults didn’t have rice we kids needed to buy rice on credit… and it was a lot of suffering for me, so of course I complained about what kind of society this was.

 

Li-Hui: I knew all of the letters (delivered to political prisoners) would have been checked, couldn’t the people who checked your letter tell that the characters were written by a kid?

 

Yueh-Tao: They really didn’t give a damn what the written characters looked like

... some adults write like kids anyway (Li-Hui: true), also I have written very neatly since I was a child...

 

Li-Hui: Okay so the examiner couldn't tell... fine, do you know why your name is Yueh-Tao?

 

Yueh-Tao: I don’t know, someone in the original family decided that... I had a passed-away older sister named Yueh-Li(*note). Probably because after Li, it’s the turn for Tao … I had an older sister named Yueh-Li, but she died when she was very young.

(*note: In Chinese, “Tao / 桃” means peach, “Li / 李” means plum, peach and plum was put together quite often as “Tao Li / 桃李”. By the way, “Yueh / 月” means moon. Therefore, “Yueh-Tao  / 月桃” means “moon-peach”, and “Yueh-Li  / 月李” means “moon-plum”)

 

Li-Hui: After Li it’s Tao’s turn, so you are called as Yueh-Tao.

 

Yueh-Tao: That’s right!