Part 1
The Eldest Daughter
Chapter 1
My Father Waited All Night
The man had been standing outside the newspaper office for hours.
It was still dark.
Somewhere inside the Mandarin Daily News, the presses thundered into
life, feeding blank sheets of paper through rollers that would soon
print the examination results for thousands of students across Taiwan.
His eldest daughter was asleep.
He could not be.
Years later, 阿嬤 would tell the story with a smile, still slightly
amused by the lengths her father had gone to.
“He couldn't wait until morning. He went to the newspaper office
himself.”
To modern readers, it may seem extraordinary. Today, examination results
arrive with the tap of a screen. But in the Taiwan of the late 1950s,
they appeared first in the morning newspaper. For families who believed
education offered the surest path to a better future, waiting until
breakfast simply felt impossible.
So he waited.
When the first bundles of newspapers finally emerged, he searched line
after line of tiny print until, at last, he found the name he had been
hoping for.
His daughter had been admitted to Taipei First Girls' High School
(北一女中).
He hurried home carrying the newspaper as though it were a family
treasure.
By the time 阿嬤 woke up, everyone already knew.
The celebration had begun without her.
That single night revealed something that shaped 阿嬤 long before she
understood it herself.
In her family, education was never simply about marks or prestige.
It was an expression of hope.
Her parents were merchants who had worked hard to build a stable life
while raising six children—three boys and three girls. Like many
families rebuilding their lives in post-war Taiwan, they believed that
learning was something no one could ever take away.
阿嬤, the eldest of the six, grew up carrying responsibilities almost
without noticing them. Helping younger brothers and sisters, setting an
example, doing her share around the house—these were not exceptional
acts. They were simply part of belonging to the family.
No one announced these expectations.
They were quietly lived.
阿嬤 had been born in 1943, while Taiwan was still under Japanese
rule.
She was too young to remember those years, but their influence lingered
long afterwards. Her mother's generation had been educated in Japanese,
a skill that would later shape 阿嬤's own future in ways no one could
yet imagine. By the time 阿嬤 started school, Taiwan had entered a
new era under the Republic of China. Mandarin replaced Japanese in
classrooms, and a generation of children grew up bridging two
worlds—one inherited from their parents, the other unfolding before
them.
To 阿嬤, however, history was never something abstract.
It was simply the world she happened to be born into.
She attended Penglai Elementary School (蓬萊國小), only a short walk
from what is now Ningxia Night Market.
The Taipei she remembered was a city of bicycles, family-run shops and
neighbours who knew one another by name. Children walked to school
carrying their books under their arms. After classes, they drifted home
through streets that would later become some of the busiest in the city.
She studied hard.
Not because anyone demanded perfection, but because doing your best was
simply what was expected.
When she later reflected on those years, she smiled with characteristic
modesty.
“I wasn't first. But I was near the top.”
That was all she would say.
Others might have described admission to Taipei First Girls' High School
as a remarkable achievement.
阿嬤 preferred to talk about her father's excitement.
Life at First Girls' opened a wider world.
There were gifted classmates, inspiring teachers and, unexpectedly, a
basketball court where she discovered one of the great joys of her
youth.
Those memories would become stories for another chapter.
For now, what mattered most was not the school itself but the values
that had carried her there: quiet perseverance, humility and a family
that believed every opportunity was worth working for.
Those values would guide every important decision she made for the rest
of her life.