Chapter 2
The Girl Who Loved Basketball
The shrill blast of the whistle echoed across the court.
Around her, girls laughed as they gathered their bags. Some collapsed
onto the polished wooden floor, exhausted from another afternoon of
practice. Others lingered, replaying the best moments of the game before
making their way home through the streets of Taipei.
阿嬤 stayed a little longer.
Years later, when she spoke about her school days, she rarely mentioned
examination scores.
She talked about basketball.
“I really enjoyed playing.”
It was such a simple sentence.
Yet it revealed a side of 阿嬤 that her grandchildren might never
otherwise have known.
By the time she entered Taipei First Girls' High School, she had
already proven herself academically. She was now surrounded by girls
who, like her, had excelled in school. In another environment, that
might have felt intimidating.
Instead, she found something that brought her joy.
Basketball.
At some point during her first years at First Girls', she earned a place
on the school's representative team. While many students attended
ordinary physical education classes, she and her teammates spent those
hours practising together, preparing to represent the school in
competitions.
She never described making the team as an achievement.
She simply described it as something she loved.
That quiet understatement runs through so many of her memories.
The Taiwan of the early 1960s placed enormous emphasis on academic
success. Families celebrated examination results, and schools expected
students to work hard. Yet the best schools also believed education was
about more than books alone. Sport taught discipline, resilience and
cooperation—qualities that could not be measured by an examination
paper.
Without realising it, 阿嬤 was learning those lessons every time she
stepped onto the court.
The games themselves gradually faded from memory.
The feeling never did.
She remembered the friendships.
The teamwork.
The excitement of pulling on the school uniform and knowing she was
representing something larger than herself.
When graduation came, another examination awaited.
Once again, 阿嬤 succeeded.
She was admitted to National Taiwan University, the dream of
countless students across Taiwan.
Life changed.
New classmates.
New professors.
A much larger campus.
Yet there was one familiar place she sought out almost immediately.
The basketball court.
She made the university team as well.
It would be easy to separate her academic life from her
sporting life, as though one mattered more than the other.
阿嬤 never did.
To her, they simply belonged together.
She studied hard.
She played hard.
Both became part of the young woman she was becoming.
When asked many years later whether she had been a top student, 阿嬤
answered with characteristic modesty.
“I wasn't first. But I was near the top.”
She spoke with exactly the same modesty about basketball.
Never once did she boast about representing her school or university.
She simply smiled as she remembered how much she had enjoyed it.
That quiet understatement carries more weight than any trophy or report card
ever could.