We mustn't shortchange the future of our youth! Youth Labor Union 95 has called on youth holding atypical employment to band together. (photo by Chuang Kung-ju)

"I got up every morning at 5 a.m. At an hour when most people were still slumbering, I got to my job at the breakfast shop, made sandwiches and milk tea, delivered breakfast, and did other tasks. When I finished my shift and got back home, my roommate would still be snoring away! Over the lunch hour I worked at a restaurant, making noodles and doing accounts. In the evenings I tutored kids living up in the mountains."

"But I never felt sorry for myself, because lots of others worked part-time jobs, too. Being short of cash was a way of life for me. No matter how hard I struggled, I always felt like I had nothing. And I guessed maybe my father was in the same situation. The stress of day-to-day living made everything seem precarious and uncertain."

In "Hard at Work," an essay that brought him a Lin Rung San Literature Award, 24-year-old Wu Yi-wei offers the preceding description of the daily struggle he went through as a high-school and university student. Finding himself following a path much like that taken by his father, who ran a mom-and-pop store, he cast about for meaning in a hardscrabble existence.

But no matter how hard the young people of today may work (both physically and intellectually), the work world for them is a much tougher place than it was for an earlier generation.