The early autumn weather can’t make up its mind whether to be warm or cool, but the heat from the oven in the back of the Te Mei ­Xiang cake shop is making sweat bead on ­Nguyen My Lan’s forehead.

It’s not yet noon, but ­Nguyen has already been hard at work for six hours. More than 100 old-fashioned cakes sit nearby ready for delivery.

Is she busy? “Today isn’t especially busy,” she tells us through the mask she wears while baking. Dressed in a yellow Te Mei ­Xiang T-shirt, ­Nguyen keeps her hands moving as she speaks, mixing the batter, pouring it into molds, and popping the molds into the oven. Some 20 minutes later, a timer rings and she pulls out the finished cakes. A few minutes later, she’s at it again, flour sack in hand and beating more eggs as she sets to work on the next batch. The process repeats over and over again, as it has, day in and day out, for the last three years.

The brown characters and yellow background of the Te Mei ­Xiang sign hang high above the county highway in Qiong­lin Township, Hsin­chu County. ­Nguyen moved the cake shop here last year to reduce her lease expenses. Although the location is close to both the old quarter of Nei­wan and the bustling ­Hakka community in ­Beipu, ­Nguyen has yet to visit either. After 15 years in Taiwan, she feels most comfortable in her cake shop.

Completely committed to her entrepreneurial vision, Vietnamese immigrant Nguyen My Lan is baking up a wonderful life.

An old-fashioned flavor

Made without butter or fruit, ­Nguyen’s eight-inch cakes are not decorative, but have a light flavor and fine crumb. Her customers often describe them as being “like the old-fashioned cakes Mother used to make when I was a child.”

Making cakes from eggs and flour isn’t difficult, but ­Nguyen spent years honing her technique, throwing away countless batches until she got everything just right.

Nguyen had to save until 2013 to accumulate the start-up capital she needed to open Te Mei ­Xiang. Unfortunately, few people seemed interested in her cakes when the shop was at its original location on Hsin­chu’s ­Guangfu Road. At the time, she was sometimes serving fewer than ten people a day and selling less than NT$2,000 worth of goods, which wasn’t enough to even cover her costs.   

Nguyen began handing out fresh-baked samples at the entrance to the local market to promote her shop. But in spite of her hard work, friendly greetings, and diligent efforts to introduce her products to passersby, very few people took a sample. Seeing no improvement in her sales and faced with the prospect of not being able to pay her lease, she often wept.

Nguyen’s daughter knew how hard her mother was working and began writing about it in her school diary. On reading it, her teacher enrolled the family in the National Immigration Agency’s New Immigrant Torch Program, which provided ­Nguyen with a better support network. Meanwhile, media reports on the cake shop raised its profile, leading to large orders that helped turn the business around. As sales improved, it became normal for her to work from midnight until dawn.

Completely committed to her entrepreneurial vision, Vietnamese immigrant Nguyen My Lan is baking up a wonderful life.

Entrepreneurship in a foreign land

Duong Thi Hong Gam, a fellow Vietnamese immigrant, sees ­Nguyen’s success as a real achievement. After reading about ­Nguyen in a magazine, ­Duong decided she wanted to meet her. ­Nguyen’s shop wasn’t far from her home, so she dropped by. The two chatted and hit it off. “I went from being a customer to a friend, and later began working at Te Mei ­Xiang,” says ­Duong.

Nguyen likes to bring in other Vietnamese immigrants when the shop gets busy and she needs an extra hand. Like ­Duong, these other helpers originally came to Taiwan to work or when they married a Taiwanese man.

Nguyen is the axis around which all parts of the business revolve. She cooks cakes through the night, takes a breather at noon, and then packages the cakes for delivery. She got her driver’s license in early 2016 and bought a new vehicle so she could also handle the deliveries herself. That means that she is now the shop’s owner, its pastry chef, its salesperson, and its delivery driver.

Friends often express pity for how hard she works to support her family, but ­Nguyen herself doesn’t see it that way. She began working when she was just 13 and underwent many trials before coming to Taiwan.

She was born in a small fishing village about two hours by car from Ho Chi Minh City. Her father passed away when she was young and her mother married another man. Within a few years of the new marriage, she had two new sisters. Meanwhile, the family’s finances remained just as dire as before.

Nguyen left school and began working when in just the fourth grade to help ease the family’s burdens. She remembers going with her two little sisters to a nearby beach to catch fish to sell in the market for extra income. People often say that her current life is difficult, but the camera-shy ­Nguyen laughs: “No, no. My life in Taiwan is good.”

Having experienced the bitterness of often having to bow her head and ask others for help, Nguyen has long looked forward to a future in which she would be able to provide assistance rather than receive it. Nowadays, she makes a point of taking time out of her busy schedule for charitable work, which includes delivering her cakes to the nearby Shih ­Guang Educational and Nursing Institution. “Seeing the residents there smile is the happiest part of my day.”

Nguyen spent the last three years getting her business up and running, and doing charity work. She calls herself a “doer,” someone who forges ahead with her ideas without giving them too much extra thought. When the Hsin­chu County Government honored her with a model immigrant award late last year, she was both happy and surprised to see all of her hard work and sacrifice finally acknowledged.

Her delicious old-fashioned cakes have made a name for Te Mei ­Xiang, won praise from customers, and generated a seemingly endless stream of online orders. But when asked about her success, the humble ­Nguyen My Lan always responds that it isn’t enough. “I need to work harder, even harder.” It is a familiar sentiment, and the one that ­Nguyen most often uses to encourage herself.  

Nguyen isn’t just making her own way in Taiwan; she’s also hiring other Vietnamese immigrants to help at her cake shop.

mixing ingredients

Nguyen pours the batter into molds.

Nguyen mixes her ingredients, pours the batter into molds, then pops the molds into the oven to bake.

The delicious cakes cook in less than half an hour.

Nguyen personally delivers cakes to Grown-up With Hands, an affiliate of the Shih Guang Educational and Nursing Institution. She loves seeing the residents tuck into her cakes.

Having grown up in poverty, Nguyen My Lan looks forward to being able to help others. She often visits the Shih Guang Educational and Nursing Institution to share her compassion.

After 15 years in Taiwan, Nguyen’s entrepreneurial endeavors were acknowledged last year with a model immigrant award from the Hsinchu County Government. (courtesy of the Hsinchu County Government)