Strolling down the lanes and back alleys of Taipei’s Zhong­zheng District, you may stumble upon the shop April’s Goodies. If you’re lucky, you might even hear the shop’s theme song being sung to its stock of used furniture by the proprietor, April Tang. Her voice is irresistible and full of feeling, much like her person. Her gentle hands have caressed all of the old things collected there, and her warmth of spirit has made the homely shop a place in which people want to linger.

 

“I want this to be a community center, or a home away from home,” says Tang. “Everyone needs a peaceful space to escape to. I’ve made a lot of friends who are on the same wavelength and I’ve been the beneficiary of much goodwill, which has allowed me to replenish my energy to do many things.”

Born in 1976, Tang studied chemical engineering at Feng Chia University and then went to Fu Jen Catholic University for graduate studies in mass communications. She has long made her living as an English teacher. A year and a half ago, with the encouragement of friends, she opened this thrift shop. After operating costs are paid for, the shop’s income all goes to charities.

Tang’s motivation for opening the shop stems from two of her own private enthusiasms: service travel and junk collecting.

Ten years ago, at the invitation of a fellow English teacher who was a foreigner, Tang went to Tibet to teach English to young Tibetans. Because she could use Chinese to communicate with her students, she was better able than the other teachers to immerse herself in their lives. She came to understand that the young Tibetans, who were living in an impoverished place that was cut off from knowledge of the outside world, would often drop out at a young age due to poverty, despite having a naturally voracious appetite for learning.

Distressed at seeing these young people’s hopes snuffed out, Tang went on the next year to organize groups of volunteers from Taiwan to go to Tibet. What’s more, year after year she initiated efforts to raise funds for Tibetan schoolchildren. The approach she took was to ask churches to lend out their facilities to hold flea markets. “Promoting the reuse of resources was both in keeping with an ethos of environmental sustainability and was also a way of gathering the energy of many people.”

Chock full of interesting old furniture and curios, April’s Goodies is a great place to enjoy a cup of coffee and immerse oneself in the warm glow of yesteryear.

The fact is that ever since she was a student, Tang would often pick up discarded furniture and bring it home to fix up, both out of a concern for the environment and also from a desire to save money. “The furniture was different every time, and I enjoyed tracing the clues to determine their eras and origins. Fixing them up was a lot of fun.” Tang always held a few overarching principles about her street finds: Avoid amounts so excessive that they interfere with your daily life, and take good care of what you find.

After she came to work in Tai­pei, she discovered that households would pull out large objects to throw away in the lanes and alleys before the lunar New Year. It was a great source of material support for life in the big city! “I would ride by motorbike and patrol the streets one neighborhood at a time, tying furniture onto the back of my motorcycle and bringing it home myself, before lugging it up five stories to my apartment.”

Because during one period her apartment building had a vacant structure on the roof, Tang had as many seven different sofa sets along with accompanying tables and sideboards up there. Her friends appreciated the atmosphere and seating capacity and would often borrow the space, holding newlywed parties or putting on concerts with dozens of people in attendance.

 

When Tang first opened her shop, she had more than 100 pieces of furniture, all of which she had found herself. Almost all of those pieces have already sold. She has since relied on donations of furniture or tips from others about discards. Many people who learned about the shop online or by word of mouth have volunteered to tend shop or help repair furniture.

Some volunteers have recently discovered that there is a master wicker weaver in his eighties living on Tai­pei’s Nan­ning Street. His skills are impressive and his charges reasonable, and he’s helped repair quite a few chairs. Volunteers want to collect and then widely disseminate information about traditional restorers’ workshops.

Already an English teacher, a leader of service travel tours, and the proprietor of a junk shop, Tang has recently added another title to her resume: singer-songwriter. Her album, April’s Goodies, is scheduled for a March release by Cin­cin Lee Music Production. The simple songs penned by Tang describe her feelings about country kids, travel and junk collecting.

“Everyone gets hurt. When someone stops to soothe my wounds, then I can go home.” —“Junk Furniture”