I met your mother in 1954. Back then the streets of Taipei were plied by jeeps, bicycles and pedicabs. There were air raid trenches along the main roads, and the wail of air raid sirens and a lingering wartime atmosphere were still a regular part of life.

Kill the pig, pluck out the bristles: It was the evening of our graduation dance, at the International Fellowship Association in the Hsimenting district. Your mother was just 20 years old. She sported a ponytail and a billowy skirt like Audrey Hepburn's in Roman Holiday. Afterwards, in the dim, yellow light of a street lamp, she hailed a pedicab, and I climbed on my 14-inch, prewar era bicycle and set out behind her. Bicycle tires, like other material goods, were in short supply back then. Mine were pieced together from strips cut from discarded automobile tires, so it was a bumpy ride. I watched the slogan on the back of the pedicab pull farther and farther away: "Fight the Communists, Oppose the Russians; Kill the Pig [a homonym for Chu Teh] and Pluck Out the Bristles [a homonym for Mao Tse-tung]."

On our first date, a classmate of mine and I took your mother and her sister rowing at Pitan. Most young people back then knew how to row because when we went on dates it was either Pitan or else the Tamsui River. There was a tea pavilion there with a view of the scenery and a wooden bridge leading to an islet where they sang songs in Taiwanese.

As we rowed and talked, I found out your mother's family owned a small department store and was very well off. She used Nuits de Paris perfume, Pond's facial cream and Camay soap--all fancy imports--while my sisters had to make due, at best, with Pai Chueh Ling facial cream, Hsinchu powder and Ming Hsing scented water. We wore baggy pants cut from flour sacks and used coarse, brown toilet paper.

That evening the four of us had dinner at the Bolero, a Western-style restaurant on Minsheng West Road. Most of the people inside were couples or blind dates sizing each other up for marriage. If it weren't such a "grand occasion," they wouldn't have gone in. When paying the bill, I took out two crisp, blue NT$10 bills. That was back when a bowl of noodles with two or three pieces of white pork meat cost just NT$1.50.

New Paradise and Hsiang Chiao: After we got to know each other better, we would head off to the night market at the Circle for fried oyster noodles or to the stalls by the remains of the Railroad Restaurant in front of the train station for delicacies from all over China, especially beef noodles. Your mother always said she didn't like meat and just ate the noodles and drank the broth, leaving the meat for me. I didn't realize it was because she was worried about the price and thought I was too skinny and wanted me to eat more. I used to tell her: If you don't like meat, just order broth noodles!

On dates we used to see a black-and-white movie, like Hung Niang with Chou Hsuan and Round Moon Over China with Chen Yun-shang or a Japanese film like Green Mountains and Return, for NT$3 a ticket. Or else we went to the National Press Club or the Tri-Service Military Club to dance. There weren't any arenas for large-scale performances back then. The Harlem Globetrotters and the Ice Capades had to put on their shows at the military sports field in front of the Presidential Building.

We got married in 1957, when I was 28 and your mother 24. Your grandfather respected me as a college graduate instead of looking down on me as poor. Your mother's dowry filled a dozen or so pushcarts, winding along in a big long line. Our wedding banquet was held in a tent set up on the side of the road in front of our house. We served Hung Lu wine and Hey-Song soft drinks. Shao-hsing wine was very expensive back then. Instead, people usually drank rice wine in refillable bottles. We smoked New Paradise and Hsiang Chiao cigarettes.

Kuan Kuang coach and Chin Ma special: We spent our honeymoon at Ali Mountain. We took a Kuan Kuang (Tourist) coach to Taichung and a Chin Ma (Golden Horse) special to Sun Moon Lake. When it came time to go back, your mother had already started to scrimp and save like a new daughter-in-law in charge of running the household, and we switched to a Ping Kuai coach and a regular city bus. It took four hours longer but saved us half our transportation money.

As our family's eldest daughter-in-law, your mother had to look after your nine little aunts and uncles, the youngest of whom was still in elementary school. A packet of monosodium glutamate, a bottle of soy sauce, a box of tooth powder--all took careful budgeting. Occasionally there were a few cents left over, and she would treat your Aunty No. 4 and Uncle No. 5 to some black candy or sweet cassia roots.

To boost rice exports, the government encouraged people to eat more flour. Your mother learned how to make steamed dumplings and stuffed buns and even bake bread. We'd all sit under a big ceiling fan in the yellow lamplight listening to Wen Hsia sing "Black Dog on the Mountaintop" on the radio or Li Chun-nan's radio play Chou Kung vs. the Peach Blossom Girl. After dinner, we'd take out the watermelon that had been "chilled" all day long in the water barrel and cut it up to eat. Your mother would heat some water on top of the coal ball, which was still warm, and wash your aunts' and uncles' only set of uniforms for school. If she had any time left over, she would darn my socks or mend my worn-down collar by taking it off, turning it over and sewing it back on again. It was really hard being a housewife back then, but your mother always seemed full of zest and interest in whatever she did.

Things got much better during the 1960s. When your older brother was just three years old, he tottered out the door and hailed a taxi. Television came in, and at dinner time your brother would carry his stool over to the local appliance store to watch cartoons and eat with the other children. Your mother would be busy at the sewing machine, singing Tzu Wei's "Green Island Nocturne" and "You Smiled at Me Yesterday" or Mei Tai's "Love's Hard to Forget" or the Ching Shan and Wan Chu duet "Almond Blossom Stream Love."

After the color movie Liang Shan-po and Chu Ying-tai came out, it would be "Eighteen Farewells" or "Pavilion Rendezvous" all day long. Even your grandmother went to see it. There wasn't an interpreter translating the dialogue into Taiwanese at the movies any more, so I had to do it for her myself.

Polyester and plastic bowls: In 1967, at your grandfather's 60th birthday, our relatives from down south brought him free-range chicken and mung bean cake, and his friends gave him Chu Shui Hsuan candy, Li Hua cream puffs and Wei-Chuan MSG. There were a lot of guests. Fortunately, we had an electric rice cooker and a gas stove by then, which made cooking much quicker.

In the evening we gathered around the television set, and your aunts and uncles from Tainan talked about how your cousin Ah Chu almost lost her life because of a pair of plastic sandals. It was during the Paiho earthquake. Your uncle had taken the children to see a movie at the old theater. Ah Chu, proud as a peacock, was wearing her new plastic sandals instead of wooden clogs. During the earthquake somebody stepped on one and it came off, and she was so upset she wouldn't run out. Everyone was afraid to sleep inside that night. Ah Chu and her little brother wrapped themselves up in a greatcoat left behind by the U.S. army and slept on a pile of hay in the yard.

Plastic items were considered novel and strange. Belts, hair clips and combs were as smooth and shiny as jade. Polyester was lightweight and wouldn't wrinkle, which made your mother the happiest. One shake after being washed and they'd look freshly ironed. But the material was so thin you could see inside the pockets. People used to wrap their money in a big green NT$100 bill to pass themselves off as swank.

Your mother liked polyester, but she wouldn't buy plastic toothbrushes, even though they had shed-free bristles. She insisted we use handmade, hog-bristle brushes. Nowadays everybody says natural-bristle brushes are better, so you can see how farsighted she was.

We moved to the countryside in 1971, when you were just in first grade. Life there was a lot different than it was in Taipei. The neighborhood children often went barefoot and helped out in the rice paddies, and they sometimes stole digestive powder from the medicine packet and ate it like candy. You wore white socks and shoes and ate milk cookies and coconut cream wafers. We had a big 20-inch television and a refrigerator and a telephone different from the old hand-cranked model we used to have in Taipei. The year the American astronauts walked on the moon, your grandmother said that times had changed very quickly, very quickly indeed.

When we made it to the Little League and Senior League world championships next year, all five of us--you, your mother, brother, sister and I--piled on the motorcycle and went to the local appliance store to watch the games on color TV. When we won them both, we clapped and cheered amid the din of exploding firecrackers.

People weren't well off back then. But in retrospect, the images, like those of black-and-white photographs, seem especially clear. I remember your mother used to look at you and sigh, "Life is getting more and more convenient. It'll be a lot easier for you when you're a daughter-in-law!"

Information and photos supplied by: Taiwan Sugar Corp., Hey-Song Corp., Namchow Group, Yue Loong Motor Co., Taiwan Fluorescent Lamp Co., Sampo Corp., Tainan Spinning Co., Spread Enterprise, Singer Industries (Taiwan) Ltd., Taiwan Toy Manufacturers Association, Ah Pa's Lovers Restaurant, Li Ting-tsai, Li Shu-chen, Chiang Chia-yu, Chan Teh-mao, Chuang Yung-ming, Liu Chu-fei, Tsai Kuo-lung,Tsai Ching-chang, Hsiao Sung-ken, Wang Sung-nien and Chiu Hsiu-chih.

Author: Han Hsiu Publisher: Youth Cultural Enterprise Price: NT$260 Pages: 456.