The Taipei-Ilan highway has been the scene of many an accident, many a ceremony in memory of the dead and many a ghost story. After cars from Taipei pass through Pinglin, noted for its small eateries, houses grow scarcer until there is only one every few kilometers. As the road climbs, conifers appear along the way. Billowing mist at dawn and dusk makes the treacherous road even harder to navigate.

Strange old man: Particularly hazardous is the notorious "Twists and Turns" section just inside Ilan County, where the road narrows, the gradient steepens and some of the curves exceed 180 degrees. "There are 30 or so major and minor accidents a month on this section alone," points out a police officer at Fucheng station, Chiaohsi precinct, Ilan County, which is responsible for this part of the road.

On the line between Taipei and Ilan counties, at a place called Shihpai, there is a little store that sells uniquely flavored tea-leaf eggs, the owner of which is said to be a strange old man.

"A lot of weird things happen at that crosspoint. That old man couldn't live there unless he knew magic," says the owner of a tea store 10 kilometers away, relating an anecdote about him. The spirits of people killed in car accidents gather there, he says, and "thousands" of bandits and resistance fighters were killed there during the Ching dynasty and the Japanese occupation. Some hoodlums wanted to take over the old man's territory once and went to get him one night, but he held up a magical curse that forced them to kneel down and kowtow in apology.

When you drive into Shihpai, you find lots of vendors and roadside stands. The gentle fragrance of seasonable fruit fills the air, and the warm scent of roast sausage and little noodle shops beckons to travelers to stop for a rest. In the little store on the far left, there are already quite a few people peeling or munching on tea-leaf eggs.

"Give me a dozen to go," one customer says, pulling out his wallet. White-haired Wang Tzu-yun, the owner, patiently explains in his thick mainlander accent: "Mountain roads are dangerous, young man. Eat some before you go. Eating and driving at the same time is dangerous!"

Tea-leaf eggs are steeped in a dozen or more ingredients for three days to bring out the flavor.

Rules and regulations:

Since he has been in the business for nearly 30 years, his regular customers have long known about his rules and regulations. "He does it for our own good!" an old customer from Ilan says. But when Wang goes to another table to clean up, he reveals in a whisper that sometimes he can't help eating in the car. When he does, he feels a bit embarrassed and tries to stay more alert at the wheel.

Customers who don't know the house rules often look surprised, turn around and shout at their friend in the driver's seat, "The old fogey says we can't take them out!" The more irascible ones call him names. "Cretin! I'm offering you good money for your wares and you put on airs!" they say, wheeling around and stomping off.

Some try a soft approach. "Wrap a few up for me. I promise not to eat them in the car." "I don't want to carry out. I just want to take them to the rest pavilion up ahead." That's when Wang Tzu-yun's young helper, 16-year-old Chang Chia-ching, pipes up, "It's for your own safety that we don't trust people to take them out. Please eat your fill first. If you want to eat them at the pavilion, we'll put them on a plate and you can bring back the plate when you're done." His tone is polite but firm.

"Mr. Wang taught me how to say it my first day on the job. He says it's a good thing and not to be afraid that customers will be angry." Chang says Mr. Wang scolds him when he tells customers they can't carry out and forgets to explain the reason.

Some nearby vendors say he's weird--what kind of businessman doesn't want customers to buy as much as they can? Others huff that it's just a promotional ploy: "The more he tries to stop people from taking them away, the more they want to buy!"

With Kuishan lsland visible in the distance, Wang says, "llan is the strategic key to Taipei, you know.".

No alcohol or cigarettes:

"You know, this Twists and Turns section is very dangerous. As soon as a car slips off the road, it's wrecked and the driver's killed. A whole family, young and old, weeping and wailing--who's going to take care of them? A man from Toucheng was in an accident once. His son rushed back from Taipei to see him and was killed in a wreck in the mountains himself. What a tragedy!" Wang raises his voice to be heard over the roar of passing vehicles. "The way I look at it, if I can get 1,000 drivers to stop for an egg and refresh themselves before heading back out on the road, maybe there'll be one fewer accident, one fewer fatality and one more family will be spared. Tell me what's wrong with that."

For a similar reason, the glass cabinet that in most little stores displays liquor and cigarettes in Wang's only holds motion sickness pills, cough syrup and the like instead. Newspaper clippings are posted up about how cigarettes are harmful to the health. "Cigarette butts not only pollute the environment, they're also liable to cause forest fires." Wang sees things from all angles.

The eggs may smell delicious, but don't eat them in the car --house rules.

Eight Immortals Soup:

In the afternoon, the temperature in the mountains falls, but business at the store heats up. Customers can't help being curious about the dozen or so 60cm diameter aluminum pots on the floor. They bring their friends over for a taste, lift up the lids and tell them to take a look at the special seasonings inside. "Cassia bark, Chinese angelica, pepper, aged ginger--there are more than ten different kinds," Chang says, as though enumerating family treasures. Mr. Wang told him to throw away the tea leaves as soon as the eggs are done. If they're left overnight, the eggs won't taste right and it's bad for the throat and stomach. The eggs have got to be steeped in seasoning for three days and arranged neatly for an even flavor. Each pot holds 200 eggs. They generally sell three or four pots a day and one or two more on weekends and holidays.

Another dish available there is Eight Immortals Soup, which is rarely sold in small eateries. It's a salty soup made by stewing a large bone and then adding pork, lotus seeds, longans and peanuts.

Wang says the soup used to be a popular treat at the Shanghai train station. He isn't from Shang-hai, though; he's from Kweichow. How did he come to sell a dish from Shanghai? He furrows his brow and searches his memory.

"Another accident!" Wang rushes over to take a look, muttering about the road's treacherous curves.

In the army and after:

Wang was born in Kweichow in 1912, the first year of the Republic. His grandfather was an official in the Ching dynasty. His mother was the second of his father's four wives, he seems to recall. Kweichow was in chaos at the time. There were bandits everywhere. When he was 12, he was drafted as a provincial soldier, and at 18 he joined the Youth Corps along with four or five of his brothers. They became separated and he never returned home. "From then on, I traveled around with the troops. It was all a long time ago, and I've forgotten most of it." He speaks in scattered bits and pieces about the first part of his life, but a rough idea of it can be pieced together.

Much of his time as a soldier was spent fighting, against both the Japanese and the Communists. Speaking of fighting, he becomes agitated--airplanes, falling bombs, half the sky in flames. When the troops withdrew, people tore down their houses and built rafts to flee. Killing Japanese and killing Chinese--there was no end to it. "I'm trying to save people now. You know the saying: A butcher can become a Buddha as soon as he lays down his cleaver!"

Wang Tzu-yun came to Taiwan with his army comrades in 1950. He retired from the military in 1958 and went to work on a duck farm and then in a military clothing factory in Ilan. In 1960 he was hired by the Public Works Department in Ilan and worked on repairing the "Twists and Turns" section of the Taipei-Ilan highway. "In addition to digging and moving earth, I thought we should plant something, so I took a pair of scissors to the local schoolyard and cut some flowers for transplanting. Sure enough, it looked a lot better," he says with pride.

The benches that Wang installed in the little park next to his store are adorned with patriotic slogans.

Guarding the passes:

After working on the road during the day, he sold fruit and steamed buns in the evening in the workers' quarters in Shihpai. He retired in 1971. Having no family or relatives, he settled down where he was and made use of the prize recipes he had learned from a chef during his years in the military to open an eatery.

The view from the back of his store overlooks Lanyang Plain and Kueishan Island. The old man says with a straight face, "Ilan is the back door to Taipei. If the Japanese wanted to invade, they'd have to fight their way through. I'm not here just to sell things, you know."

As he speaks, a highway patrolman drops in. Officer Chang Ching-hsiang describes Wang as "very patriotic." Every six months he asks him to go to the post office and send more than NT$10,000 to the Defense Ministry Patriotic Fund. Country comes first, Wang says. "I started donating NT$1,000 a month when we broke relations with Japan and another NT$1,000 when we broke with the U.S. And now, what with Korea, that makes NT$3,000 a month in support of our national defense." He made sure that the stone benches he donated to the little park nearby would all sport slogans about loyalty to the country and respect for one's parents.

Soldiers do things by the book. Not wanting to occupy land that belongs to the nation without paying for it, he made a special trip to the Forestry Bureau to rent the land his store is on. In addition to the late president Chiang Ching-kuo, who built up modern-day Taiwan, the person he most admires is Wang Chien-shien, who recently resigned as minister of finance. "You people shouldn't be writing about me," he says. "I haven't made any contributions to speak of. Why don't you write about Mr. Wang? He's upright and courageous, and I admire him a great deal."

Looking after nighttime drivers:

When business is slack, he picks up a broom and starts sweeping, all the way from the store over to the rest pavilion and the little park. He has laid down three rules for the other vendors here: first, not to fight over customers; second, not to block traffic; and third, to keep things neat and tidy.

Night falls early in the mountains, and the sky is already dark just after six o'clock. Wang and his assistant get ready to close up shop.

He used to keep open right till midnight, but he closes early now. For one reason, he's getting old, and he can't keep up all by himself after his helper leaves. And then there's the highway. It used to be a gravel road without railings or reflectors and was really dangerous. Wang feels that people driving at night need to rest, drink some hot soup, stretch their legs and relax. But now the highway has been greatly improved and some of the other vendors stay open 24 hours a day, so the task of looking after nighttime drivers can be "passed on to others."

After closing up shop, Wang reads the newspaper or watches television and goes to bed before nine o'clock.

When asked, in view of the strange stories about him, whether he isn't afraid living in the mountains all alone or whether he has ever run up against any "creepy things," he laughs and replies, "Ghosts? Sure! If you see NT$1,000 on the ground and look around to see if anyone is watching and then pocket it on the sly, that's a ghost! Ghosts and spirits? They're right here, aren't they?" he says, pointing to his chest.

Helping people in distress:

Before his helper leaves, Wang reminds him to take home some rice. He was given it at a Buddhist ceremony recently, and he, in turn, is giving it to people in need. Chang's father suffered a stroke a month ago. Wang sends the family NT$5,000 a month and keeps Chang working to help supplement their income.

The people in nearby Shihtsao Village, Pinglin Township, grow tea and fruit for a living and are rather hard off. Wang's adopted daughter, Liang Shu-hua, remembers that when she was little her mother used to take her three or four kilometers up the road to Shihpai to cut mang grass and carry it home to patch up their walls. That was how Wang got to know her and adopted her. He paid almost all the tuition for her eight brothers and sisters. Her father, Liang Nan-shan, is full of gratitude: "This old mainlander sells eggs to help those in need and not for himself. Most of the poor families in Shihtsao have been helped by him at one time or another."

Besides helping out on his own, as soon as cold weather arrives, Wang regularly donates tens of thousands of NT dollars to the Pinglin Township and Toucheng Village administrative centers in response to their winter relief drives.

"Some people see how good my business is and think this old guy must be loaded. Actually, I don't have a cent in the bank," he says. At year's end, he figures how much is required for operations in the coming year, for buying beverages, instant noodles and other merchandise, and donates the rest to charity. "There's no need to hang onto anything. There's only me, so the rest is easy," he says. The dozens of good citizenship awards hanging up in his store were earned that way.

How can I relax and go home?

On Sunday morning, Wang rises shortly after five o'clock, as usual. Sunday is usually the busiest day of the week, but today he's lucky: His adopted daughter and her husband have brought their two children over to see him and keep him company at work. He happily plays with the children and chats away.

At his age, most people would think about returning to their birthplace, but Wang doesn't plan on going back to the mainland. For the first part of his life, he was ceaselessly on the move, traveling all over China, north and south. Besides Kwei-chow the place he lived in the longest was Hunan, but even that was only for two years, he figures. "I don't want to go back and have a look. If I did, I wouldn't recognize anything. I've lived here the longest and here's where I want to be buried," he says.

A true soldier, Wang has always kept the war and the fall of the mainland vivid in his breast. Whenever he is asked why he never married, he answers, "The loss of my country was disloyal. Failing to care for my parents was unfilial. How can a person who's disloyal and unfilial think about marriage?"

After tasting the bitterness of war and displacement to the full, Wang says he has no greater hope than that Taiwan remain peaceful and stable. As for the scuffles in the Legislative Yuan, the rising crime rate, the 28 percent divorce rate and even the frequent vandalism of the doors on the public toilets in Shihpai, he feels fear and trepidation. "How is it people don't love their country and their home?If they keep fighting and messing things up, they'll wreck the country and then where can we go? With all this fighting and mess, how do you expect me to relax and go back to the mainland?"

Holding on to peace and quiet:

For the past 30 years, except for typhoons or when he gets a haircut, Wang's little store on the Taipei-Ilan highway has never closed. He's never been anywhere in Taiwan except Ilan and Kaohsiung. His adopted daughter urges him to take some time off and go on a tour, but he doesn't want to. He's only content when devoting himself heart and soul to keeping his little store.

"The first half of my life was spent in a hail of bullets. That the second half has been so peaceful is all thanks to this blessed piece of earth."

"When I used to sell fruit, people would still buy my bananas even if the skins were black. I know they felt sorry for me, and I truly thank them."

"I'm lucky: 81 years old and no false teeth or pock marks."

The dappled sunlight of a splendid late autumn afternoon shines on Wang's head of white hair. Watching his two adopted grandchildren playing to one side, the old man sits in a chair and dozes off. It's no matter that trucks and cars are roaring past. For him, this is peace and quiet. Nothing could be more precious.

[Picture Caption]

p.106

Tea-leaf eggs are steeped in a dozen or more ingredients for three days to bring out the flavor.

p.108

With Kuishan lsland visible in the distance, Wang says, "llan is the strategic key to Taipei, you know."

p.109

The eggs may smell delicious, but don't eat them in the car --house rules.

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"Another accident!" Wang rushes over to take a look, muttering about the road's treacherous curves.

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The benches that Wang installed in the little park next to his store are adorned with patriotic slogans.