Once looked down on, now teaching to cook
Sun Li’an comes from Thailand. At age 24, having graduated from a technical college, she came to Taiwan to stay with relatives. She originally intended to go to university here. “I even brought along a big English dictionary!” She assumed she could get by easily just with English, but things didn’t turn out that way. So Sun, who didn’t speak a word of Chinese, began working part-time as she studied Chinese in a supplementary school. How did she get together with her current husband? “He kept on pestering me!” With a smile, she explains that they were introduced by a friend, and after they knew each other for more than a year, she thought, “What the heck, anyway he loves me so much,” and she married him. They have two children, a boy and a girl.
In her first decade or so in Taiwan, Sun lived a very isolated life. She did whatever her family said, either staying at home to take care of family members or working in a factory to make money. Living her life between these two places, she had no personal life and very few friends. It was only nine years ago that things began to change, after she came into contact with Zhao Peiyu of the Lixin Community Development Association in Zhongli, Taoyuan, who had set up a support group for immigrant women named Hui Zhi Lan Xin. Sun started to take part in the group’s activities and to meet more people. She even won second place in a Chinese speech contest, greatly boosting her confidence. Sun says that Zhao taught her a great deal: “My life should not just be silently spent on my family so that I lose myself.”
She realized that she could look after her family and still do things that she liked. She began taking a lot of classes, and, with a strong interest in making people more attractive with cosmetics, she ignored the objections of her family and started selling cosmetics. She laughs, “My rebellious period didn’t start until I was 40!” She has a lot of positive things to say about the cosmetics company. “They give new people training, and I got a lot of awards and made a decent income. It was only then that my family sat up and took notice.”
With economic independence, she also won the right to have a say in her children’s education. Sun says that when they were small her children had no interest in her mother tongue, Thai, but they have had a change of heart in recent years. This is because the government has been promoting mother-tongue education in schools, and the kids realized that being able to speak another language was an advantage. He son studied tourism at university, gaining an even stronger sense of the importance of languages. Sun says with a laugh that her son is now very open: “He himself says he is a mixed-blood child!” Now her two kids clamor to study Thai, and take the initiative to speak Thai with her at home. In fact, both kids came to help out at the camp activity.
Sun Li’an states that in her life in Taiwan, she has gone from being discriminated against, to being grudgingly accepted, to now winning respect. She now considers herself a part of Taiwan, and feels very contented.
She makes Thai food at home, and says with a smile that her family love her Thai basil pork, her green curry, and tapioca pudding for dessert. Looking back over the past, she says: “I feel that now people no longer look at me differently. When I say I’m Thai, Taiwanese happily accept me. Sometimes they even ask me to teach them how to cook, which is a huge turnaround from the past!”
Tapioca pudding has evolved different flavors in the countries of Southeast Asia. In Thai-style tapioca pudding, for example, pumpkin is one of the most frequently used ingredients.