Rural Setbacks and Nourishment: Two Mothers from Cimei Community College Live Out Their Own Stories with All Their Might

Text | Huang Xiangyun (Executive Secretary of Cimei Community College)

What do you imagine when you think of the countryside? Beautiful pastoral scenery, overflowing warmth and human kindness, a place you must come to after retirement? Some people have had farming experience, and perhaps for their bodies, the countryside bears countless traces of labor; some people, though they have never lived in the countryside, have visited it before... Everyone has their own understanding of the countryside, and this question inherently has no fixed answer. But the people who live here are precisely the important existence that constitutes the countryside. Their lives are intertwined with the countryside - how do they live in the countryside?

Hong Jingwen's Early Setbacks in the Countryside: "Am I Going to Live My Whole Life Like This?"

Hong Jingwen is an instructor at Cimei Community College for the course "Dyeing Rainbows from the Land." Speaking of her own story, she said, "Two hours wouldn't be enough for me to tell it all!" Jingwen originally lived in downtown Kaohsiung, working in the electronics processing industry as a very ordinary office worker. She married in year 76 of the Republic of China calendar, and for the first two years after marriage lived in the city. It was not until her first child was born that things changed - after the child was born, her mother-in-law took care of the baby, and later, in order to care for the child nearby, and because her husband's family was in Meinong, she stepped into rural life.

After arriving at her husband's family home, she encountered many bottlenecks in family life, but in order to raise her children, she had to earn money. Rural job opportunities were few, so she did whatever was available. For example, she was nominally an accountant, but did many things that had nothing to do with accounting, and could only do them while crying - such as pouring tea, cleaning toilets, and even cooking.

She also once sold bubble tea in front of a school and worked as a warehouse keeper. Because there were mostly men around, she also trained her tolerance for alcohol. When she first arrived in Meinong, she put most of her time into family and work, and since she could not understand Hakka, it was very hard to make friends, and she was even often bullied. Those days were very difficult to endure, and in her heart she also asked herself: "Am I going to live my whole life like this?"