When you can't be a handsome guy or a beauty, become a household plumber and electrician
"I originally wanted to be an 'Eng-eng mei-dai-zi' [a lady of leisure with nothing to do], but look at me, my hands are so rough?!" said the slender Tan Dun-Tzu, holding out both her hands, all ten fingers. She said that at home, whether a light bulb burns out or a drain is clogged, everything is handled by her alone: "A woman isn't afraid of doing work, only of not being cherished." As for her 30-year marriage with Dr. Lin Jie-Liang, she has not one trace of resentment.
She said that Lin Jie-Liang was not a man of sweet talk. When they first married, she had thought that after the wedding she would simply continue doing her nursing work well, but "should I say it was Dr. Lin's influence, inspiration, or guidance?" After marriage, she followed her husband to the countryside for free clinics and pollution investigations. With her long hair and shorts, Tan Dun-Tzu said that although she was not the typical "doctor's wife," she is very grateful to Lin Jie-Liang for bringing her a different life.
Tan Dun-Tzu said that her in-laws have always been grateful to her, believing that she took very good care of Lin Jie-Liang's daily life and health, "but my older sister told my sister-in-law that actually it is my own family who should thank Lin Jie-Liang, for turning me, naturally scatterbrained as I am, into someone who does things very thoroughly."
"Dr. Lin wouldn't hang love on his lips," Tan Dun-Tzu said. When she was young she had hyperthyroidism, and as she grew older she developed hypothyroidism and feared the cold in autumn and winter. "When the weather is cold, Dr. Lin would get into bed first to warm the blankets for me; after I got into bed, he would rub my feet with his own feet, already toasty from nestling under the quilt, so that my ice-cold feet would warm up faster." She recalled with a smile, "Dr. Lin is a person who shows love through actions, I guess!"
Tan Dun-Tzu and Lin Jie-Liang's elder son has now graduated from university and finished his military service. She said that before high school, her son thought it was perfectly normal that his mom and dad always walked hand in hand and never quarreled; in high school, when he heard classmates talk about how their parents got along, "he discovered that couples like us, who never quarrel and always hold hands, are actually very rare."
What is the secret to 30 years of deep marital devotion? Tan Dun-Tzu thought for a moment and said that as a couple they "never take credit in married life and always consider the other person important." Many couples often complain to each other or claim credit, saying things like: the family depends on me working hard to earn money, or I work hard at home washing clothes and cooking, but in their household no one has ever said such things.
As the interview was drawing to a close, her son, in the second year of junior high, came to the coffee shop with classmates to find his mother. Before the son could speak, the classmate couldn't help telling Tan Dun-Tzu that her son had just instructed him that the moment he saw Tan Dun-Tzu, he must remember to praise her for being beautiful; hearing this, the son beside them smiled shyly.
