Throughout her life, she never managed to balance her checkbook. Yet she couldn't care less, because she had an amazing talent for borrowing money. In fact, she thrived on high-interest loans. While she was not indulging in all the joys a consumer society had to offer, she was most likely at work extracting cash from the people around her in order to fuel her unquenchable desire for material goods. Not a great beauty, she nonetheless learned to attract men's lust and became a lap dancer at 18. In her middle age, she operated one escort service after another, and got herself thrown into jail several times. Attracted to her worldly savvy, men fell for her easily, especially the squeaky-clean, middle-aged public-servant type. Needless to say, every one of her six marriages failed.
Remembering Mother (多桑與紅玫瑰), the puzzle of a book National Chengchi University professor Chen Wen-lin (陳文玲) pieces together for her deceased mother, is probably the nearest thing Taiwan has produced to a non-fictionalized depiction of a woman of pleasure. Chen grew up with her father and spent time with her mother only when the latter cared to show up for appointments in her orgasmic outbursts of maternal love. Yet once the lavish gifts had been given, and the expensive meal eaten, the elusive mother would again vanish into air.
Even at the book's most hilarious moments, one wonders if one should feel pity for this woman, for she couldn't help but ruin so many lives around her, including that of her own daughter, or the author's elder sister, who grew up in the world of drugs and killed herself soon after turning 30. However, it just doesn't feel right to pity a woman so full of life. She shopped till she dropped. She got whatever she desired, and threw away whatever she got soon after.
Through first-hand accounts, supplemental research and background interviews, the author presents a portrait of a woman who defies judgment.
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