I'm caught by the rich fragrance of coffee while walking in the small Jingzhong Street of Taipei's Jingmei district, near the night market. The fragrance leads to a row of low houses, and then to one building whose windows display various coffee makers: Moka pots, Turkish coffee pots, and a giant antique espresso maker.
Yin Lu Shop (吟陸商號) is a well-known coffeeshop in Taipei and sells home-roasted coffee beans and rich, fragrant Moka pot coffee. Actress Lu Yi-ching (陸亦靜) opened the shop 21 years ago, but though Taipei's coffee gourmands may visit the shop frequently, it was not until Lu gained fame as an award-winning actress in the past five years that people began to realize who the person behind the fragrance of the famous coffeeshop was.
When I visited the coffeeshop one afternoon, Lu had just finished her daily routine of roasting beans. That day, she had been roasting Golden Mandheling beans from Sumatra. She was on a two-month break between finishing Tsai Ming-liang's (蔡
PHOTO: YU SEN-LUN, TAIPEI TIMES
"After an acting scene, I always feel I'm lucky that I can come back to coffee roasting. It gives me a chance to settle my emotions," Lu said.
Lu explained that after roasting the beans comes the long and tedious process of picking which beans to use. Raw beans may look flawless on the surface, but after roasting, the colors may look too light or too dark. "Then it's time to decide which stay and which are left out," she said.
In Tsai's films, Lu Yi-ching is often the loud, neurotic and superstitious housewife. But when she picks beans after they're roasted, she is, in her words, like a cat, quiet and aloof and fully concentrated on picking only the best beans.
"People use (Buddhist) prayer beads to chant sutras. For me, picking beans is like chanting Buddhist scriptures or meditating. It gives me a sense of tranquility and I feel blessed," she said.
On screen, Lu's characters are mostly people suffering from pain and misfortune. In Wang Tung's (王
In most of the films made with Tsai, Lu plays a mother who struggles with and represses her desires. In The Missing (不
All those characters are experiencing the bitter part of life, and in a way, it's similar to the first taste of black coffee. "I am good at producing the bitterness in life, and I sell bitter water too," Lu said with a laugh.
While preparing a pot of Golden Mandheling for me, she reminded me to have it black at least for the first sip. "Taste the bitter part and then the sweetness naturally comes out," she said.
After graduating from high school, Lu had wanted to study drama, but when her stepfather opposed the idea, she decided to move from Chiayi to Taipei and work at a coffeeshop.
The first lesson about coffee that she was taught was that "fragrance is the soul of coffee."
Lu said she did not fully apprehend the true meaning of this lesson until 10 years later, when she was burnt by a pot of scalding coffe and experienced a philosophical epiphany. "Coffee beans need to experience pain and high temperature first and then the fragrance will come out. Human life is the same."
Fifteen years ago, Lu's coffeeshop was the first shop in Taiwan to import the top-class Blue Mountain beans from Jamaica.
At that time, the shop's only business was selling beans. "But so many customers wanted a cup of freshly brewed Blue Mountain on the spot. There were no seats and tables. People just sat on the gunny bags and enjoyed their coffee," Lu said.
Ten years ago, she divorced her husband and in the separation got to keep the coffeeshop while their two daughters were entrusted to the husband.
Another painful episode took place in 1999, when she decided to expand the coffeeshop into a restaurant and fell deep in debt. Exhausted mentally and physically, she fell twice down staircases and was hospitalized once for two weeks.
Director Tsai has witnessed the ups and downs at Yin Lu Shop. Eighteen years ago, Tsai was drawn by the fragrance of coffee and became a frequent customer, writing scripts at the shop.
Tsai, at the time a director for a TV drama, made friends with Lu and invited her to play a minor role as a hair salon assistant. Thus began her dual career as an actress and coffeeshop owner.
Tsai's Wayward Wind, a musical about porn actors, was yet another challenge for Lu. In the film, which is in post-production, Lu sings a sentimental ballad from the 1950s in front of a statute of Chiang Kai-shek (蔣
"I grew up a student who cried so hard hearing about Chiang Kai-shek's death on TV. So it was quite a transformation for me to start caressing the statue," Lu said.
Lu's role in Wayward Wind is again not a happy character. She plays an actress who sees her time passing too quickly and becomes a porn star. The movie also contains a "very explicit" sex scene between Lu and actor Lee Kang-sheng (李
"It was like having my skin peeled off. I have to say it was so unpleasant that it was almost unbearable. I almost gave up acting because of the film," Lu said.
After acting, Lu always finds herself back at the coffeeshop.
"My life seems like a constant process of finding flavor in pain and bitterness," she said.
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