Upon returning to Taiwan in 1921 as a doctor, Cai felt that merely practicing medicine was not enough, so she founded Qingxin Hospital and obstetrics school (
When war broke out, Japan started sending Taiwan's doctors and nurses to Southeast Asia to administer to wounded soldiers. As a result, people stopped enrolling in Cai's school.
With the situation in Taiwan as it was, Cai went to the US and then to Canada to further her education in medicine. One day, she visited the Toronto church that had sent Mackay to Taiwan.
"The people [in the church] embraced her as a daughter and were so happy to see her."
Just then, the news of the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor came.
"Cai fainted, and when she came to, nobody was nice to her anymore."
Due to the war in the Pacific, there was no way for Cai to return to either Taiwan or Japan. She found employment as a doctor in an internment camp for ethnic Japanese in Slocan, British Columbia. Then, when it was discovered that she had no Canadian license to practice medicine, she was thrown out of the camp.
When the war ended and Cai could finally go home, she was barely able to get a visa from Taiwan because her work in the internment camp was seen as treason.
Finally, returning to Taiwan in 1946, Cai faced persecution by the KMT as a Taiwanese intellectual. A marriage of convenience to Canadian Raymond Gibson (and the UK citizenship it provided) spared Cai the fate of many intellectuals in 1947's 228 incident, but caused her to be exiled by the ROC government when Britain recognized the PRC in 1950. Cai lived out the rest of her days in Vancouver.
"This story goes to show you how hard it was for women to do business -- three times harder than for a man," said Po, who laments how undervalued women are in traditional Chinese society.
"There's a saying in Chinese that a daughter equals a thief," said Po, "because parents think that a daughter will cost them much and bring them nothing in return."
When asked if things are any better nowadays, Po replied that they are "much better, but it is still very difficult."
Po is doing his part, though. He pointed, grinning, to the picture of him and his wife inside one of newly printed second-edition volumes of Sand in the Waves: "How great is that -- the woman is in front of the man, not behind him."
The TV series of Sand in the Waves airs on Formosa TV (channel 6) every Saturday and Sunday at 10pm.
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