A clay oven roll wrapped round a fried bread stick and a bowl of hot soybean milk is a typical breakfast for many Taiwanese.
This style of breakfast originated in Northern China and was brought to Taiwan when the KMT government retreated to Taiwan. It is one of the ironies of culinary history that this breakfast food has been popularized not by immigrants from northern China, but by Taiwan's Hakka people.
Everyday at 3am, Chiu Feng-tsai (邱豐彩) gets up to prepare his Ssu Hai Soybean Milk Store (四海豆漿店). He grinds the soybeans, cooks them in a giant pot, then strains out the milk. Then he prepares the dough for the fried bread sticks. He has been doing this every day for 42 years.
PHOTO: YU SEN-LUN, TAIPEI TIMES
During this time, Chiu has also taught over 2,000 people this simple business, and they have gone on to establish their own stores. Some use the name Ssu Hai, and other use Yungho, a city on the outskirts of Taipei, where the whole thing began.
In 1955, the first soybean milk store, called Tunghai (East Ocean, 東海) was founded in Yungho, Taipei County, by a group of veterans from Shandong province. It was a huge success and Yungho became synonymous with soybean milk -- so much so that even in China, stores will call themselves "Taiwan Yung-ho Soybean Milk" (台灣永和豆漿) to attract customers.
A family business
That Taiwan's soybean milk became so famous that it "sells back" to China can be attributed to the 62 year-old Chiu, who stands at the center of this Hakka-dominated network of soybean milk stores
Chiu started out as a member of the staff at the original Tunghai store. He established his own Ssu Hai Soybean Milk Store in 1968. Now there are more than 200 Ssu Hai branches.
"[Opening a soybean milk place] was a good way to start a career, and a quick way to escape poverty," said Chiu. In teaching people how to start a soybean milk business, his motives were primarily to help others.
Chiu was born in the predominantly Hakka village of Hsihu, Miao-li County. This barren rural area offered few jobs so Chiu went to Taipei to find work. He found work through an aunt who was married to one of the veterans who set up the Tunghai soybean milk store. Because of his diligence and cooking skills, Chiu became one of seven shareholders within two months of joining the business.
Tunghai was located near the Chungcheng bridge, a major artery carrying people in and out of Taipei City. Chiu remembers that the huge crowds that collected outside would often bring traffic to a standstill.
According to Chiu, Tunghai split in 1968 because of quarrels among the shareholders. Chiu left to establish Ssu Hai, which relocated to Taipei City, and the original store was renamed World Soybean Milk Magnate (世界豆漿大王).
Ssu Hai means "four seas" in Chinese. It can also refer to wide-ranging travels, a meaning which reflects closely the nomadic Hakka spirit that drove the expansion of Ssu Hai.
"In my hometown of Hsihu village, it was very hard to find jobs. When I started my stores in Taipei, I naturally sought workers from home," said Chiu.
His first recruiting drive brought in 200 people, many of them relatives. Chiu began to teach them how to make soybean milk and all the traditional snacks. By the mid-1970s, Chiu was taking care of eight soybean milk stores, while also training more of his Hakka relatives in the business.
When Hsueh Yun-feng (薛雲峰), a journalist and Hakka scholar was commissioned by the Taipei City Government's Committee for Hakka Affairs to make a study of Taipei's soybean milk stores, he found that more than 70 percent of Taipei's soybean milk stores are run by Hakka people. Of these, 90 percent are from Miaoli's Hsihu village, Chiu's hometown.
"The more stores I visited, the more Hakka people I found. And then, most of the stores trace their roots back to Chiu Feng-tsai," said Hsueh.
"In a way, Chiu has led another immigration of Hakka people through his soybean milk stores," Hsueh added.
Lee Mei-chu (李美珠), who runs a branch of Ssu Hai on Taipei's Chinshan S. Road, remembers well how she learn the skills of making soybean milk.
"I learned from my cousin. My cousin learned from Mr. Chiu's brother's son-in-law. And this son-in-law of course learned from Mr. Chiu's brother, and Chiu's brother naturally learned from Chiu..." said Lee.
According to Lee, among all her schoolmates in Hsihu Junior High School, there were at least 100 who came to Taipei to learn how to run a soybean milk business.
A way out of poverty
Starting up a soybean milk store is not costly, according to Hsueh. The cooking equipment (oven, grinder, fridge and wok) costs less than NT$40,0000. "And the whole process takes less than six months to master," said Chiu.
With this low entry barrier, soybean milk stores have proliferated, but part of the reason for the profusion of Ssu Hai stores is Chiu's own generosity.
In the past 34 years, not a penny has charged hands whenever one of Chiu's relatives and friends have opened a Ssu Hai branch.
"Everybody makes money, so everyone's happy," said Chiu, explaining his "free franchise" policy.
But what happens when their business is better than your store? "It's okay. That's their good fortune," said Chiu calmly.
For Hakka cultural researcher Hsueh, "everybody makes money" reflects a typical Hakka attitude -- sharing good fortune with your own people.
"Hakka people have a migratory nature. And the development of Ssu Hai is a Hakka-style diaspora," said Hsueh. But this has also constrained the store's growth as a Macdonald's-like chain.
"I've never thought of business that way. At the beginning I just wanted to help people. And now, I just run this store to kill time," Chiu said, in his small store on Hoping E. Road. This also explains why, after training over 2,000 pupils, Chiu's own establishment is still a humble one.
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