Romantic relationships or successful careers may be the most meaningful element in some people’s lives, but to 100-year-old Yang Shu-chin (楊淑琴), a nominee for New Taipei City’s role model mother award, it is her children.
Yang smiled when her eldest daughter, Chang Jun-chih (張潤芝), visited her at her home in Banciao District (板橋) on Monday, along with New Taipei City Mayor Eric Chu (朱立倫).
“Seeing how filial my children have become is the greatest happiness of my life,” Yang said, holding hands with Chu and her daughter.
Photo: Chen Wei-tsung
Yang lives with her third daughter and always starts her day with a stroll around a nearby park, where she chats with other seniors.
“To live a long and happy life, one must put his or her worries aside, exercise more often and eat less meat,” Yang said.
Most people who know Yang see her as a bright and amicable person, but few are aware of her somewhat bitter past.
Yang was born in 1914 in Beijing, China, and was married to a veterinary officer in the army after she turned 18.
The couple lived a self-sufficient life in the first few years of their marriage, until the Second Sino-Japanese War forced them to flee their home and move from place to place seeking safety
Because of the war, each of Yang’s nine children was born in a different place, ranging from China’s Henan and Shandong provinces to an ancestral hall in Taiwan, where Yang’s family took refuge after their retreat alongside the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime in 1949.
“The only thing I remembered as a child was that we were always on the run. There was a time when one of my younger sisters got severely sick and my father had no choice but to treat her with medicine for horses,” Chang said.
Chang said that after her family moved to Taiwan, her parents tried to scrape a living by selling steamed buns from a temporary street stall.
Despite the family’s financial challenges, Yang insisted on giving all her children an education. She even adopted a 13-year-old orphan who came alone to Taiwan from Shandong.
“Grandma Yang is a true role model for would-be role model mothers,” New Taipei City Social Welfare Department Director Lee Li-tsun (李麗圳) said.
In addition to Yang, the city government nominated 53 women as role models this year, with Lee Chen Pan (李陳伴) the oldest at 102.
They are due to be publicly recognized for their contributions to their families at a ceremony tomorrow, ahead of Mother’s Day on May 11.
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