Chin Tsai turned the management of his store over to his daughter, Hsiu-feng. He knew early on that she would make a good businesswoman, and she didn’t disappoint him. Hsiu-feng took the tiny “Chin Tsai’s Shop,” and with hard work and pluck turned it into a Minchuan Road shopping mall. She stocked black pearl wax apples brought in from Pingtung, soy sauce that had been fermented for 20 or 30 years in the town of Jhu Jhai Jiao, daily necessities, and even gold and silver paper money for use on special occasions. You name it, Hsiu-feng had it. Hsiufeng had everything that kids like us, whose lives revolved around eating and having fun, could want: snacks to eat, cold beverages to drink, toys to play with, and—when television cartoons became popular—collectible cards. Hsiu-feng knew exactly what children would want to try next.
     Apart from the Kuai Kuai corn puffs and shrimp-flavored chips that were NT$5 and came with a free toy inside, most of the snacks were packed inside clear glass jars. There were brightly colored sugar balls (with lots of artificial dye), spicy dried mango marinated to a blood red, several varieties of heavily salted preserved sour plums, malt-sugar cookies, and small packets of Wang Tzu Noodles. With temptation all around, saving money was next to impossible, and deciding what to try next was always a dilemma.
     If you wanted to cool off, there was wheat black tea, Jin Jin asparagus juice, honey soymilk, Bai Ji popsicles and Hsiao Mei ice cream. Even drinks that came in glass bottles were only NT$5, like Cherico or the special soda with a marble inside. Hsiu-feng would come over with her bottle opener, pop off the cap, pour the fizzy drink into a plastic bag, stick in a straw and then tie the bag up with red plastic string so you could carry it and sip on it all the way home—so cool and refreshing. In the heat of the summer Hsiu-feng would roll up her sleeves, wipe the sweat off her brow and squeeze lemons to make lemonade. Cool ice for the summer swelter. Cool O cool O so cool.
     Hsiu-feng was even better at selling toys. She devoted an entire wall to a massive selection of paper dolls, colored plastic figurines, sand bags, glass beads, toy guns, tiny pots and bowls and rakes and shovels for playing house, soap suds, and bubblemaking solution. If there was something you wanted, you just had to stand on your tiptoes and pull it down. The stock changed faster than the seasons and new toys arrived in an endless stream. Children who lived near Hsiu-feng’s store never had enough pocket money.
     Every day after school and before dinner, my younger sister and I could ask our grandfather for a NT$10 coin, and then immediately spend it on Kuai Kuai and soda at Hsiu-feng’s store. If we wanted a paper doll with the latest dress, my sister would crawl up on our aunt’s bed, who was still unmarried. My sister would just sign and moan, Aya . . . hmgh . . . three times in a row, and our aunt, who had just got off work and removed her make-up, would get the hint. My sister filled an entire Chu Shui Che wedding cookie box with the paper dolls that she collected: Jewel, Sophie, Ling, Barbie, and Coco. Each one had its own name and looked as real as life.
     After school was out and before it got dark, the first thing we did was call out for our grandpa, which meant we wanted money. If he couldn’t be found anywhere in the house, I knew that he must be in Hsiu-feng’s store. Put another way, when the western sky burned crimson, all of the old men on Minch`uan Road would gather inside Hsiu-feng’s store. Hsiu-feng had put several wooden benches below the Tobacco and Wine Monopoly Bureau’s trademark iron sign and had set up a canopy. The area was filled with purplish-red bougainvilleas that she had planted, bright and beautiful southern flowers. The old men would put their legs up, chew tobacco, play chess, tell stories, and wait for their grandchildren to come by and yell “Grandpa! Grandpa!” The grandpas would respond by giving their grandkids NT$5 or NT$10 as reward for a hard day of study. Hsiu-feng made a pile of money in those days, and it was tax-free. If grandma or mother had already prepared dinner and they saw their kids with a mouth full of snacks, they would yell “How are you going to grow if you keep eating that junk everyday and don’t eat your dinner?!”
     One time Hsiu-feng stocked a new kind of colorful candy whistle that would go “beep beep” when you blew on it. The whistle even came with the popular Kung Fu Kids collectible cards. My sister and I each bought one and headed home, filling the street with our whistling. I’m not sure if there was too much artificial color in the candy or whether it had gone bad, but something went terribly wrong and in the middle of the night my sister and I both got a terrible stomachache, broke out in a cold sweat, and began moaning and rolling around on the ground. We were both taken to the clinic, where we got shots and medicine. Our grandmother thought her grandchildren, dumb as they were, had finally learned their lesson and that we’d eat a little less junk food. She never guessed that we would keep heading to Hsiu-feng’s store for our three meals, helping Hsiu-feng’s business to become even more bustling than before. As we gradually got older, grandpa increased our allowance from one coin to two, NT$20.
     “Hsiu-feng rules your lives!” our grandma said helplessly.
     Later Hsiu-feng got married, and her post-wedding homecoming banquet spanned the length of Minchuan Road. But Hsiu-feng stayed at home, bringing her husband with her, and continued to run the inimitable Chin T’sai general store.
     Before long Hsiu-feng was pregnant and she soon had a baby boy and baby girl to help her stock shelves. The children on Minchuan Road were all envious. We thought it would be great to be one of Hsiu-feng’s kids—you could eat or play with anything you wanted, all for free.