The Sacred Spirit in Taiwan
I saw the words--‘Founded
in 1868’ on a pack of tea
leaves, one family can adhere to a business for 150 years, specialized skills
from generation to generation, it’s no wonder to be superb, this spirit is the
reason why Taiwan could be prosperous.
To do the Field-research,
in a non-structural interview, the Octogenarian boss humbly said: “Your family was actually the
family of this city; our store had been burned before, your grandpa Biao
Kuo helped us to get another shop for subsisting our business…” Originally,
His father and father’s father had been dealing with my grandfather’s Trading Company;
meanwhile, it’s shown my grandpa’s character of helpfulness.
This is a changing world,
but there is always a constant truth, one of them is ‘loving your neighbor as
yourself and reaching your hand to the needy’. Tainan’s top rich man Biao Kuo, who
would be able to give the shop to the unrelated people, and to discard the
entire family business for trying to rescue the unrelated girls and his name
had thus been removed completely from the earth by the Japanese militarist in1937,
and been mocked as "Top Spendthrift in Tainan" by the betrayal slaves
and those unworthy descendants, the outsiders could not realize why Biao Kuo’s
inside-story about his fallen overnight. However, after 70 years, a voice came
from heaven to guide me picking up my grandpa’s wreckage and enshrining at
Abraham Memorial Center in 2007, the name—‘Kuo Biao’ re-appeared; and further
to discover the difference between the ‘Great Kindness’ and ‘Top Spendthrift’
from a bag of tea leaves….
In Chinese:
台灣的優勢
從一包紅玉茶看見「一八六八年創業」字樣，台灣人能堅守專業150年，技藝代代相傳，不精湛也難，民間這種傳承精神才是台灣繁榮的根源。進行田野調查，在非結構性訪談中，八十多歲的老板說：「你們郭家才是府城世家；以前我們家曾經被火燒毀，你祖父在赤崁樓旁幫我們弄了一間店---」原來他的父祖就與郭家的和美貿易行有生意往來，也說明祖父郭標的樂於助人性格。人間世雖無常，但總有不變的道理，而「伸手救拔跌落坑裡的人」（reach your hand to the needy）即其中之一。府城大員外郭標，為了不相干的人可以給人房舍，為了不相干的女孩子竟能拋棄整個家業，在1937年被日本人徹底從地上除名，被不肖子孫及背叛的奴婢嘲笑為「台南第一敗家子」，外人根本無從得知郭標隕落之內幕；不過，來自天上的聲音指引之下，「郭標」二字在2007年終重現於亞伯拉罕中心，而且從一包茶葉又進一步挖掘出「標少爺」與「標仔舍」的不同----
