Me and my dad's oldest brother (at that point), Lin Eng-hok:



My understanding is that the family ran the shop in Shin-hua, Tainan, Taiwan, for over four hundred years. There were some very rough times (during his childhood, my dad's family could seldom afford meat -- he remembered his high school celebration dinner with this big brother both because he was told to choose something with meat and because he accidentally ordered dog), but the family had clawed its way back to affluence by the time he married my mother (my grandmother was reportedly both iron-willed and an investment genius).

The business in Tainan shut down after my uncle's death in 1982. (There may still be a branch in Kaohsiung, though. I don't know if I'll ever get my Mandarin up to a functional level -- and the aunt I'm closest to prefers Japanese, which is a whole 'nother saga -- but every now and then I resume the struggle.)

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