Pass over the slack months (度小月)

Well before I was in courtship with my wife in 1975, I had already heard of the story about "Du Xiao Yue” 度小月, meaning "pass over the slack months".

Du Xiao Yue is a small restaurant serving very delicious and traditional Taiwan delicacy located on the corner of two streets in Tainan city. Since Tainan is my wife's maiden home town, so when I paid my first visit to her family, she naturally took me to this restaurant and told me the story of the founder, Mr. Hung, a ferry boat operator in mid 1800's.

"In order to feed a big family, Mr. Hung worked very hard. But there were always a few months in a year during which he could not earn a living for the family due that the demand for ferry transportation was very low." Jean continued, "people called the months when they were put in the idling state as Xiao Yue, small months. We can appreciate how anxious Mr. Hung were during those small months. He saw that his time was wasted in waiting for passengers, he brainstormed for ideas of using of the slack months for other ways of income."

"He withdrew from the ferry boat gang during the small months and ran a mobile food stand selling fast food. His food featured with a unique recipe of the spoonful of very aromatic stir-fried pork mince put on top of the noodle with soup cooked out of the big bone. Very few people could resist the temptation of that aroma drifted over in the air when they passed by where his stand was located, and by and by he gradually built up a solid base of loyal customers, thus his story became a popular legend and has been used as an inspirational example to encourage people to face to the challenge when their business gets stuck."

The story Jean had told me 35 years ago vividly flashed through my mind. When my thought came out of the story, it immediately associated the story with my son’s current issue -- job-hunting.

Through the unimaginable cause-and-factor process, my son landed in a job serving as guitar tutor since 2007 when he was in the second year of university. To a student, this is a good job for earning some pocket money while on school study. However, the nature of this job is being unstable with income because the wage he earns is based on the actual hours he teaches. For example, during the school holidays, there will be many students asking for leaves so as to go on holiday with their families; students may quit at any time for any possible reason. Therefore, in some months he may earn a lot more, and in some other months he has to eat into his reserve. So my son has been concerned about the disadvantage of his current job now that he has graduated he is desperate for a full-time job.

It is fine to change to other path of career if the circumstance cooperates, but I know he loves music and being passionate with one’s job is very important, so I have been trying to make him understand about this point and stay in where he is and try to develop his guitar tuition business into full-time scale, or even follow the example of “Du Xiao Yue” by doing some sideline casual jobs. This kind of father and son interaction has been found pretty active in my home recently.

In a chat with my wife this morning, the topic was unintentionally switched to Taiwan delicacy, and it naturally went into our mutual memory of that morning in Tainan 35 years ago when we were in that reminiscent small restaurant called Du Xiao Yue devouring that very yummy Dan Zi Mian. And the conversation swerved to the story of Mr. Hung, the founder of Du Xiao Yue.

I found Du Xiao Yue story is very inspirational. It’s a story about how a father identified his problem; figured out the cause of his problem; worked out a practical plan and took action to achieve it. The part I extolled the most is his spirit of not wasting his energy and time in self-pity or complaining about his miserable destination. Instead, he did what he could or should do step-by-step toward his goal. His descendants seem to have discovered that the secret of Mr. Hung’s success is in his strategy of earning extra income by using of the slack months that they later in some time branded the fast food stand Mr. Hung has passed down to be “Du Xiao Yue”. A brand name that fully reflects the founder’s spirit.