The big pot sizzles with hot, aromatic stuffed water-fried buns. For the past 27 years, Chen Chin-po and his wife, Min-huan, have worked hard to improve their lives. A simple life is valuable to them at this moment, and they donate part of their savings for charity.

On Changmei Road, not far from the train station in Changhua, central Taiwan, street vendors hawk their wares. In the morning, as the day becomes brighter and the temperature rises, the road is filled with people going to work or school and the air smells greasy and sweet. This is where Chen Chin-po and his wife, Min-huan, run their little shop.

"Three water-fried buns," a customer orders.

"Do you want hot sauce on them?"

Min-huan hands over the hot buns with her right hand to the customer and accepts his NT$50 coin (US$1.50) with her left hand. Standing behind the sizzling pot, she counts out three $10 coins and gives them to the customer. Chin-po, standing at the counter next to her, cuts a long roll of white dough into short pieces and inserts stuffing into each piece.

The store they rent is very small, and they have to avoid bumping into each other. A freezer, a milk-tea machine, and a table for kneading and rolling dough take up more space. On a wall is a picture of the Abode of Still Thoughts, the spiritual home of the Tzu Chi Foundation. Beside the picture are the vows of the Great Vow Bodhisattva: "I vow to attain buddhahood only when all suffering souls are saved from hell, and I vow to be enlightened only when all living beings are redeemed from the misery of the world." On another wall are shelves where Tzu Chi publications, various kinds of bean powder (a nutritional supplement), and other items made by Tzu Chi nuns are on sale.

Chin-po glances at the buns in a styrofoam box, already fried and ready to go. He deftly puts more stuffing into pieces of dough and quickly completes another batch of buns to be fried. Min-huan first fries the buns for a minute, then she scoops up a cup of water, sprinkles some flour onto it, and pours it into the frying pot (thus the origin of the name, "water-fried buns"). Their daughters and Chin-po's sister-in-law also help out. With five people working, the small store seems very busy and crowded.

Min-huan lifts the lid of the pot and remarks, "The buns taste best while they're still hot." She scoops up the hot, golden brown buns.

"I've eaten buns every morning for over 20 years," says Chin-po.

Time flies as they fry the buns, scoop them out, and wait on customers. The Chen family works hard to produce the delicious stuffed buns in exchange for growth and development, both physical and spiritual.

A knack for making buns

Chin-po graduated from elementary school when Taiwan's light industry was about to take off in the late 1960s. Garment factories mushroomed one after the other, and lots of laborers were needed. Then only 13 years old, Chin-po started working from the bottom in a factory. When he finished his compulsory two-year military service in 1975 and went back to work in the factory, he was a master worker earning NT$7,000 (US$175) a month.

One day, Chin-po visited a former colleague who had quit his factory job and become a wholesaler of water-fried buns. Chin-po learned that his friend made $800 a day while he himself only made $200 a day. Chin-po asked his friend how to make the buns. Then he quit his job and started selling water-fried buns in the market.

Every morning, Chin-po made buns at home and loaded them onto a cart. He pushed his cart to the market and sold the buns until noon. Each bun sold for NT$2.50 (US$0.06), and he might sell 60 or 70 buns a day. With earnings just over $100 a day, he couldn't make ends meet. When he quit his factory job, he thought he could make big money by selling buns. But he had run into a dead end, and after six months he was forced to drop this line of work.

Chin-po had idled around for another six months when the factory owner invited him to go back to work there. Chin-po did not want to because he could not get his mind off the bun business. His mother, however, did not agree and kept telling him to go back to the factory. Frustrated, he finally picked up the phone to call the factory boss. However, the calls never went through, and after failing to get hold of the boss all day long, Chin-po gave it up and decided to try the bun business one more time. Once again, he began pushing his cart full of buns to the market.

While he was unemployed, he still remembered how good the buns would taste with the right stuffing. He would go to the market to observe how other vendors did their stuffing, and he would experiment at home. He realized that the buns needed the right dough and the right stuffing. If he didn't have the right knack, the buns would not taste good or the stuffing would go sour in less than three hours. Furthermore, if the buns weren't sold within half an hour after being scooped up from the pot, they wouldn't taste the same.

Perhaps it was because of the cooler weather and his improved stuffing, Chin-po's water-fried buns gradually attracted more customers.

He later learned that the phone numbers in Changhua at that time had changed from four digits to five, and that was why he wasn't able to contact the factory. And that is why he has sold buns ever since.

No breaks throughout the year

For the first three years, Chin-po would sell buns from five in the morning to noon and from two in the afternoon to seven. To expand his business, he also sold his buns in bulk to breakfast shops. The shops asked him to deliver the buns before 6:30 a.m., so he had to start early.

At that time, his brothers helped him out. Sometimes they left home at midnight and produced, delivered, and sold the buns under electric poles or streetlights. They worked rain or shine, and even during typhoons!

They first used carts, and now they rent a small shop. They have two pots, one for vegetarian buns and the other for meat buns. With five people working, they can sell 2,000 buns a day.

Between 3 and 4 in the morning, the whole family wakes up and starts working. When they close the store and return home, it is already 1 p.m. They rest until 8. and then return to the store and work until midnight preparing stuffing and sauces for the next day.

Someone once noticed how good business was and asked Chin-po to teach him how to do it, but Chin-po in return asked this person if he truly wanted to get into this business. When a person is determined to work in this line of work, he has to endure the hardship of an upside-down lifestyle and not being able to sleep well at night. People who aren't serious enough will soon drop out.

When Chin-po was 19 years old, his father died of a gastric illness. As the oldest child in the family, Chin-po shouldered the responsibility of raising his seven sisters and two brothers. The youngest sister is 17 years younger than he.

For the past 20 years, Chin-po has never taken a break, except for the three major Chinese festivals: the Dragon Boat Festival, the Moon Festival, and the Chinese New Year. He worked hard to raise his siblings, and as soon as they left school they found jobs to help with the family finances.

Min-huan remembers that when she married Chin-po, his youngest sister, then only eight years old, asked, "My brother is not good-looking and we aren't rich, so why did you want to marry him?"

"I'm impressed by what he has achieved," Min-huan answered.

Min-huan's father was not in good health, so when she graduated from elementary school, she went to work in the same garment factory where Chin-po was a master worker. Some time later, she went to work in her sister's bakery in Taipei. Chin-po found out her address in Taipei, and they started writing letters to each other.

After seeing all kinds of people in Taipei, Min-huan chose Chin-po because of his honesty and industriousness. After they were married, Chin-po never let her down or said harsh words to her. There was only one incident: He used to love fishing and would go fishing every three days. He once had dinner with his fishing buddies and didn't come home until dawn. Min-huan was furious and refused to speak to him. Chin-po apologized to her and said that he would never do that again.

Donations

"I knew nothing about Buddhism. I was a farm boy who only prayed to the local land deities, and I didn't know much about Taoism either." Chin-po just wanted to make money to raise his family, but Min-huan would donate money regularly to orphanages, nursing homes, or temples.

One day, Min-huan's brother brought them a cassette tape on the charitable deeds done by Tzu Chi members, and Chin-po was impressed by what he heard. "Could there really be such touching stories in this world?" He told Min-huan to just donate money to Tzu Chi from then on. In addition, Chin-po bought 100 cassette tapes from Tzu Chi to give out to friends and acquaintances. He believed that if one person could be touched by a tape, this person might pitch in and do good deeds along with Tzu Chi members.

When he started giving out tapes, his friends sneered at him saying, "How can a person who is so crazy about fishing suddenly become compassionate enough to engage in charity?" Chin-po was depressed and dropped the idea of giving out any more tapes. The thought of doing good was nipped in the bud.

During the Chinese New Year holiday in early 1995, Chin-po took his family to Hualien. They listened to Master Cheng Yen lecture on the Earth Treasury Sutra. Her discussion of the cycle of karma warned him not to find entertainment or pleasure in hurting other living creatures. Fearing future retribution, he completely stopped fishing.

Both Chin-po and his wife are vegetarians and they lead a simple, regular life. They constantly donate their savings. Min-huan has taken the money from selling the buns and her handicrafts and donated it in the names of her husband, her father-in-law, her two daughters, and also herself. She is now preparing to donate in the name of her mother-in-law.

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The shop is very busy, but Min-huan still volunteers at the Tzu Chi Changhua branch office every Saturday afternoon and at Dalin Tzu Chi Hospital during the Chinese New Year. Last year, Chin-po started selling Tzu Chi publications and bean powder, a dietary supplement made by the Tzu Chi nuns, in his store. He also gives free buns to recycling volunteers to supplement their strength.

Every morning, the oil in the pot sizzles. Pedestrians are often attracted by the scent of the buns and the aroma from the heart-warming story of the Chens.