He got through a difficult childhood, but he became lost in the pursuit of wealth and status when he grew up. When everything was lost, his wife forgave him and, without regret or complaint, encouraged him to start all over again. Maybe his life is not as splendid as before, but it is as fresh as the morning dew.

The hardships of his childhood allowed clever Yang Chih-cheng to realize what a difficult life his parents went through. Therefore, he worked very hard to bring his family out of the shadow of poverty.

After he finished his military service, he worked in a plastics factory as a salesman and climbed up to the position of factory manager. He married a nice wife and established a good home. He almost made his dreams come true. However...

Lost In Pursuit of Wealth and Status

Yang did not know when it started, but socializing with customers became an excuse for not going home. He became a frequent visitor at bars, and he indulged himself in alcohol and women.

People working at those places are only in it for the money. Whoever has a thick wallet and speaks loudly is all-powerful. Because of this, Yang no longer took any money home. Instead, he threw most of it down that bottomless hole as if he had been bewitched. He boasted to the girls how prosperous his business was, so they looked up to him as a sugar daddy. Some well-meaning but silly women even fell in love with him, but he only toyed with their affections. He was master of eating, drinking, fornicating, gambling and cheating.

Day after day, his wife never saw him. At first, she didn't have any doubts. Gradually she became uneasy, but she still tried to convince herself that it wasn't easy for a man to excel in his line of work, and that sometimes he might even have to do things that went against his will. She insisted on sticking to her position as a good wife, kind mother and obedient daughter-in-law.

There was a market in their neighborhood. Each morning as early as three or four o'clock, the peddlers started to do business. The noise usually woke her up. When she found that nobody was lying beside her, she felt a chill in her heart.

Reconsidering after Struggling

The secret was finally exposed. A girl that Yang had cheated came to his home to have it out. Yang's parents were stung by the news of their son's misdeeds. Although his wife was very much upset by his behavior, she did not say anything in front of her children and in-laws.

The cheated girl hired a gangster to kill him. Since there was no place to hide, he quit his job and started driving a taxi, and his wife sold fruit in the market.

Yang didn't earn much from driving a taxi. However, as he drove around, he saw people doing all kinds of things to make money, and he learned a lot about the wickedness of the world. He once ran into a "dry-cleaning group." The operators advertised low prices to lure unsuspecting men to a "Siamese bath" (a type of sex service). Customers hung their clothes on a wall which could be rotated. While they were enjoying the "massage ," their pockets were completely cleaned out. When the service was over and the bewildered customers found they had no money to pay, they would be severely chewed out and humiliated.

One old soldier was thus swindled out of NT$60,000 (US$2 ,000). In tears , he tried to end his own life. Yang could not bear this, so he got the owner of the Siamese bath to return some money to the veteran by threatening to report the whole incident to the police. The soldier got NT$20,000 back, and Yang urged him to leave the place at once. He advised the old man to consider himself unlucky, as if he had lost the money in gambling, and suggested that he not desire such cheap thrills again, so as not to lose any more money.

Another group of swindlers trained young women with good figures and beautiful faces to tempt aged tycoons. After being together for a period of time, the woman would tell the tycoon that she was pregnant. Usually the tycoon would spend a lot of money to keep her quiet. The woman could make big bucks within a short period of time.

Driving in the city, Yang saw people commit crimes as if they were changing clothes. He felt bitter about all this, and he struggled in his heart over what direction he should take in his own life. He finally decided to take his family to the South to get a new start.

Working Together

Yang and his wife rented a house in the beautiful, sunny southern part of Taiwan. They were total strangers there and the economy was not good. Yang borrowed some money and bought a van, and with his previous experience as a salesman , he started a small food distribution business . His wife worked together with him and encouraged him by saying, "Life has been hard for us for too long. This time we cannot allow ourselves to fail."

In that area, there were three medium-sized distributors which had been established for many years. Even if he was willing to reduce his prices to compete against those distributors, it was very difficult to get clients. Furthermore, he did not have enough cash to expand.

The couple started very early each day. They loaded their merchandise into their van and set out to develop new business. Other distributors rested four days a month, but Yang and his wife took off only one day every two months. They would take any route that the other distributors did not want to run.

They often had to drive on narrow country roads to remote mountain areas of Hengchun in southern Taiwan. Sometimes they would be cut by roadside tree branches sticking into the open windows. They often had to drive a long way to find a small grocery store, and then the storekeeper would only buy a few bottles of something, instead of cases. Thus, they didn't always even cover their costs.

Though they didn't have much, their hard work paid off. With their sincerity and excellent service, they created a place for themselves in the world.

Two Phrases

In 1987, Yang became acquainted with Tzu Chi through a business friend, Chen Shu-tsung. With Chen's encouragement, Yang became a Tzu Chi member, but only to maintain a good relationship with Chen.

In 1990, Master Cheng Yen gave a speech on "The Fortunate Life" at the Chung Cheng Art Hall in Pingtung. Chen invited Yang to attend. Yang thought to himself that the art hall was only a few steps away from his home. Besides, his mother had revered Master Cheng Yen for a long time. So he took his mother and wife to the speech.

Watching all the tour buses and the crowds approaching the hall, Yang began to notice things around him. When he saw gentlemen in formal suits arranging tables and chairs, directing traffic and maintaining order, he wondered what kind of big organization Tzu Chi was, since its workers wore suits to do such work.

Two phrases in Master Cheng Yen's speech struck him: "A lucky man lives in a lucky place," and "A lightly-spoken remark may weigh heavily in someone's heart."

Most Chinese tend to think that "A lucky place makes a man lucky." Many people blame feng-shui [Chinese geomancy] when they run into problems, and they try to consult a geomancer to solve their problems. Although the place may become more fortunate, what is the use if one still has the same bad habits and does not do good deeds to create blessings? "In the past, I would change the position of my desk, expecting that such a move would bring me better luck. I never thought my bad luck was the fruit of the bad seeds I had planted for myself." Now he realized that a person's fortune comes from the seeds of karma that he planted before. Thus, a fortunate no matter where he lives.

The second sentence made Yang ashamed that his wife had always stuck with him during his most difficult times. "I was never polite to my wife . Something that I said just casually might put heavy pressure on her. I might quickly forget what I had said and go to sleep as soon as my head touched the pillow, but that word might hurt her so much that she would begin to sob and toss about in bed, unable to sleep."

Joining the Tzu Cheng Faith Corps

Having realized these truths, Yang decided to follow Master Cheng Yen. He had been told that Tzu Cheng Faith Corps members had to observe ten precepts, including "no smoking" and "no drinking." Saying good-bye to these "old friends" was really difficult.

He tried to bargain with a Tzu Cheng unit leader to let him join the corps first and quit those two habits gradually. The leader said to him, "If you've made up your mind to join the corps, you'd better quit both right away, or you won't join the corps at all." Yang thought about that again and again.

"In the winter whenever I drove out to do business, I had to close all the windows in the car. When I smoked, my wife would cough and her eyes would water. I didn't enjoy it myself."

After countless struggles in his mind, he finally decided to bid a permanent farewell to those two "old friends." When he told his wife about his decision, she said she had heard this too many times in the previous ten years. He assured her that this time he was determined to do it. Since they had been together for such a long time, she thoroughly understood that he might be determined, but he didn't have much willpower. She said to him, "If you really quit smoking , I'll quit eating rice."

In the first three days, he was restless and listless. Sometimes, he was crazy with depression. In order not to give his wife any chance to laugh at him as a man with enthusiasm but no persistence, he kept reminding himself that he had to keep at it. He chewed gum, drank a lot of tea , and took hot baths to conquer his craving for nicotine.

She kept her promise not to eat any rice, but she changed to noodles. As for her "cheating," Yang laughed, "It's a good thing that she was so wise and that she could make me successfully quit smoking."

Compared with quitting smoking, quitting drinking was much easier. He used to leave home at ten o'clock in the morning and would finish working at six. After that, his customers would invite him out for a drink. They usually drank at three or four places each evening.

Since he had made up his mind to quit drinking, he rearranged his schedule. He would contact his customers by phone and sort out the orders in the morning. He drove out at two in the afternoon to deliver the merchandise and came back after ten. Since he didn't have dinner at home, his customers couldn't find him in the evening, and after a couple of times, they no longer bothered him. Thus he got rid of that problem and even saved more money.

Renewed Relationship with His Father

The only difficult problem still to be solved was the distance between Yang and his father. Because of Yang's bad behavior in the past, his father had deeply-rooted feelings against him. Father and son had nothing to talk about, and his father even refused to eat with him. One of the Faith Corps precepts is "Respect your parents." How could Yang meet this requirement if he did not improve the cold relationship with his father?

His father liked to drink tea, so Yang ordered a special stone tea table and a set of tea utensils. He also bought his father's favorite tea leaves. This relaxed the stalemate and his father began to talk to him. However, he still refused to eat with the prodigal son at the same table.

One day while his father was eating, Yang invited a supplier to their home for a meal. Of course, his father couldn't leave the table without saying anything, so Yang had the chance to eat with him. After using the same stratagem several times, Yang could continue to eat at the same table with his father even when there were no guests.

Having been certified as a member of the Tzu Cheng Faith Corps, Yang makes use of a specialty that he learned in his military service-directing traffic. He is in charge of transportation and training the traffic control division. He also joined the Tzu Chi Public Speaking Team, whose members go to other organizations or meetings to talk about Tzu Chi.