I was 19 years old and stayed single. Most of my friends were married, but I knew I needed to work a few more years to make money to support my mother. My youngest sister was only 10 years old.

I worked in a clinic as a part-time nurse because I was unqualified. I also helped one cousin running his restaurant. I kept a small sum of salary to myself, and the rest of it was given to my mother. I tried to visit my mother as often as possible. Sometimes I felt I was doomed to this when I looked at my younger sisters were playing around and asking me what I brought to them. How many years I had to keep going on this? I did not know.


I didn’t know what to do on a date. I could have learned from my friends, but I didn’t do it. I thought how embarrassment it might be, so I got cold feet and refused to play gooseberry when a couple of my friends invited me to go with their blind dates.

He gave me a wistful smile. A part of me wanted to act on it, but I worried that an easy date for a guy would not be wise under such a circumstance.

He kept coming to see me in that clinic. The doctor encouraged me to go out with him. I refused him no longer than I expected myself. He was a true love to me, especially a first love. I thought thoroughly before I moved on. Things should be what they were supposed to be, shouldn’t they?

His mother didn’t say anything about why my mother took the money but didn’t give me the dowry or even pay anything for the cost of wedding. He paid every cent for everything. It was a wedding without an unnecessary extravagance.

Even though I had the heart and questioning mind of an independent woman, I quit my two jobs after engagement. I became a housewife.

Marriage never ran on smoothly I learned later. The worries of it was out-of-bounds for conversation with my mother or my growing-up sisters because it had come of my own free will. It was shifting since the day he had an affair with the other woman. I expressed doubt over marriage. The love and care my husband toward me were disappearing when time went by. 

Then it was plummeting to the hopeless. I had to fulfill my roles as nurturers. I felt there had always been an endless debt to pay, as a daughter, a wife, and a mother. I had never tasted freedom in my life.


Fatherhood seemed to be an unbearable stress for my husband because his mind was totally caught up in something else. Yes, women or his career. I assessed his role in our family, and thought he didn’t act really like a father or a husband but only an above-average breadwinner. He had confidence in himself to make it work out as he wanted to, with such a highly developed knowledge and skills.

In the back of my mind, I played with the idea that this might be my last day in that room with him, but I couldn’t afford to break the ties. Could I? My heart was as empty as space with such a heavy feeling being betrayed. I was on the edge of a breakdown. I thought I was dying and couldn’t survive.


It was then I first visited a temple. A couple of neighbors, who must have overheard my quarrels with my husband, nicely took me to a temple not of Buddhism but Taoism. They soothed and convinced me I could pray to gods and conduct some rituals to ease my anxiety and  troublous mind to gain my strength back. They also offered me their interpretation of my husband's disloyalty, that my husband was only lost temporarily. I should be patient and give him more time to come back to me. Besides, the wish I made could come true if I was devout enough. 

I believed it. I formed a habit going to different temples of either Taoism or Buddhism for years. It did help me one way or another.

Don’t be surprised if you find out there are believers of different religions of the same family honoring their own gods in Taiwan. That is the way we live with it.
The Taiwanese Ministry of the Interior carries out a census every ten years. The last census was held in 2010, and an official population of 23,162,000 was recorded.

The Constitution of Taiwan entitles everyone to freedom of religion. People are free to follow other religions if they choose. If you look at government statistics, that shows a diversity of religious beliefs. Buddhism is the most popular religion, practiced by around 35.1% of the whole population, followed closely by Taoism (33.0%). Christianity and Yiguandao have their followers, 3.9% and 3.5% respectively. Nearly 18.7% are classified in a categorized of atheism or none of the above.

One more thing very interesting is that religious beliefs and practices of Taoism and Yiguandao have strongly related to Chinese culture and Confucianism. Besides, it seems difficult to distinguish between Buddhism and Taoism too, both of which have been intertwined with Confucianism and the folk religions of Chinese history.