Paying the piper
It wasn't until their eldest daughter was 20 that Tseng finally left her husband. Flat broke, Tseng tried to set up a new home and a new life for her daughters.
Even at her lowest points, Tseng was trying to find a way to set up a proper restaurant, but her credit had been destroyed by her ex-husband, and no bank would give her a loan. Out of desperation, she turned to underworld loan sharks, borrowing NT$600,000 to rent an old place for NT$50,000 a month.
After a bit of renovation, the shop opened its doors in 2002. A keen businesswoman, Tseng offered a special price of just NT$10 per bowl that day, packing the street with customers. That evening, Tseng wrote out a NT$100,000 check to a charity, post-dated by three months, to push herself to make more money. Her donation earned her a sizable reputation and much media attention, essentially providing a free advertising campaign.
With the store situated well in a major tourist area, weekends were always jam-packed. Three months later, not only was Tseng able to honor that check, she had also cleared her debt with the loan sharks.
The most crucial part of keeping the customers rolling in for a danzi noodle restaurant is the scent of fresh cooking meat, and Tseng insists on using only the freshest pork. After slicing and grinding the meat, she adds onion, garlic, scallops, rock sugar and soy sauce, and stews the mixture over a slow flame. Time and heat level are automatically controlled, guaranteeing the quality of the result. The next stage is to cook up a broth of scallops, shrimps, and pork bones, in which she also stews duck eggs, giving the eggs a unique flavor. The store offers over a dozen different dishes, with herbal tea, spicy pickled cabbage, and soup stock provided free of charge.
To try and escape the stigma that surrounds danzi noodles as being a "street-vendor thing," Tseng has striven to create a special dining environment by decorating the store in an old-fashioned style. This particular creative touch comes from her eldest daughter, who has always been interested in design.
Four years ago, that same daughter was accepted into the Department of Tourism Management at Taipei's Chinese Culture University. However, she only stayed one semester, having found she had no interest in tourism and being unable to afford the over NT$50,000 tuition fees. Now she is her mother's right-hand woman and the manager of their Kaohsiung branches.