Shen-Fu Chen, from Just the Man Who’d Come Home Each and Every Single Evening, from Just Giving Orders to Sitting and Listening to His Own Daughter

Changing the way he interacted with his own children, from the Front Page Sections, translated…

The Traditional Taiwanese Opera Troupe’s manager, Shen-Fu Chen is the patriarch of the group, and at home, he is like an “emperor” too, his daughters, Chiao-Ting, Chiao-Hsien Chen described, “Dad is always giving out orders.”  Chiao-Hsien recalled, that when she was in the elementary years, her father had gone into the kindergarten classes to look for her, he just didn’t know how old she is, “just like in the television commercials!”

Chiao-Hsien Chen said, Shen-Fu Chen was extremely strict with them, is also a work-a-holic, slept only two, three hours a day, and would go off on tours a lot, as a child, she felt that her father was someone “who’d shown up at the house”, without too much emotional attachments toward him.  Until she’d started acting in the drama club in her middle school years, did she see the hardships that her parents weathered, and turned her fear toward her father to respect.

Three years ago, Chiao-Hsien Chen set up the “the Goddess of Wind Children’s Drama Group”, getting the younger generation acquainted with Taiwanese opera early, and Shen-Fu Chen took part in the program completely, bringing the daughter and father closer.

This time, the new show, “Wind Baby and Dong-Bing Lu”, she’d written the character for Dong-Bing Lu after becoming a father, still kept up his sword practice routines like crazy, making the child feel left alone.  Chiao-Hsien said, that it was, exactly how she’d felt growing up, and she’d set a place specially for her father to be there in the audience.  As Shen-Fu Chen read the scripts, he’d known that it was about him too, “It’s like the show was about me”.

Seeing how his daughter talked about him, Chen had that scent of nostalgia in his voice.  He’d admitted, that he’d been working too hard in his traditional Taiwanese opera career that his children are raised by the neighbors and the school officials, and, all he and Tsuei-Feng Sun can only use themselves to set good examples for the young, so the kids would have good work ethics.

And, the way the daughter and father communicated is no longer just one way now.  Shen-Fu Chen and Chiao-Hsien Chen said, from before, “I’d followed my father’s words”, there was NO conflicts whatsoever; and now, when they differed in opinion, Chiao-Hsien would ask her father to, “Calm down, hear my point, a nd, make your decisions later”.  Tsuei-Feng Sun would get jealous of her husband, “I can’t believe that my husband actually took the words of another!”

So, we still have a father who was working too hard, to the point, that he’d neglected his own young, but, gladly, this relationship was patched up, before too much damage, and, the father and daughter are now, on good communication terms.