Finding fulfillment in helping the community
Born in Vietnam’s Nghe An Province, Le arrived in Taoyuan in 1998 and worked as a quality control inspector at an electronics plant. There she first met her future husband, an engineer, and the couple married a short time later. After giving birth to her second child, she decided to bring her elder son, who had reached school age, back from Vietnam, where he was being cared for by her mother. “My boss was really supportive,” she says. “He let me bring work home to do in my spare time and told me I could return to work whenever I was ready.”
But she never dreamed that a few years later, the factories in Taoyuan would close down one after another. Her old job no longer existed, and even her part-time work dried up. Leafing through the newspaper, Le came across a help-wanted ad posted by a local church for a job assisting foreign workers. The pay was low, but she would have the opportunity to help fellow Vietnamese. She decided to give it a try. “The job entailed helping take care of foreign workers placed by the National Immigration Agency,” she says. “I was often called upon by the police to translate for foreign workers. I realized that many foreign workers inadvertently committed offenses because they didn’t understand Taiwan’s laws, or could not stand the pressure put on them by their employers and therefore ran away, only to be picked up by the police. As I saw how much they suffered, I grew more and more sympathetic with their plight.”
In the five years that she did the job, Le made many good friends and witnessed many instances of mistreatment, sharpening her desire to serve Taiwan’s Vietnamese community.
During that period, the Taoyuan County Vietnamese Women’s Association was also voting for a new director. Le won the election and was subsequently invited to serve on the Women’s Rights Advancement Committee of the then Taoyuan County Council (Taoyuan became a special municipality in 2014), where she met many well-intentioned councilors who assisted her in her work. But the more effort she put into the job, the greater the demands on her became, and she found that it was taking up much of her personal time and eating up her personal funds. The post at the church paid only NT$25,000 per month, and she was struggling to get by. She started to consider opening a business.
“After thinking it over, I realized that it would be easier to open a small restaurant,” Le says. “This would also give Vietnamese friends a place to meet.”
She first opened the business in the Neili area of Taoyuan’s Zhongli District, where many foreign laborers were located, but later moved to Yanping Road in Taoyuan District, where the restaurant became a popular gathering place. It also, however, attracted trouble. Foreign laborers lacked a place to blow off steam, and came to her place to drink. They sometimes caused a ruckus after drinking, often prompting the police to intervene, which caused Le much embarrassment. “In the past I used to be treated with deference when the police wanted my help communicating with Vietnamese people,” she says. “After I opened a restaurant, however, I was treated no better than a suspect and questioned by the police. It was too much to take!” She therefore decided to close the shop.
Artifacts from home are displayed in Le Van Anh’s wedding salon. She plans to establish a small museum in the space to introduce Vietnam to a wider audience.