When word began spreading on the Internet that an 82-year-old Taiwanese man had to sell red beans by the roadside because his five children wouldn't care for him, customers began flocking to his tiny stand.
But when officials checked out the story, they found out it was untrue. The old man, Wang Ta-ching, was never married and had no children, said social worker Lee Shu-lin yesterday.
Lee doubts the man cooked up the now infamous "Uncle Red Bean" story to boost his business in Tainan City.
She thinks it was all a misunderstanding caused by a combination of things: Wang's partial deafness, his thick accent, the incredibly wide reach of the Internet and the often confusing Mandarin language.
"Actually, the elderly man had no idea why his business had improved so much," Lee said.
Wang didn't even know what the Internet was, she added. And he was unaware Websites were telling travelers that if they go to Tainan, they should help him out by buying his red beans near the intersection of Min Tzu and Gong Yuan roads.
Lee interviewed Wang and found out that when asked if he had children, the man answered "wu zi." Mandarin is loaded with homonyms, and "wu zi" can mean "five children" or "no children." Lee said that Wang meant the latter.
He wasn't able to clarify himself because he has lost much of his hearing. "Whatever you say to him, he just nods his head. So when other people asked him if he had five kids, he probably just nodded," the social worker said.
Lee also said that Wang was a retired soldier on the mainland who came to Taiwan five decades ago. He still speaks with a thick mainland accent that's almost unintelligible for most native Taiwanese, she said.
Recently, Wang moved to a new spot but that didn't stop people from continuing to look for him as the "Uncle Red Bean" story lives on, the United Daily News reported yesterday.
(eastday.com January 15, 2003)
