The Making of an Ordinary Woman | Hexing Ice Parlour — Two Old Men Deciding a Middle-Aged Man's Life

Grandfather and his old friend Yong-bo sit over bowls of ice and work out how to test whether Chen Jin-wen is ready to inherit the pharmacy. He is a grown man with a wife and children. He is not in the room. That is 俗女養成記 in one scene — tender, funny, and quietly about how little say anyone in this family gets over their own life.

Go in and sit where they sat. This is a working ice shop, not a heritage exhibit. Twenty to forty NT dollars for a bowl.

Just inside the door there is a pink gauze screen. It is there for a reason that predates the drama by seventy years: from the 1950s this was the village's matchmaking shop, and the screen hid courting couples from the street. It is still hiding you from the street. Past it, a round moon-gate arch separates the front seating from the back where they cut the ice, and you order through the arch.

The house speciality is banana clear ice, which is not banana. It is banana-flavoured shaved ice, pale and very fine-grained, and it is gone the moment it is on your tongue. They use only Taiwan Sugar sugar and they measure the sweetness. The ice machine behind the counter is about fifty years old and you can hear it working. On the wall there are framed wedding photographs, including the owner's daughter's, taken in this room.

Open roughly eight or nine in the morning to five or six in the evening, closed Mondays. Hours drift; it is a family shop.

Order the banana clear ice and sit at the front, on the street side of the pink screen. Old men will come in and talk about people who are not there. Nothing about the scene was invented.

Location data: Tainan City Government tourism. Photo courtesy of Tainan City Tourism Bureau.