Childhood
Jui-Wen Chen, a renowned inventor in the world, was born in a family of farmers in Zhutang Township of Changhua County, Taiwan. How can a farmer’s boy from such a humble beginning transform into a genius inventor? It all began with his “unusual” childhood that paved the way for his success years later.
As a child, Jui-Wen Chen was a sincere and honest boy. He had many creative ideas, but he was not the best at expressing himself. To his teachers, he was a boy who did things slowly and always turned in work late.
In fourth grade, he met a demanding teacher who required students to recite the texts of each lesson and punished those who failed to do so. Since he had a hard time memorizing the text and could not memorize the information quickly, he was frequently punished and received beatings. Over time, he gave up on his schooling and was no longer willing to try. He became rebellious and skipped school; he even burned his schoolbags. However, in the end, he continued going to school because of his mother’s pleas and urges.
Because he got hit by his teacher almost every day, he began to test to see what things he could put on his hands to reduce the pain he felt. From homemade sesame oil, lard, castor oil, to Tiger Balm...he had tried them all before he found that Tiger Balm was the least effective and castor oil worked the best. All these bits and pieces of interesting experiments slowly revealed that Jui-Wen Chen had a unique interest and talent in researching and inventing.
Jui-Wen Chen spent a lot of time daydreaming in his primary school years. He said, “I didn’t want to learn and couldn’t learn well, but I still had to stay in the class; of course, the only thing I could do was daydream.” He loved to daydream about creative things and new thoughts would flow in his mind. Subconsciously, he began to develop his creativity and outside-the-box thinking that would later become critical to his invention.
By Ariel Tsai