Fu Jing was set up about 20 years ago when I first entered this market. At that time, there were over 10 convenience stores in Shetou Township. To make it distinguished from Chinese-style convenience stores in the market, I positioned the store as the Japanese cuisine such as Sushi, rolls, steamed eggs, sashimi.

Why I didn’t want to be a train driver since childhood?

It was in 2015 when I got into the automobile class. My “automobile” is a train. Around 2015, I rescued a 135 train from the scrap yard with a cost of NT$ 40,000 and then spent a repair cost of NT$ 500,000 in two years to make it move. If you ask which one is my favorite train, I will tell you it is 135, because it is my accomplishment after more than 2 years’ painstaking efforts.

Actually, I used to work part time in this kind of store when I was a college student. Its name was “Grandpa Hong Chinese-Japanese Vegetarian Diet” located in Pingtung. It has a history of over 30 years till now. I joined the store in 1992 and stayed there until my graduation. In 1994, the owner wanted to set up a brand store in Kaohsiung. It was me who made the overall planning from store decoration, line design to material purchasing until the branch store went on the right track. After graduation, I served in the military in the outer island. During that period, I had a rough record of it and had the plan to engage in this business after I leave the army. When I returned here from the army, I already had a clear idea about the planning of the cuisine because I had the experience of opening such a store. BUT! Customers in Pingtung, Kaohsiung, which is the southern area of Taiwan, may have different taste from local people here. So I would make moderate adjustment to adapt to the taste of local people. This is how I decide the menu. In principle, I would have pork, beef and chicken on our menu. Why? Recently, African swine fever is prevalent. I always hope it can be blocked outside Taiwan. Otherwise, it will have serious impact on Taiwan economy. Why? If people cannot eat pork, they have to turn to chicken or beef, which will cause unbalanced supply and demand and in turn increase the market price. Therefore, it is better to prevent its prevalence for sake of risk diversification. Also, you cannot eat port when foot-and-mouth disease breaks out or eat beef when mad cow disease breaks out, and poultry may also have some virus. So I will prepare various dish categories in my convenience store.

About the messages left here? I don’t make every guest sign here. Otherwise, all the walls will be full of messages, or there will even be not enough space for messages. So I generally invite three or four kinds of visitors to sign here. The first kind is railway practitioners. If I know my guest works in a railway station, I would invite him to sign as a commemoration. Because our store takes railway as the theme, railway practitioners are normally more privileged. The scope of railway practitioners later expanded to the high speed rail, sugarcane train, Alishan line, Taipei MRT and Kaohsiung MRT, all of which are related to transportation. I would probably invite them to leave a signature. The second kind of guests is foreigners, 90% of whom may be Japanese. If I happened to see a Japanese guest, I may invite him to leave a signature as a commemoration as long as I am free. I may not have time to do it if I am occupied. The third kind of guests is the reporters to interview us. No matter they are from magazines or TV stations, I will let them leave a message as a record. The fourth kind of guests is politicians, including the former president Tsai Ing-wen and the county magistrates. I would also invite them to leave a signature here as a commemoration.