Category: Blog

Home Journal 2026.Jan.12  
by Master Yang's eldest daughter, Sue YANG

That afternoon, our familiar tea room manager Zoey and her husband drove non-stop from Hualien to their home, opened the car door with a tired expression, and quickly invited them to stretch on the tatami in the Japanese-style room, sitting by the side enjoying the cool breeze, savoring afternoon snacks and coffee at the low tile table. After relieving the tension from driving, we first talked about Zoey’s plan for a lifestyle I had never considered before — changing places to live every six months.

She and her husband have arranged for an agent to manage their house in the United States, and in the next six months, they have decided to move to Taiwan to try living there.

I listened to her describe the upcoming mobile plan that was about to be executed, while thinking about something else.

Because if it were me, after participating in a forum, I would just want to go home immediately.

That day we discussed a topic: What is the difference between a house and a home?

And I suddenly realized that looking back at every place a person has lived, naturally, each has their own set of definitions in their heart.

Mobile Home and Immobile Home

Zoey’s visit to the house coincided with the time she and her husband started implementing a wish: to change locations every six months

This idea has been brewing for a long time, so they first arranged a trusted agent to manage the house in the United States that still hasn’t found a tenant, and then they actually took action.

For their first stop, they chose to come to Taiwan, planning to live here for half a year to see how it goes. They also invited Zoey to stay at their home for a night, and we completed my final Coaching session. That day, we talked a lot about “houses” and “homes.” Zoey yearns for a nomadic lifestyle, moving to the next place she wants to live every so often, while I am just the opposite. Since childhood, I have never really liked moving. Even though I am willing to briefly leave home for learning, to attend a forum, participate in workshops, or visit exhibitions — usually, as soon as the event ends, I immediately head back home, not wanting to stay any longer in unfamiliar places. Traveling abroad has never been in my vacation plans.

In recent years, I have been following the content shared by Zoey, watching her write newsletters, listening to her podcast “Tea Room,” discussing brand management, and also talking about her life as a Digital Nomad — wherever she wants to live, she just moves there.

Although our life action lines are completely different, after going through Zoey’s one-on-one coaching course on “brand management,” I suddenly discovered something very interesting:

Our answer seems to point to the same thing

That is——how to take control of the action line of your life

Does every place you’ve lived have the appearance of home?

Before moving into the third cabin built by my father, I had actually lived in quite a few places. Excluding the four houses I lived in with my parents and in-laws, most of the time was spent in rental homes.

In the years of studying and just entering the workforce, I almost lived in different rental spaces.

Those houses are nominally not “one’s own home”

But looking back now, those places were actually the strongest fortresses of life at that time.

Every time I move to a new place, I always spend a lot of effort decorating the space, trying to turn the originally unfamiliar room into something that feels like home. Until later, when I had a partner, my husband decided to accompany me back to my parents’ home, and that period happened to coincide with the time of building the house.

So we began a very special life: living while accompanying my father in building a house

The house is not yet completed, there are no doors, no windows, the walls are not built well, there are only columns and a half-finished roof, we even set up a tent inside the house to live.

This kind of day has lasted for at least five whole years.

Looking back now, the house was actually incomplete
But strangely—home already existed

Because there are family members inside, although it is noisy, at least I am not facing the joys and sorrows of life alone.

By 2021, during the pandemic, the workload suddenly decreased, and the pace of life slowed down. It was during that time that our daughter was born.

The arrival of the granddaughter is like a kind of soft lubricant, making this home more complete.

Her laughter filled the house that was not yet fully completed

Every key seals a segment of life

Until now, I still keep a lot of keys from places I used to live, some of which still have the charms from back then, recording the preferences of that time.

Each key is like a sealed piece of life

I discovered that the place where a person has lived will gradually shape their current self.
Compared to my father’s experiences, I have actually been much more stable thanks to my parents’ blessings.

When my father was young, he worked various engineering jobs, as a laborer, and even traveled to Arabia for work. In that high-temperature land, he lived a life of wandering for many years. Those years of drifting bore the weight of life given to him and also shaped the current Master Yang.

Perhaps it is because of this that he later insisted on building a house, a home that can allow the family to live in for a hundred years

How many keys have you had in your life?

Calculating, from birth to leaving home for studying and working, I have now lived in 11 houses.

If we add the time when my parents ran a restaurant, along with the two experimental wooden houses built on the same piece of land, then I have actually lived in 13 houses, with 15 rooms.

There is a key that I have always remembered

That was a very busy and also very exciting time. Every day I ran between the classroom, school newspaper club, editing camp, print shop, freelance design company, dance troupe, and dormitory. When the door opened, the floor was often filled with assignments, color samples, and text drafts. The blue jelly computer in the corner was still panting while helping me calculate the Cinema 4D assignments. On the tatami bed were piled the cleaned dance costumes and uniforms that I didn’t have time to fold.

Looking back now, those days of staying outside have quietly shaped who I am today.

Perhaps I can never stop because I have long been used to advancing things on multiple tracks simultaneously

Houses are like a relay

Later I slowly understood one thing

Every house lived in is like carrying different versions of oneself in a relay.

Those spaces record lifestyles from different periods and gradually shape our imagination of future life.

And such longing does not arise from nothing.

It is generated step by step, slowly in different places

Perhaps you will go abroad to further your studies in a subject; it may also be for a job, temporarily leaving your familiar hometown.

But, when one day, you have accumulated enough ability and have honed a set of skills

Perhaps it will start to think about another question: Can one live in the place they want to be with these abilities?

For me, the answer right now might be this: whether moving or not, be prepared with your personal brand management skills, along with some digital work skills, and perhaps you can gradually regain the freedom to choose your location to live.

Finally, I want to leave a question for you who have read this far:

How many keys have you had in your life?🔑
Which one locks away the days with the most memories for you?
What kind of house represents your ideal life?🏠

Welcome to the dining table of our home to chat with our family about what your definition of a house & home is?

Let’s schedule a time! 🤙 A Book House Reservation Link

Understand the Basic Application Construction Process, So You Don’t Encounter Obstacles on Your Dream-Building Journey

Taiwanese couple returning home to open a store despite financial difficulties

In most people’s places of residence, influenced by various factors from studying, working, and starting a family, it is often difficult to design or make choices completely according to one’s own wishes. However, after gradually stabilizing, have you ever considered what kind of place you want to live in at the end of your life? How do you want to live? What kind of lifestyle do you want or what kind of house do you want to build as the final stop of your life…?

Today’s article shares the story of a couple who always make decisions opposite to others and spent 18 years building a private residence in Pingtung Fangliao.

During the era of money flooding in Taiwan (1980-1989), peers flocked north to seek employment and entrepreneurial opportunities, even buying property, but this couple decided to rent out their house in Kaohsiung, raise funds with family, and return with their two daughters to their hometown Fangliao to prepare for the second half of their life and their house-building plan.

They opened their first restaurant “Greenery Square” in their hometown Fangliao, selling the fashionable burgers of the time (the kind you see at breakfast shops now). The whole restaurant was designed in the shape of a large “G,” and they intentionally left a native mango tree on the land. The area behind the restaurant was planned as a lawn courtyard with an outdoor elegant seating area. The owner Yang San Er, besides personally supervising the construction, also made a fountain himself. Before they turned fifty, they raised two children on the income from this restaurant, and in the tenth year of operating Greenery Square, they decided to start from scratch to build their retirement home.

The Romantic Dream of Being an Engineer

Yang San Er (known as Master Yang) once worked in Arabia and was employed by Arabian Oil Engineering. This foreign worker from Taiwan, after returning to Taiwan, participated in the Ten Major Construction Projects. Building his own house is a project that Master Yang, who struggled in the engineering field in his youth, is eager and determined to undertake.

It was around the year 2000 when the decision was made to construct another future home. Master Yang believed that steel materials were too expensive [note 1], and he was unwilling to use the RC brick construction method, which faced issues of water leakage and wall cancer over time. While searching for suitable building materials, he read about a lecture on wooden architecture in a newspaper. After attending that lecture, Master Yang chatted with the speaker, Professor Chen Qiren, who is currently the president of National Kaohsiung University. From Professor Chen’s research room, he borrowed a book titled “Japanese Wooden Houses,” co-authored by Mr. Matsui Ikuo and architects Kobayashi Kazumoto and Miyakoshi Yoshihiro. This illustrated book, approximately A3 size, became a prized possession for Master Yang. After flipping through this book several times, he decided to construct his retirement home using the Japanese wooden joint construction technique starting in the year he turned 50.

[Note 1] Reinforced steel is approximately NT$20,000 per metric ton (current steel SD-280 average price per ton is approximately NT$14,150 / ton _ Price update date is February 2, 2015)

The purest “naked value” revealed through sweat and perseverance

Making the decision to build a house by oneself is similar to deciding to apply for a working holiday abroad before turning 30. For Mr. Yang, who has an engineering spirit, his motivation to build his own house, aside from saving on labor costs, is to personally experience and create the process of building a home.

Building a home is a major project of life, and it is recommended to start this romantic plan when your physical strength, financial resources, and mental capacity are most abundant. As you envision your ultimate journey in life step by step, ask yourself what kind of life you want to live, imagine various future living scenarios, and hope that the blueprint of the home you personally tailor reflects reality, then you can slow down and see the “naked value” of this plan.

Choosing a non-mainstream way of building requires plenty of patience and an unavoidable determination. The harsh reality is that living in a utilitarian environment means time equals money. We live in this era of coexisting with digital resources and shared resources, where upon opening our eyes, there are a pile of bills and basic living expenses that must be paid, making it impossible to ignore the existence of fixed monthly payment bills.

For this reason, the strategy of Master Yang and Madam Yang from the Great Wood Family is to lower their desires for life, save on living expenses, and treat living in a tent at the construction site as a pleasure. They use waste materials and dry leaves to start a fire for boiling water for home use. These tactics are not just a mere camping experience lasting a couple of days; they are a genuine change in lifestyle that has been maintained for nearly ten years during the home-building process, with wholehearted effort invested in creating their home.

Basic Construction Procedures for Self-Built Houses

People often ask: “Why does it take so long to build a retirement home?” A certain family would respond: “We aren’t very wealthy, so we choose to build the house slowly.” If you have a sufficient budget, you don’t have to choose to build the entire house by yourself like a certain large wooden house, which took 18 years just for the main structure. In fact, outsourcing the house construction is a good option to simplify a complex process.

Regarding self-built housing, one significant difference compared to purchasing a completed house is that in Taiwan, if you only own land without any development, it will be more challenging in terms of loans and financing. The options are quite limited, and the amount of loan you can secure is also not high. This is the primary threshold to overcome. As a result, during the initial phase of the dream to build a house, most people choose the mainstream method of buying a completed house and negotiate credit with the bank. While you can decide “where to buy,” the type of house you can live in will depend on how many construction projects are available in that location for viewing and selection.

However, purchasing a completed house has never been an option for a family like the Da Mu family. When Master Yang was young, he returned home with US dollars from working in Arabia. Following his father’s advice, he bought a fifth-floor apartment in Kaohsiung City. He experienced inconvenient access, excessive sunlight on the rooftop, and constant maintenance issues affecting the whole building. In recent years, disputes over insufficient parking spaces have increased, and various uncontrollable factors in daily life have troubled their lives, making it impossible to live comfortably. Therefore, even though funds are not abundant, building their own home remains the only option for Master Yang and Mistress Yang to insist upon.

The rhythm of self-built houses in Taiwan and the application procedures for construction can refer to the following steps:

House Builder Guide

When you consider what kind of house you want to live in and what kind of life you want to lead in the future, do you often find yourself in a state of reverie, filled with anticipation? Of course, you don’t have to mobilize your entire family like Master Yang did, insisting on building a house for 20 years. You can choose to hire a home building agent, who, with their experience of having traversed the long road of home construction, can become your best guide on the journey to fulfilling your dreams, clarifying the feasibility from your vague aspirations.

Starting from the planning blueprint, assist in calculating suitable construction methods, provide reference materials under the preset framework to avoid visiting different places for price inquiries and always being unable to obtain reasonable market prices. This way, you can use the time that lingers outside the walls, finding it hard to enter, to think and establish your residential blueprint, allowing the building agent to help you translate the wishes on the blueprint.

There are three major conditions for self-built houses, which are also the three key points that need to be reviewed before starting any project:

1. People (family support)
2. Money (house budget)
3. Time (dedicating vacation days)

Building a house on your own or contracting to build a house will be a solid period of pursuing dreams in your life. However, the payment experience is completely the opposite of buying a ready-made house, where you enjoy first and pay later. The speed of self-building a house will change according to the builder’s daily schedule; it may be delayed because of being tied up with work, it may stop because the budget for the next phase of construction funds has not been gathered, or it may change due to family needs. This is a romantic action that requires you to continuously ask yourself. Various pauses seem to question again: Will this self-constructed house be the destined residence?

If you are also looking for the best measure of life in a residence

Start looking for your destined home builder agent for home building consultation!