Taiwan Mandarin ！

Let’s have some interesting Mandarin Reading and get to know about 鹿港囝仔 (Lukang Kids)! It is a team founded by Zhang Jing-Ye (張敬業) and friends to make their hometown a place young people want to stay in; 囝仔 is a Taiwanese word for “kid.”

一句話簡介 Intro in a Sentence

前面幾篇提到的老房子、藝術節，其實都是同一群人做的。

文章 The Text

前面幾篇文章裡，我們看到老房子變成咖啡廳、小鎮辦藝術節。這些事情，其實都是同一群人做的。

這群人裡面，有一個人叫做張敬業。他是鹿港人，但是以前不住在鹿港，他去外地讀書、工作。

後來，他決定回來。他回來的時候，發現很多年輕人跟他一樣，離開家鄉，去大城市生活。他覺得，這樣下去，家鄉會越來越沒有人。

所以，他跟一群朋友，一起成立了一個團隊，叫做「鹿港囝仔」。「囝仔」是台語，意思是「小孩」。

他們想做的事情很簡單：讓家鄉變成一個年輕人願意留下來的地方，而不是只能離開的地方。

我覺得，這是一個很有力量的想法。

單字 The Words

中文	Pinyin	English
家鄉	jiā xiāng	hometown
外地	wài dì	somewhere else, away from home
決定	jué dìng	to decide
年輕人	nián qīng rén	young people
離開	lí kāi	to leave
成立	chéng lì	to found, establish
團隊	tuán duì	team
台語	tái yǔ	Taiwanese (Hokkien)
留下來	liú xià lái	to stay
力量	lì liàng	strength, power

翻譯 The Translation

In the previous readings, we saw an old building become a cafe and a small town hold an arts festival. It turns out these are all things done by the same group of people.

Among this group is a man named Zhang Jing-Ye. He’s from Lukang, but he didn’t always live there — he went away to study and work.

Later, he decided to come back. When he came back, he noticed that a lot of young people were like him — leaving their hometowns to live in big cities. He felt that if this kept happening, hometowns like his would end up with fewer and fewer people.

So he and a group of friends together founded a team called “Lukang Kids” (鹿港囝仔). “囝仔” is a Taiwanese (Hokkien) word meaning “kid” or “child.”

What they wanted to do was simple: make their hometown a place young people want to stay in — not just a place they have to leave.

I think that’s a pretty powerful idea.

Notice This

• 越來越 — 家鄉會越來越沒有人 = “the hometown would have fewer and fewer people.” 越來越 + adjective/verb is the go-to pattern for describing a trend that keeps intensifying.
• 囝仔 is Taiwanese, not Mandarin — 囝仔 (kiánn-á) is a Taiwanese (台語) word for “child,” borrowed straight into everyday Mandarin speech in Taiwan. You won’t find this used the same way in mainland Chinese.
• 不是只能…，而是… — 而不是只能離開的地方 = “not just a place you can only leave.”

Try It Yourself

試著用一句話說說看，你身邊有沒有「一群人默默在做同一件有意義的事」的例子。

Try it: do you know some people around you are doing something meaningful?