Childhood poverty, youth delinquency, battling dyslexia: Jam Hsiao goes candid about life before fame

While fans know Taiwanese singer Jam Hsiao lives in a million-dollar mansion now, they may not have known that as a child, the 37-year-old lived in a house with no windows and door.

"Nobody believes me every time I say this, only my classmates who have been to my home before would know," he revealed in an interview with Chinese broadcasting company Phoenix Television shown last Saturday (May 25).

Jam shared that his family had a difficult time financially when he was young. His father was a taxi driver, his mother worked odd jobs and he and his three other siblings were mostly brought up by their grandmother, who operated a clothing stall.

In his childhood home, the window wasn't fixed after it was broken. During typhoon season, his home would be flooded and his family also burned coal during winter to keep warm.

"You can see the traces of partitions on the floor, but you can't see the partitions because they have all been eaten by termites," Jam said.

In addition to facing poverty, he also has dyslexia and had a hard time in school.

"I was suffering in school because nobody understood what was happening to me. The school and my parents knew that my grades were poor, but nobody could really analyse what was happening," Jam said, adding that he had never completed an examination paper within the time limit.

Because of all the difficulties he faced, Jam was a school bully.

When asked if he had done things when he was younger that he felt sorry about, he said: "There were a lot. I am really sorry about what I had done. I am actually a kind person. I had a bad temper and was very fierce, but I am also someone who cried easily."

He also shared that when he was 15 years old, he beated up someone and was brought to juvenile court. He had to undergo counselling for two years after that.

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Besides meeting people who spoke kindly to him for the first time in his life, the counsellor also encouraged him to hone his music skills when they learnt that he trained in drums for about two months.

"They said they wanted to apply funds to buy me a set of drums, so that I can teach other youths there to play it. They gave me a lot of chances and made me feel that I have value in this society," Jam said.

Because of the opportunities he was given, Jam also received a kindness award from ex-Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou in 2003.

He expressed: "For someone like me who has never received any awards in school before, to receive an award like this from the society, I was surprised and cherished it a lot. I knew clearly that this was an opportunity they created for me."

When Jam earned his first paycheck after entering showbiz in 2007, he decided to rebuild his childhood home and brought his manager Summer Lin, whom he married in October 2023, and a designer to his house.

He recounted: "Before Summer came to my house, she didn't believe that there was such a place in this world. The first time they entered my home, my elder brother came out of his room… To walk from his spot to where we were standing, he had to use a stick and jumped over a few bags of rubbish.

"To me, I didn't find it strange. Because sometimes cockroaches or rats would run over us at home. Maybe those who had lived in better conditions would never have seen the state of people who had harder lives."

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yeo.shuhui@asiaone.com

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