Chao Tzu-chiang: The Undefeated Soul Behind the Grandma's Apron

30-Second Overview:
Chao Tzu-chiang is a name that stands apart in Taiwan's entertainment world. His warm persona as "Fruit Grandma" accompanied countless children's growth — but beneath that warmth lies a performer's soul forged at the Lanling Theater Workshop, and the tenacity of a man who founded the "If Theater for Children," faced bankruptcy multiple times with debts exceeding ten million NT dollars, and still refused to quit. In 2025, when the PTS budget crisis erupted, he stepped forward again to speak up for public broadcasting.

In 1984, a 19-year-old Chao Tzu-chiang happened to spot an ad in the newspaper: the Lanling Theater Workshop was recruiting members, and it said "free all year."¹ Knowing nothing about theater at the time and motivated by the thought "it's free, and there's even a lunch box," he auditioned — and it became his life's vocation². At the Lanling Theater Workshop, the cradle of Taiwan's experimental theater, he participated in landmark productions including Nine Songs and A Happy Wandering, and under the tutelage of veterans like Jin Shih-chieh, came to understand the truth that "theater is life."³

On July 2, 1998, the Public Television Service children's program Fruit Ice Cream made its debut. On screen, a grandmother in a red-and-green checkered apron, wearing reading glasses, speaking in a warm gentle voice — "Fruit Grandma" — met the children of Taiwan for the first time. Chao, then at the peak of his acting career, made the deliberate choice to enter children's programming, and was met with no shortage of scorn: "You're this famous — why bother with kids' shows? Wait till you're old and nobody wants you anymore!"⁴

The Shelter Under the Apron: The Gentle Power of Going from "Chubby Bird" to "Grandma"

Chao's devotion to the Grandma character is rooted in an unhappy childhood. He has spoken openly about how in sixth grade, classmates called him "Chubby Bird" and "Fat Chao (Soap)" — leaving him deeply lacking in self-confidence⁵. Raised by his maternal grandparents, in an environment where adults were busy making ends meet and peers were full of competition, only an old grandmother's acceptance made him feel safe. "A grandmother has seen all of life's joys and sorrows — she doesn't overreact to a child's mistakes; she is very able to accept and understand."⁴

That personal experience became the soul of Fruit Grandma. Chao jokes that he is Taiwan's most senior "red-topped performer," but he never performs artificially. In children's eyes, he believes, a grandmother is neutral — like a zebra or an elephant, a pure symbol.⁴

📝 Curator's Note: Fruit Grandma's success is hidden in a purity that transcends gender — through this character, Chao transmitted precisely what he most longed for but never received in childhood.

To protect this cultural symbol, Chao has maintained an almost obsessive constancy. For 26 years, Fruit Grandma's costume and appearance has never changed. "Batman and Superman haven't changed clothes either!"⁴ He refuses to let the process of putting on Fruit Grandma's makeup be filmed, because he believes: "Adults care about what is real; children care about what is beautiful. At the age when they still believe in stories, would telling the truth make them happy?"⁴

If Theater for Children: A 24-Year Adventure in Art and Financial War

If Fruit Grandma is the gift Chao gives to children, then "If Theater for Children" is the trial he gives himself — and to Taiwan's children's arts.

In 2000, Chao founded "If Theater for Children."⁶ It was an investment widely considered "insane" from the start. In the company's third year (2003), SARS hit and every performance was forced to shut down. He was preparing to announce closure, only to discover that "closing down costs even more" — severance pay and contract penalties would have totaled NT$2 million, and at the time he could not even produce NT$10,000 in waste disposal fees⁷.

This financial anxiety became his constant companion over the following two-plus decades. The company faced operational difficulties multiple times; Chao has openly admitted that he was once NT$10 million in debt⁸.

"I can be beaten, but I will never surrender." This is a phrase Chao keeps close⁹. When the pandemic was at its most severe in 2020, he was burning NT$3 million a month, and even rehearsed from a wheelchair — holding a microphone, conducting at full voice — after rupturing his Achilles tendon. He laid nobody off and cut nobody's pay, because he knew his colleagues were the company's most precious asset¹⁰.

Artistic Breakthroughs: From Traditional Storytelling to "Tech-Cross-Arts"

Chao has not been content with traditional children's theater forms. He has led "If Theater for Children" to repeatedly push boundaries — including a recent interactive image theater production featuring the "Detective Pig" character called The Explosion at the Glittering Treasure Shop, combining "tech-cross-arts" features to let audiences participate in solving a case through video interaction¹¹. He has also launched "biographical theater," adapting the true entrepreneurial stories of 15 Taiwanese business leaders into drama, letting children see the real-world challenges and resilience of the adult world¹².

The 2025 Call: Why Do We Still Need Public Television and Fruit Grandma?

In a society of collective anxiety where everything is measured by competition, Chao's persistence feels a little out of time — yet also profoundly precious.

"Our programs aim to provide acceptance and companionship, to guide children, to give them a pat on the back from time to time!" Chao feels that children's programming should be like starlight in the darkness — radiating gentle beams⁴. While modern parents are busy enrolling children in talent classes and feeding them into rankings and competitive currents, Fruit Grandma is still there, using twenty-six years of an unchanged voice to tell stories — and to tell children: you don't need to come in first. You only need to be yourself.

📝 Curator's Note: In a fast-changing digital era, constancy itself is the most powerful force. Fruit Grandma's eternality is the gentlest possible rebuke to a restless society.

In January 2025, when KMT legislator Chen Yu-chen proposed cutting NT$2.3 billion from the PTS budget, triggering a fierce backlash from Taiwan's film and television industry, Chao once again put on his Fruit Grandma apron and stood in the front line: "There are truly a thousand reasons to keep PTS. I hope we can continue communicating."¹³ For him, Fruit Grandma has transcended the role of an actor — becoming a cultural symbol, a vehicle for speaking on behalf of the public interest.

"To become a cultural memory of a generation — I truly believe this matters more than being president!"⁴ Coming from someone who spent thirty years guarding Taiwan's children's arts, these words carry their own weight.

Coda

The young viewers of those early years may by now be sitting with their own children in front of the television. When a child asks: "Why doesn't Fruit Grandma ever get old?" Perhaps we can say: because beneath that apron lives a soul that has always believed in dreams, and has always refused to bow to reality.

Chao Tzu-chiang has spent his life demonstrating that performing arts can be a form of guardianship — guarding the tenderness that can get forgotten in growing up, guarding the small lights that can be extinguished by the pressure of reality. He is Fruit Grandma. He is also, for thirty years of Taiwan's children's theater, the most stubborn soul standing.

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