Strolling through the quiet alleyways near Taipei's Da'an Forest Park, you catch a faint, delicate scent of pastries drifting through the air — sweet, but never cloying. Two little orange cats meow at passersby from the roadside. Following the fragrance, your gaze is drawn to a low-key yet elegant blue signboard, its wall-mounted light illuminating the bold letters of PinckyMommy, as if warmly beckoning every passerby to step inside.
Tucked away in the alleyways, drifting with the scent of pastries
PinckyMommy
PinckyMommy (real name Chen Xiangling) is the owner of this little shop. The name came about simply because she has a dog named Pincky, and people who know her naturally started calling her "Pincky's Mommy." She didn't get into diving the way most people do, yet diving has quietly brought about a profound transformation in her life.
Growing up in a traditional Chinese medicine family, she was sent to Beijing's Beijing University of Chinese Medicine to study Chinese medicine after high school, following her father's arrangements. After graduating in 2008, she stayed in Beijing to begin her life as a young drifter in the city. With no interest in Chinese medicine whatsoever, and facing the reality that her family would no longer support her financially after graduation, she decided to strike out on her own — selling desserts right there in Beijing. Back then, she clumsily navigated the newly launched Weibo, arranging hand-deliveries at subway stations across the city, unfazed by the sidelong glances of police as she boldly challenged a business model whose outcome was entirely uncertain. Looking back, she thinks she was a little crazy. Although a friend eventually offered to invest and help her open a proper dessert shop, her longing for Taiwan led her to close the chapter on her seven years in Beijing and return to Taiwan's heartland — Nantou.
A compact workspace — the baking corner of her dreams
But her resistance to carrying on the family tradition followed her home. Even back in Nantou, she refused to accept her father's plans. So she grabbed a ritual offering table, bought an ordinary home oven, and started her dessert journey right there in the house. Her initial capital was just NT$30,000. Gritting her teeth, she began selling desserts online, and she still remembers the genuine rush of emotion the first time she saw her savings climb past NT$100,000. In 2013, following her own dreams, she headed north alone to complete a Western pastry and baking course at the China Grain Research Institute, hoping that more solid, professional training would help her take those dreams further.
Every dessert is crafted by her own skillful, heartfelt hands
Her encounter with diving came after she had already opened her shop in Taipei. She went to Sabah, Malaysia with a part-time staff member, and spent two full days snorkeling on the open ocean. Not only did she encounter tropical fish she had never seen in her life, but — more importantly — she conquered her fear of deep water she couldn't touch the bottom of, and of the surge and swell of the waves. Back in Taiwan, she signed up for a beginner scuba diving course. She still vividly remembers the first time she came across a whole spawning aggregation of bigfin reef squid at the Northeast Coast — an ecosystem so mysterious it felt like another world entirely, and that image remains deeply etched in her memory to this day. Half a year later, a friend introduced her to freediving, and just like that, another window in her life swung open.
She has since completed her AIDA (freediving agency) a4 course (with a certified dive depth standard of 32m), making her a professional-level freediver. Over these two years of learning, what changes has diving brought to her life? She has always lived alone, and the pressures of reality and the mind kept mounting. For three to four years, her menstrual cycle was highly irregular — but after she started diving, it was as though her body naturally found a balancing mechanism, and the irregular cycle resolved completely on its own.
On a psychological level, diving has taught her to honestly face the unknown and her fears. With scuba diving, you can't touch the bottom, and if your neutral buoyancy isn't well-controlled underwater, it can trigger an inexplicable fear in someone accustomed to being in control on land. Freediving requires you to overcome physiological discomfort — such as extended breath-holds and diaphragmatic contractions (when your blood oxygen level drops to a certain point, your body uses diaphragm spasms to remind you to breathe). Most people have never experienced these sensations, and the unfamiliar breeds fear. So for her, diving means understanding fear, accepting fear, and ultimately overcoming fear.
Freediving is a journey of self-discovery — photo credit 歐大
Scuba diving is about getting to know the ocean; freediving is about getting to know yourself.
With scuba diving, you can stay underwater for extended periods with the help of your equipment, observing ecosystems that are impossible to witness from land and experiencing everything the ocean has to offer. Freediving, however, gives you only a single breath. In just a few minutes of descent, you need to be fully in tune with your breathing, your weight system, your fins, and every other variable — because only you know when and at what depth it's time to turn back.
Along the way, she has met many companions, and they have gradually come together as a team. As her business grew, the dessert shop had the opportunity to expand into a seating area. She has always wanted to share the feeling of the ocean with her customers, so in addition to 20 underwater photographs contributed by different photographers displayed throughout the shop, the walls are deliberately painted in a gradient — blue at the bottom, white at the top (just as the ocean deepens with depth, and sunlight's red wavelengths are absorbed by seawater, leaving everything increasingly blue). When you lie on the floor and look around, the whole environment feels as though you are truly submerged underwater. In this space, she hopes everyone can share their own ocean stories over the simple pleasure of enjoying a dessert.
She simply wants to share with everyone the wonder that desserts and the ocean have brought into her life
To me, the ocean is a therapist. Everyone encounters joy and sadness in life, but the moment you enter the sea, it's as though the ocean is listening to your every emotion. There's a saying that the ocean has a healing power — whether it's physical or emotional healing.
When asked about her vision for the future, she simply smiles and says: "Keep making desserts, keep freediving!" She loves the process of finding her position, closing her eyes, and sinking steadily during a freedive — in those moments, she feels as though she has become a fish, sensing the gentle glide of seawater across every inch of her skin. Perhaps that is the true magic of freediving.
The story of desserts and the ocean will keep on fermenting inside her little kitchen
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