What Cuisine Means to Taiwan's Identity and Its Clash With China

[Celerity]

Chefs and restaurant owners are using a multiplicity of ingredients and tastes to reflect Taiwan’s roots, shaping a distinct culinary culture.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/08/business/taiwan-cuisine.html

https://archive.li/6DQQM


Ian Lee at his restaurant in Taipei called HoSu, which means “good island” in the Taiwanese dialect.Credit...Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times

Taiwan is a self-ruling island of 24 million people that is officially known as the Republic of China. About only a dozen countries recognize it as a nation because China claims it as one of its provinces. Taiwan is called “Chinese Taipei” by international organizations and at the Olympic Games. The ambiguity of Taiwan’s nationhood contrasts with a growing Taiwanese claim of identity. More than 60 percent of the people living on the island identify as Taiwanese, and roughly 30 percent identify as both Chinese and Taiwanese, according to the latest results of an annual survey conducted by National Chengchi University in Taipei. Only 2.5 percent consider themselves Chinese exclusively.

But what makes them Taiwanese, not Chinese? How will they create a cohesive narrative about their identity? And how do they reconcile with their Chinese heritage? For many people, it’s through food, one of the things the island is known for, aside from its semiconductor industry. In the past decade or so, restaurateurs, writers and scholars have started to promote the concept of Taiwanese cuisine, reviving traditional fine dining and incorporating local, especially Indigenous, produce and ingredients into cooking. They are articulating and shaping a culinary culture that’s distinct from that of China, highlighting a Taiwanese identity that’s organic, tangible and immersed in everyday life. The food embodies Taiwan’s yearning for recognition as a nation, or at least as a culture of its own.


Mr. Lee uses the restaurant’s menu to express his love of the land of Taiwan — its produce, terrain and aroma.Credit...Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times

“For years, Taiwan’s ‘nationhood’ has been an ambiguous concept,” Yu-Jen Chen, a food historian at National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei, wrote in a 2020 book. “And that makes the question ‘What Taiwanese cuisine is’ particularly interesting.” She said the efforts to define and shape the cuisine allowed the Taiwanese to “taste and feel the ‘nationhood.’” Ian Lee is the owner and executive chef of the HoSu Restaurant in Taipei. HoSu means “good island” in the Taiwanese dialect, and he uses his menu to express his love of the land of Taiwan — its produce, terrain and aroma. One of Mr. Lee’s dishes, a smoky chargrilled fish, draws inspiration from the cooking of the Atayal, one of many Indigenous groups in Taiwan. The rice noodle soup Dingbiancuo, a famous street snack, is elevated to a main course. Taiwanese mango is presented in the shape of the terraced fields where the decorative herb for the dessert is grown.

“I want the others to see how wonderful and vibrant Taiwan is by telling the stories of our homeland,” he said. Mr. Lee believes his food could enhance the chances that the people of Taiwan will stand up to China, whose threat to take over the island by force is looking more real than it has in many decades. “We have to help people identify with this land so a national identity could emerge eventually,” he said. “So if something happens, we will be willing to fight for our homeland.” Nowhere does food exist independently from politics. After Mexico’s independence from Spain two centuries ago, the Mexican cuisine helped shape a national identity. In March, China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, said, “Whether the public can have vegetables on their tables is a political matter.”

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[Ligyron]

1. Thanks.

Now I'm hungry...

[marble falls]

2. Food is culture.