Leaving behind the din of the Gong­guan traffic circle and turning into Lane 119 off Section 4 of Roosevelt Road, the noise of the city instantly fades and the sweltering heat drops by one or two degrees. The single-story houses of the Toad Hill community are nestled in close rows against the hillside. In summer, this area on the southern outskirts of the Tai­pei Basin is alive with the sounds of insects and birds. On spring evenings, fireflies flicker, old folk chat on benches, and the clatter of stir-fry cooking fills the air. A village landscape comes to life—­complete with ­communal melon trellises and vegetable gardens, and the leafy shade of the hillside—a world apart from the nearby bustle of the city.

 

On Toad Hill, Taiwanese of different backgrounds blend into a single community when they enjoy meals together.

Though men in Taiwan traditionally left the cooking to women, this situation has changed greatly in recent years.

On this summer evening, residents have agreed to contribute home-cooked dishes for a communal banquet. One by one, they emerge from their kitchens as if in a ceremonial procession, gingerly carrying their best family recipes, lovingly prepared, and teetering up and down the narrow stairs. They gather at a long table outside the Wang family residence, and suddenly the whole table overflows with delicacies.   

A feast of communal memories

The dishes contributed by the Wang family that day include stewed beef, mung bean porridge, and fried milkfish. The stewed beef recipe comes from the beef noodle shop set up by the senior Mr. Wang after he was discharged from the army. As Wang grew old and lost his teeth, his son began to use tender beef tendon slowly simmered in water, but preserved the flavors of the family recipes. The mung bean porridge prepared by a neighbor named Ah-Mei also reflects the culinary tastes of wai­sheng­ren—the mainland Chinese who arrived in Taiwan after 1945. Mung bean porridge has a “cooling” effect on the body according to the precepts of traditional Chinese medicine, and in the summer it is often served cold. Beef broth is sometimes added to enhance the flavor, and children like to add spoonfuls of sugar and enjoy it as a sweet delicacy. The pan-fried milkfish, on the other hand, hails from Mrs. Wang’s hometown of Tai­nan, where a meal is incomplete without fish.

Food reflects personal histories, and Wang family recipes indicate the family’s background. Marriages like the Wang’s—between waishengren men and Taiwanese women—are a common phenomenon in Toad Hill communities. Mrs. Tong, for example, a member of the Amis indigenous tribe from Hua­lien’s Shou­feng Township, learned the culinary techniques of northeastern China after she took a husband from China’s Hei­long­jiang Province. Similarly Mrs. Ye, a Hakka from ­Beipu Township in Hsin­chu, became just as proficient at making the kind of noodles common in mainland China as she was at making traditional Hakka rice cakes, after she married a man from ­Jiangsu Province.

After the chaos of the war years, it was not easy to find common ground in marriages between different communities. When two people had entirely different backgrounds, would they also discover that their dietary habits provided another source of conflict? “In the past we were all so poor and had little to eat. It didn’t really matter as long as there was food!” says a smiling Mrs. Ye. The problem sorted itself out.

An anjara spice box is essential for Indian households, and classic flavors are created by blending a few basic spices.

A banana leaf overflows with curry, naan, and long-grain rice. Friends dine with their hands, seated on the floor.

Good cooking makes for good neighbors

Che Lin, the founder of Good Toad Studio and a ten-year resident of Toad Hill, showed me an old picture taken in 1928. At that time, the Japanese colonial government had set up agricultural facilities such as a research station and a sericulture unit near Toad Hill. Dormitories for their workers were located at the foot of the hill along Fang­lan Road and were the community’s earliest buildings.

In the postwar years, the military constructed Huan­min New Village for soldiers and their families, and in the 1960s and ’70s migrant workers from other parts of Taiwan built themselves new homes through their own hard work. Through these phases of building, the community took shape. The tolerant community welcomed people from all over. No matter how different their backgrounds, the residents shared the common dream of making a good life. Plus the humble architecture of the structures meant that sounds carried between houses, creating a friendly atmosphere rarely seen in the big city.

Mrs. Ye learned to make her delicious traditional Chinese-chive-and-egg pastries from her neighbor Mr. Chen. Mr. and Mrs. Wang, who hail from China’s ­Jiangsu Province, once operated a restaurant in Shanghai, and at each Chinese New Year Mrs. Wang prepares traditional Shanghai New Year’s dishes for her neighbors.

Indian scholars and wild herbs

Because of its proximity to National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, this inclusive community has also welcomed a succession of science and ­engineering students and researchers from southern India. About a decade ago, these students began to take up residence in the area and others followed as word spread between them. Presently there are 30 students in six households, and they form a unique part of this community.     

Like Taiwan’s Aboriginal peoples and Taiwan’s older generations who understand herbal medicine, A.K. Prasannan, a postdoctoral researcher from Tamil Nadu, and his friends from southern India, know how to ­listen to the body and treat it with health-giving plants ­foraged in the wilds that they use in their cooking.

Prasannan has identified more than 30 medicinal plants on Toad Hill that also grow near his home in India. He and his friends have also planted paper mulberry, moringa, banana trees, curry trees, lemon grass and other plants on uncultivated parts of the hilltop. “Where I come from, almost every family grows paper mulberry, curry trees, and bananas,” Prasannan says.

Twice weekly Prasannan and his friends gather for cooking parties and use leaves from their banana trees to serve curry dishes simmered with myriad spices. Indian dance music enlivens the parties, helping to recreate the atmosphere of home and celebrate the spirit of life in an adopted place.

Like Taiwan’s Aboriginal peoples and Taiwan’s older generations who understand herbal medicine, A.K. Prasannan, a postdoctoral researcher from Tamil Nadu, and his friends from southern India, know how to ­listen to the body and treat it with health-giving plants ­foraged in the wilds that they use in their cooking. (photo by Lin Min-hsuan)

A timeless hillside community

Dietary customs are often acquired unconsciously through the habits of daily life. In 2015 the community was included in the Wen Luo Ting Community Arts Festival, sponsored by Taipower, and local residents had the opportunity to comb through their family recipes and share the rich layers of culinary history with the public. Feng Tien, a documentary filmmaker who lived in Toad Hill for five years, was able to take cooking lessons with local residents and film the process. Artist ­Tseng Yun-chieh­ applied her knowledge of plant-dyeing techniques, gathering Indian almond and paper mulberry leaves on the slopes of Toad Hill and boiling them into pigments that she used to illustrate local cuisine. She used these illustrations to make a calendar that she distributed to local residents.

“For me, Toad Hill is an enormous gift. It’s nearly impossible to find this kind of place in the city, and it has preserved precious traces and clues to life 30 to 40 years ago,” Feng says.

In this rapidly changing metropolis that prizes efficiency, the Toad Hill community, situated in a hilly backwater of the city, is like a last harbor, welcoming strangers with completely different life stories, allowing them to become intimate neighbors, to nurture each other, and to carry on with their peaceful lives.