If we cut open a big, disc-shaped dabing pie—a staple of traditional Taiwanese confectionery—we may find that the filling comprises sweet adzuki-bean paste mixed with meat floss and glutinous rice balls. This strange combination is likely to confound our ideas of what “pastries” should be like: can they be at once sweet and savory?
As the impacts of global climate change grow more severe, greater attention is being devoted to the issues of food security and environmental sustainability. Because plant-based foods require less in the way of resources to produce, their development has boomed in recent years.
Thanks to globalization, there is a dazzling array of snack foods and sweets available to people today, and they come from all over the world. But are you curious about what snack foods and sweets were like in less prosperous days gone by? What did they taste like? And how did they evolve?
The Xiluo Bridge used to be the longest bridge in East Asia. Opened in 1953, it spurred economic growth by linking together the road networks of the northern and southern parts of Western Taiwan, and it served as the starting point for many a Xilou native’s dreams of seeking their fortunes in Northern Taiwan. Today, the bridge has become something of a tourist attraction, and both Changhua and Yunlin counties have listed it as a heritage site.
Rivaling Willy Wonka’s legendary chocolate bars, and laden with even more stories than Marcel Proust’s madeleine cakes, Taiwanese pastries continue to satisfy our sweet tooth. With their origins in traditional Chinese confectionery, they are made with local ingredients rich in cultural meanings, and are constantly undergoing innovation. Baked into each of these sweet treats are distinctively Taiwanese memories.
In centuries past, the Philippines played a significant role in sparking the outside world’s first awareness of Taiwan. When the Spanish occupied the Philippine archipelago in 1571 and set up Manila as a trading base, they launched new trade routes that brought them close to Taiwan.
Lukas Engström is a Swedish national based in Taiwan. Shortly after he started to learn Mandarin Chinese here, he visited a soft drinks bar to buy a cup of pearl milk tea. While in the queue, he kept repeating to himself the Chinese phrases he had to say to the staff. When at last he gave the order in impeccable Mandarin, he thought all was well, but he was completely nonplussed when the smiling staff shot out these questions in truncated Chinese: “How sweet would you like it? How much ice?”
In Nantou County’s Jiji Township, you will see not only many signs for a famous local product, “banana egg rolls,” but just as many statues of leopard cats. This adorable creature that lives in mountain foothills has become consummately integrated into the lives of the area’s residents, so that even locals who have never seen one in the flesh know what it looks like. A street vendor says with a laugh: “It’s thanks to the leopard cat that people come here to visit!”
Hospitals in Taiwan possess high-end medical technology and equipment, and Taiwan is a world leader in certain specialties, including liver transplantation and reproductive medicine. Institutions here provide very cost-effective healthcare services and have a competitive advantage against the rest of the world in terms of the level of medical science and the quality of care.
“We might say that a man could not move even ten feet without seeing some kind of beauty, provided he has the eyes to see it. Even if this world had been but a barren desert, there still would have been beauty.”
—Andrew Loomis, The Eye of the Painter (1961)
