Taiwanese Cuisine and Its Culture

指導老師：張簡麗淑

應英系 4-2邱以昀 1001417062

應英系 4-2陳爾彬 1001417072

應英系 4-2邵怡靜 1001417092

應英系 4-2張雅如 1001417100

Department of Applied English,

Yuanpei University of Medical Technology

March 2015

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(Title of Special Topic) Taiwanese Cuisine and Its Culture

(Students’ Names) Bing Phoebe Sherry Kira

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Title: Taiwanese Cuisine and Its Culture

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i

Acknowledgements

Our greatest debt is to Professor Monica Chang Chien, who

painstakingly and scrupulously went through the early drafts of the text,

always helping with invaluable suggestions. We also wish to thank Dr.

Alex Liu, who provided stimulating direction, and other teachers of DAE,

who offered sound insights and much vital encouragement. We’re

particularly grateful to our family who told us to get on with it.

ii

Abstract

Food is a great way to become acquainted with Taiwan’s culture because food

plays a major role in people’s lives here. In English, the common greet is “How are

you?” In Taiwan, it implies, “Have you eaten?” To Taiwanese, being able to eat is

the basic gauge for happiness. Beyond its role as the gauge for happiness, food is

something that allows one to see the overwhelming hospitality of the people in

Taiwan. Being a host is an important role here, and offering food to someone who is

unfamiliar to a place or a certain type of food makes Taiwanese people proud and

honored.

One can find great Thai, Vietnamese, American, Japanese, Italian, and Indian

foods as well as the different styles of foods from mainland China in this amazing

island. Taiwan’s unique ethnic influx experienced from China, in particular, offers a

widespread variety of its cuisine in just a small area. This diversity gives us a

window into the Taiwanese culture because the people here, just like the food, are

friendly and welcoming to foreigners. One other arena for food enjoyment is

something unique in Taiwan: the night market. On a pleasant evening, people crowd

night market streets where they can enjoy a variety of different foods for extremely

low prices. Barbecue, seafood, steaks, sushi, and desserts are all available, and these

night markets provide a place for the community to come together and friends to

rendezvous.

Whether eating a huge wedding feast or having cheap but delicious meals

around a night market, food is something to celebrate, and it is a great way to learn

about Taiwan. Not only does Taiwanese cuisine give insight into the culture in many

significant ways, but it is delicious, as diverse as the people, and a reason to be happy.

Keywords: Taiwan’s culture, hospitality, night market, Taiwanese cuisine

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements..................................................................................i

Abstract...................................................................................................ii

Introduction.............................................................................................1

Beef Noodle Soup.....................................................................................3

Oyster Omelet..........................................................................................4

The Featured Food for Festivals.............................................................6

Night Market...........................................................................................10

Zuo Yezi....................................................................................................11

Taiwanese Desserts.................................................................................12

Conclusion...............................................................................................14

Works Cited............................................................................................17

1

Introduction

Food is a great way to become acquainted with Taiwan’s culture

because food plays a major role in people’s lives here. A common

greeting in Taiwan is “chi bao le ma,” meaning “are you full?”

The question implies not only that being able to eat is central in the

Taiwanese mind, but also that if you have eaten, you are happy or alright.

Being able to eat is the basic gauge for happiness.

There is also a saying which infers Taiwanese dinning culture. That is:

“While eating, one deserves dignity and superiority.” (吃飯皇帝大)

2

Beyond its role as the gauge for happiness, food is something that

allows one to see the overwhelming hospitality of the people in Taiwan.

This hospitality implies a very strong sense of community and

fellowship in Taiwan. Not only is being a host important, but eating

good food with friends and/or family is the norm.

Taiwanese cuisine and its culture can also be viewed in a way that

many Asian countries cannot: as a melting pot of people. The reason is

that Taiwan’s history has involved countries such as Holland, Portugal,

Japan, and China. Thus, its cuisine is as diverse as its people, and

almost every dish has its own story.

3

Beef Noodle Soup

Take beef noodle soup and oyster omelet for examples. Beef noodle

soup is one of the most popular Taiwanese dishes. Yet, it was invented by

a retired old soldier from Sichuan.

This soldier came to Taiwan with Chiang Kai-Shek’s troops around

1949. After he settled down in this island, he suffered from serious

homesickness because he missed his native dishes and their tasty flavor.

One day, he cooked slabs of beef in Sichuan spicy soup, and then put

noodles in it. He shared the noodle soup with his friends who were fond

4

of it. Eventually, it became very popular. That was the origin of beef

noodle soup.

Oyster Omelet

As for the oyster omelet, there is a different story. According to

Taiwanese legend, Dutch troops invaded Taiwan in 1661. Zheng Cheng

Gong was assigned to beat the foreign force.

Yet he found that the enemy had stolen and hidden all the food,

especially rice. Challenged by the shortage of food, Zheng’s troops

encountered the problem of famines. In order to feed his soldiers, Zheng

came up with an idea to use the local sea food – oyster, as their main

course.

5

They mixed oyster with sweet potato starch, vegetables and egg to

make it an omelet. No one knew that it would turn out to be one of the

most popular dim sums (snacks) in Taiwan.

6

The Featured Food for Festivals

Different types of food can be almost synonymous with certain

festivals. For example, sticky rice wrapped in bamboo leaves is popular

during the Dragon Boat Festival, while moon cakes are common during

the Mid-Autumn Festival. In this latter festival, the foods are symbolic.

The round shape of the moon cakes represents the full moon and the

wholeness of the family. They essentially represent community and

togetherness, as the moon does.

7

For Taiwanese, the winter solstice is a

time to eat healthy foods, such as mutton

hot pot, sesame oil chicken, or ginger

duck soup. Ginger duck soup was

invented by Wu Zhong, a physician of

Shang Dynasty.

In order to revive his sick king, Wu

Zhong put special herbal medicine and ginger roots to stew duck. This

stew’s flavor gets better with the seasoning of rice wine and sesame oil,

filling the room with a wonderful aroma. It is believed to keep the body

warm and help people fight sicknesses.

The winter solstice is also celebrated as the Dong Zhi festival. At this

time, Taiwanese people take part in an important activity – eating

tangyuan. Tangyuan, made of rice flour, is usually plain or stuffed with

peanut powder or sesame paste and cooked in sweet soup. It is stuffed

with meat, too.

8

The name tangyuan sounds like the Chinese word for “reuniting,” and

it is a reminder that we are all a year older after eating tangyuan. So, on

the day of the winter solstice, be sure to get together with your family and

celebrate this special day.

On Lunar New Year’s Eve, Taiwanese usually get together to enjoy a

hot pot meal. They usually apply the Wu-Xing principle, known as five

elements, in cooking the hot pot. The word 'element' is thus used within

the context of Chinese medicine with a connotation.

They believe that the proper order of five elements will offer a "mutual

generation" (xiangsheng 相生) sequence. Vegetables of various colors

will multiply the effect of their nutrients.

9

So Taiwanese stew turnip (white), mushroom or jew (black), burdock

or pumpkin (yellow), carrot or tomato (red), and radish leaves (green) to

make the broth.

The more colors in the hot pot, the better it will be for the body. The

hot pot thus embodies not only the richness of the nutrients but also the

wholeness of the family.

10

Night Market

The other arena for food enjoyment is something unique in Taiwan: the

night market. Night markets are exactly what the name for them implies:

markets set up, outside, during the night.

Here in the night market, you may enjoy various xiao-chi in Mandarin

(“small eats”). “Small eats” are something like a delicacy, snack, or one

dish of a main meal.

On a pleasant evening, people crowd night market streets where they

can enjoy a variety of different foods for extremely low prices.

Barbecue, seafood, sushi, and desserts are all available, and these night

markets provide a place for the community to come together and friends

to rendezvous.

11

The night market is worth mentioning because it is such a big part of

Taiwanese culture, and it is largely centered around food. People can

eat all night long at night markets, and people of all ages can enjoy

hanging out at the night market.

It’s a great way to sample small amounts of different kinds of food for

cheap prices, from Gua bao (Taiwan Pork Burger), rou-yuan (meatball

dumplings), uann-kue (“bowl-pasties”), milkfish porridge to

o-a-mi-suann (slender noodles with oysters).

Zuo Yezi

Besides various “small eats,” postpartum diets are unique food for

women during maternity leave. After giving birth, most Taiwanese

women will be asked to follow the convention of Zuo Yezi (staying out a

month) and enjoy their postpartum diets.

12

During the specific period of time, postpartum diets will be offered in

order to help the recovery of a woman’s body, milk production,

preventing infection and chronic disease prevention. Postpartum diets

illustrate how we cherish a new mother and her baby.

Among the various postpartum diets, sesame oil chicken is served

more than often for women during Zou Yezi, and it turns out eventually to

be one of the most popular gourmet dishes in this island, especially in

winter.

13

Taiwanese Desserts

The last but not the least, we would like to mention about is Taiwanese

desserts. A popular dessert in Hualien is “muaji,” or rice ground into

gooey dough that is filled with something. This dessert is not very

sweet, and the “fillers,” or material put inside the dough, are things like

red beans, peanut paste, coconut, etc. All of these are natural products

that actually contain nutritional value.

Other desserts or sweets that are popular in Taiwan are pearl milk tea,

Taiwanese ice cream, and a dessert called u tou xi mi lu. It contains taro,

black rice, coconut milk, and tapioca balls. Once you try it, you will

never forget it. Pearl milk tea is milk tea with balls of tapioca which are

sucked through a straw. It becomes so popular that even Western people

love it.

14

Taiwanese ice cream, another popular dessert, is actually not ice cream

at all, because it contains no cream. It is shaved ice topped with tapioca

balls, sweet potatoes, jelly, pineapple bits, peanuts, and many other things.

It’s the favorite dessert of Taiwanese in summer.

.

Most of the Taiwanese desserts are quite healthy, when compared to

the sugar-filled cakes, ice creams, and candies. They are also simply

delicious. Overall, they seem to be less sweet and consumed less fat

than that in western countries. The low obesity in Taiwan may be due to

this reason.

15

Conclusion

Whether eating a huge festival feast or are walking around a night

market, eating cheap but delicious meals, food is something to celebrate,

especially in Taiwan, and it is a great way to learn about this amazing

island.

The very act of eating is a display of community. Large dishes are

placed at the center of the table, and everyone takes from these

community plates and puts the food from them in their personal rice

bowls. It is this simple gesture of sharing which makes eating here a

bonding and special experience. By comparison, in the West, meals are

16

almost always personal. After all, the role of food in Taiwan is that it

keeps in perspective some of the simple pleasures we should be grateful

for.

There are many important things to be learned from the food in Taiwan.

Not only does it give insight into the culture in many significant ways,

but it is delicious, as diverse as the people, and a reason to be happy.

17

Works Cited

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kAw--?qid=1205081607496 2014.03.10

http://big5.china.com.cn/ch-jieri/yuanxiao/2.htm 2014.03.12

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%90%E7%89%9B%E8%82%89%E9%BA%B5%E3%80%91%E7%9A%84%E6%A

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%9A%84%E7%94%B1%E4%BE%86 2014.03.25

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