Rural roots of taiwan's food culture

Food culture represents one face by which a country knows itself and by which it shows itself to the world. Due to its great ethnic diversity, Taiwan has a wide variety of such faces and, moreover, these have increased and strengthened with the rise in local awareness. This diversity of cuisines includes eight main categories: Holo (also called “Minnanese,” or simply “Taiwanese”), Hakka, and vegetarian foods, as well as the various cooking styles with long histories from the length and breadth of mainland China such as northern style, Hunan, Jiangzhe (from the provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang), Hong Kong (Cantonese), and Sichuan. In general, therefore, it can be said that Taiwan’s varied cuisine shows ethnic, geographic, economic, and other cultural influences.

This situation can be illustrated using the example of Changhua County in west-central Taiwan. While Changhua’s one city and 25 townships have a variety of distinctive geographic conditions, there is an overall tendency toward agriculture, meaning that Changhua foodstuffs tend to have a rural flavor. Local influence can be seen on top of this, however, such as in the seafood ingredients used for coastal dishes such as o-a-tsian (oyster omelet) and o-a-mi-suann (slender noodles with oysters), which are considered Changhua specialties. Agricultural communities throughout Taiwan tend not to include beef as a staple of their diet, so Changhua’s meat dishes are also generally based on pork. These include rice with stewed pork, and bah-uan (rou-yuan in Mandarin), which are meatballs in a large dumpling. These are so famous that, throughout Taiwan, they are known as Changhua rou-yuan. These meatballs are made using bamboo shoots and mushrooms as well as pork, and the dough is generally made using sweet potato starch. This shows how such dishes are closely bound to the agricultural societies that produced them. Local religious activities have also contributed to the development of pastry making, so that Changhua’s many old pastry shops now enjoy a widespread reputation.

The situation in Taoyuan can be contrasted to that in Changhua. The culinary culture of the 13 conurbations of this northern county was originally similar to that of Changhua discussed above. Following settlement by large numbers of mainland veterans and the arrival of foreign workers, however, local cuisine has been influenced markedly. Initial Han-Chinese inhabitants of Taoyuan had been mostly descendants of immigrants from the Zhangzhou area of mainland China’s Fujian Province. The rich tapestry of local inhabitants also includes indigenous Atayal, Hakka, and immigrants from Matsu Island and Yunnan Province, giving rise to an equally rich variety of cuisines.
Following the arrival of foreign laborers, Southeast Asian restaurants have also prospered, while the hot and spicy beef noodles of the veterans’ community has become another feature of local food over the last few decades.