It's 5 o'clock in the morning. Camera slung over shoulder, a tourist walks out the front door of one of Taipei's sleek new tourist hotels. The doorman greets him with a cheery: "Hello! Good Morning! Have you eaten yet?" The doorman's intent is to ask "How are you?" But because he thinks of the question in a literal sense, the tourist is compelled to answer "I have" (eaten) rather than the usual "I'm fine." The doorman's query was merely a reflection of Chinese belief that to have just finished a good meal is one of life's best moments.
In free China, where Chinese customs and traditions are not only alive but practiced and observed from day to day, people eat when they want, where they want and as they wish. Places to eat are found on street corners and sidewalks, in front of temples and beside construction sites, on platforms spanning a stream and on the roofs of high buildings. Tables, stools and diners may get in the way of vehicles and pedestrians. Nobody minds too much. Food comes first. The scene may be al fresco but the cuisine is surprisingly good.
Breakfast hours at street stalls begin at dawn as laborers, office workers and students rush to find space at their favorite place. The early breakfaster gets a stool. Late comers will have to stand or wait. The day's first meal is likely to include such delicacies as long doughnut-like oil sticks, baked flat rolls called shao ping and a bowl of milky bean curd soup or tou chiang. Frying of the oil sticks, boiling of the tou chiang and baking of the shao ping start around 4 a.m.
Oil sticks are said to have originated in the Southern Sung dynasty (1127-1280). Yueh Fei (1103-1141), a loyal Sung general, was recalled from the front lines and poisoned by Ch'in Kuai, a traitorous court official who sought to appease the enemy. Later generations kept the hate-Ch'in Kuai tradition alive by deep frying the sticks to symbolize boiling Ch'in Kuai in oil.
Big production numbers mark shows at theater restaurants. (File photo)
Less rich breakfast food is found in the South China dim sum. These are small pastries and dumplings served at Cantonese restaurants from 8 in the morning until 2 p.m. A meal may be made of these in lieu of an ordinary lunch. Customer come for breakfast or brunch. They drink tea and wait for waiters or waitresses to circulate with trays or carts of the small dishes priced at NT$8 (US 20 cents) each. The variety numbers more than 20 with two or three displayed at a time, steaming from the kitchen and sending up savoury smells to delight a gourmet's heart. The boy or girl pauses by each table to call out the names of the dishes and permit close-up inspection. These dim sum people do not take orders for other dishes. If your favorites are not there, they will be around next time. Special orders for big dishes may be placed with the regular waiter assigned to the table. On Sundays and holidays, service is continuous from breakfast time until mid-afternoon. Those arriving after 10:30 may find all the tables gone. Waiting for one may be in vain, since this kind of eating takes a long while. The tables nearest the door to the kitchen get their dishes first, which means the widest variety of choice. Eight to 10 servings will suffice for the hungriest customer. The selection is usually larger than that, however, because the dishes are shared and more different ones may be picked. The bill is figured by toting up the empty dim sum containers. No tip is expected beyond small change.
Those who prefer something spicier that the mildness of Cantonese food may wish to try inexpensive chiao tse or mien. Chiao tse are dumplings. They may be boiled, fried or steamed. Thirty dumplings and a soup is the usual order for a full lunch or dinner. Mein or noodles is equally popular. Noodles in broth with chunks of beef or pork are from North or West China, whereas the fried noodles known to Americans as chow mein is a Cantonese dish.
Theater restaurants of Taipei serve chow mein and other dishes at a buffet luncheon eaten while watching a stage show of an hour or so. The cost ranges from NT$60 (US$1.50) to NT$90 (US$2.25) and you may eat as much as you wish from some 20 dishes. Tea is free. The show is not unlike the old-time vaudeville of the West but with more singers.
All the ingredients must be ready for the pan in Chinese cookery, much of which calls for fast cooking on a hot fire. (File photo)
Those who ate lightly at noon are likely to get hungry in the late afternoon and may take a coffee break at around 4 o'clock. One of the many coffee shops is the probable destination. What with ubiquitous tea, coffee breaks are not a Chinese custom. But businessmen of Taipei and young people have learned that coffee in the afternoon can be pleasurable and good for quiet business discussions. The coffee houses do their best business at this time.
Ordinary restaurants are at their busiest in the early evening. Those serving Chinese cuisine nominally are open until 9 o'clock. Western, Japanese and Korean style restaurants serve until 10 or later. Japanese themselves say their own food served in Taiwan is better than that found in restaurants of the big Japanese cities. Variety ranges from tempura and sashimi to complex full course ume dinners. Service and decor of the restaurants are in Japanese style. There are tatami rooms but waitresses seldom dress in the Japanese kimono. Korean cuisine centers around barbecue. At each table is a gas-fired combination grill and soup boiler. Diners cook their own meat, usually beef but also mutton or pork or sweetbreads. Vegetables and noodles are cooked in the broth.
Taipei also has Italian, French, Indonesian and Malaysian restaurants, steak houses and international cuisine in a score or more hotel dining rooms and several restaurants. The tariff range is from NT$80 (US$2) to NT$300 (US$7.50). Western restaurants are open until 11 p.m. A number of coffee shops serving food stay open around the clock.
Chinese restaurants close early but are by far the most popular in Taipei. Gourmets agree that Taipei has the best selection of Chinese food from the widest variety of provincial specialties to be found anywhere in the world. Included are the widely differing cookeries of Canton, Hunan, Szechwan, Shanghai, Peiping, Shansi, Mongolia and Taiwan.
Cantonese food is that of the southern province of Kwangtung and is the basis of almost all Chinese American cookery. The dishes of this style are sweeter and more colorful than those of other regions. Spicing is mild. The range is from dim sum to the most elaborate banquet dishes. Some favorites are chicken in wine, cold chicken cutlet, sweet and sour pork, egg fooyung, smoked pomfret, beef with oyster sauce, abalone with oyster sauce, sauteed lobster in tomato sauce and king hua chicken.
Hunan cookery is known for the liberal use of red pepper in an assortment of chicken and meat dishes. Steamers are much used. Specialties are beggar's chicken (cooked in a coating of clay), fried chicken with green peppers, fried pork shreds, steamed fish, steamed pork and bacon and cucumber soup.
Duck skin and meat are eaten in one course. Bones and fat provide the stock for a soup. (File photo)
The Peiping style of food preparation prevails throughout North China. More sweetening is employed than in either Cantonese or Hunan cookery. Chicken is stewed, fried, stuffed with chestnuts for roasting and made into soup. Duck is served in the world renowned Peiping style, crisp and succulent. The cook may display the duck and ask if it is crisp enough. Usually it couldn't be done to a better turn. The duck is carved into three parts: crisp brown skin, meat and bones and fat. Skin and when that is gone meat is dipped in sweet bean paste and wrapped together with scallions in a thin wheat flour tortilla and is popped into the mouth. Bones and fat go into a rich soup to be served as a subsequent course.
A less refined, more robust form of North China eating is Mongolian barbecue. Diners choose from among frozen chicken, beef, mutton, pork and venison. Meat or meats (and it's good form to take some of each) are piled into a bowl. Atop the proteins goes a selection of vegetables: shredded cabbage and carrots, sliced tomatoes and green peppers, bean sprouts and Chinese parsley (coriander). Finally come the ingredients of the sauce: soy, white wine, sesame oil and chili oil, ginger, chopped garlic, chopped red chilis, sugar and water, if and as needed. This mixture is handed to a chef who grills it over an open fire, turning and scraping with 2-foot chopsticks. When done to a turn, the delicious result is scooped back into the bowl and handed to the diner. Mongolian barbecue is eaten with hot unleavened bread or rice gruel.
Those who prefer to do their own cooking may try the shuan yang jo firepot. Platters of thinly sliced meat (originally mutton, the principal protein of Mongolia) and sliced or shredded with vegetables are placed on the table along with the chimneyed charcoal cooker. Stock is poured into the pan girdling the fire. Into the broth go meat and vegetables to be cooked as the eater wishes. A self-prepared sauce has been made in individual bowls out of wine, vinegar, soy, peanut oil, garlic, ginger shreds, sugar and water. A raw egg is often added. Meats and vegetables are dipped in the sauce after cooking. Various kinds of noodles may also be cooked in the broth, which is spooned into bowls for eating as it grows richer from the endless rounds of meat and vegetable cooking.
There is a southern firepot, called the "tea dust firepot" in Kwangtung. "Tea dust" is a hot sauce into which the cooked meat and vegetables are dipped. Among the materials to be cooked are fish balls, meat balls, shrimp, beef, mutton and pork. An egg usually reinforces the "tea dust." A Taiwan version of the firepot offers seafood, exclusively. The shrimp and oysters may be eaten raw.
Shanghai food is sweet and rich. Special dishes include braised sharks fins, live shrimp which jump out of the bowl and onto the table when the cover is lifted, pork and preserved bean curd, stewed fish in vinegar, steamed crabs, fried shrimp and braised eels.
Szechwanese food of Western China is also oily but much spicier than the Shanghai style. Westerners with a liking for Mexican chilis, Indian curries or Korean kimchi usually like it. Red chilis flavor almost everything. Especially tasty are diced chicken with red peppers, beef and green peppers, chicken or beef in chili sauce, highly spiced beef stew, crab with hot bean sauce, ma po bean curd, pickles and minced vegetables. Tea and camphor smoked duck has a different flavor. Served for late snacks is Hsiao yeh. Small portions of fried fish and meat, seasoned oysters, shellfish, diced chicken and spiced vegetables whet the appetite for bowls of rice soup.
Hsiao yeh stalls are found at food markets. The small booths are concentrated under one big tent. Each booth serves from one to four specialities at prices ranging from US 10 cents to 25 cents. Winter dishes include tang kue duck, duck boiled in a soup made of tang kue, an herb, eight treasure rice, four gods soup, squid soup, clamshell soup, snack soup, raw fish, chicken soup, fried chicken legs, pigeons and egg noodles. Summer delicacies are fried shrimp, tapioka pudding, peanut soup, red and green bean soup, rice noodles and fish or meat ball soup. These stalls open at 6 in the evening and stay open until the early morning hours. Night owls make up the clientele.
Hsiao yeh snacks also are served at small hotels where friends gather on a warm evening to drink beer and engage in small talk. A more expensive alternative is the "girlie restaurant," which purveys more pulchritude than food. Prices are very high and fruit is the staple repast. The girls are table hoppers; the hour they are supposed to stay with one party commonly turns out to be 15 or 20 minutes. Patrons are mostly businessmen and Japanese tourists.
The theater restaurants offer fair Cantonese food and interesting floor shows, mostly in the Chinese style. The evening show lasts from a little after 7 until 9. There is a late show with snacks and lower prices at 10. Tourists enjoy the theater restaurants. So do businessmen celebrating birthdays or a profitable deal. Because these restaurants are large enough to accommodate several hundred guests, they are often sold out for wedding parties, especially on Saturdays and Sun days.
Wedding banquets at an ordinary restaurant are somewhat more common. Tables seat 10 to 12 guests. Courses number between 12 and 20 with the cost in proportion. Wine and soft drinks are lifted in an endless succession of toasts that begins long before the first course. New acquaintances are made and old ones renewed. Halfway through the dinner the bride, bridegroom, parents and best man and maid of honor go to each table to toast the guests. If the principals do not drink, they may be represented by surrogates or may touch lips to cup in gesture.
What with the accent on eating, almost anything is properly and happily celebrated at a banquet—birthdays, passing of examinations, promotions and anniversaries of various kinds. Parents will hail the passing grades of a student at the Chuang Yuan Lo (Hall of Successful Candidate Restaurant). Birthday observers go to the Longevity Hall Restaurant, and so on.
Street stalls offer an assortment of varied, delicious snacks. (File photo)
Feasting with a local flavor takes place at pai pai celebrations in honor of city or other indigenous deities. Family members, friends and even strangers passing by are invited. Tables are set on sidewalks and eating and drinking overflow into the streets, which are closed to traffic. No vehicle could move through a pai pai party. The more tables set up and the larger the consumption of food and drink, the greater the gain in face for the party givers. Pai pais have been discouraged in recent years because of the waste involved in neighborly conspicuous consumption competitions.
The matter of face arises in the names of foods as well as the quantity served. Chicken becomes phoenix and vegetables are green jade. Names given dishes may recall persons, in the case of the ma po bean curd of Szechwanese. The dish is named after Chen Ma-po of Chengtu. Wei kung bean curd is named for Tan Wei-kung (Tan Yen-kai), the first premier of the Republic of China, who created this delicacy. Food names may convey good tidings. The New Year fish course, yu, also has the meaning of abundance. A Szechwanese dish which sizzles when hot tomato sauce is poured over puffed rice was named "Bomb Tokyo" during World War II. It subsequently became "Bomb Moscow" and then "Bomb Peiping." Chop suey, a popular Cantonese-style dish, does not exist in Chinese cuisine or the Chinese language. One story of the name's origin is that the Chinese Embassy in the United States invited guests to dinner in Ch'ing dynasty times. Food was insufficient. So the cook mixed some leftovers and served up this concoction as a new dish. The Americans liked it and asked what it was. The cook answered in Cantonese: "Chop suey." He meant it was bits and pieces but his English was not good enough to explain that. The Americans took for granted that the dish was called chop suey.
Some connoisseurs of Chinese food say Hongkong's Cantonese cooking is better than Taipei's. That could be, but the connoisseur is almost certainly from Hongkong. For variety of styles and reasonableness of price, Taipei stands in a class by itself. Hongkong has Shanghai and Peiping restaurants but none exclusively specializing in the great Szechwan and Hunan cuisines. There is no Taiwanese restaurant and the barest taste of Mongolian barbecue. All in all, and without running down Hongkong's excellent offerings, Taipei is the place to find out what the cooking of China is all about.
Another Taipei advantage is the down-island hinterland of Taiwan. There are places to go outside the big city. Food is good throughout the island, although the choice is not so extensive as in the capital city. Taiwanese food is excellent everywhere. This is plain fare, light on oil and even more so on salt, heavy on soups and seafoods, offering some good chicken and pork dishes and no beef at all. For many island-born, the cow of all work is a friend of the family and not to be eaten. Not so long ago this taboo was universal.
As befits big cities, Kaohsiung, Taichung and Tainan offer multi-faceted Chinese menus, standard international cooking and excellent Japanese cooking. The same is true of resorts such as Sun Moon Lake, Alishan and Kenting Park at the island's southern tip. However, edible Taiwanese food and often some Japanese dishes will be found even in small places. The decor and furnishings may not be much in crossroads towns, but the food ordinarily will be better than that found in the average American hamlet of the same size. Top expresses of the Taiwan Railway Administration carry dining cars serving both international and Chinese food. Larger stations have railway restaurants with similar food at reasonable prices.
Chinese do not merely eat to live; they live to eat and, in fact, love to eat to a point where they have invented the world's most extensive, most varied and (many gourmets agree) most delectable cuisine known to man. To be in Taipei and Taiwan is to eat, and to eat very well, and those who are daring enough to venture out and try new taste experiences will find themselves richly rewarded.