Hidden in the twist and turns of the Dihua commercial loop in Taipei City lies a pastry store established in the Qing dynasty (1683-1911).
“Lee Cake,” founded in 1895 by Lee Teng-fei, an immigrant from mainland China’s Fujian province, started out as a grocery store that sold mainly cakes and pastries in New Taipei City’s Luzhou District. It relocated to Dihua Street 50 years later because of the area’s convenient transportation.
“With techniques learned in Fujian, my ancestors opened the store to support the family and make a living,” said Rita Lee, a fifth-generation descendant of Lee Teng-fei. “They developed many products according to customers’ needs and came up with cakes suitable for festival use, such as Chinese hamburgers, red turtle cake, steamed sponge cake and turnip cake.”
Asked to describe a few store specialties, Lee pointed to a box of Pinsi cakes nearby. Developed when the store was first established, Pinsi cake has been a perennial favorite with customers, remaining a best-selling item even today.
“Its filling is made from jack bean mash, which melts once popped into one’s mouth,” Lee said, explaining that the beans are boiled to get rid of the peels first, and later stir fried with vegetable oil and sugar to create a creamy texture.
Citing a study by a National Taiwan University professor, Lee said the beans are health products, as they are full of nutrition and can help prevent cancer.
According to Lee, origins of the Pinsi cake can be traced back to a legend in the Tang dynasty (618-907), when the scholar Hsueh Ping-kuei fought in a war along the western frontiers.
“The way to the battlefield was far,” Lee said. “Lacking food, the soldiers picked the beans by the roadside, ground them and made them into pastries to ease their hunger. After the war ended, the soldiers continued to make the cake to commemorate their comrades and named it ‘Pinsi,’ meaning to ‘pacify the western front.’”
Another popular product sold at the store is the Pinan cake, also known as red turtle cake because of its shape. According to Lee, turtles are an auspicious symbol in traditional Chinese culture; they represent good luck, a long life, peace and tranquility. As the cakes are thought to drive away evil spirits, they are used throughout the year during religious festivals to worship the gods and ancestors.
But traditional Pinan cakes are made from flour, which molds easily even when refrigerated. “So instead of flour, we use peanuts and malt to make our turtle cakes, both of which help keep them fresh longer,” Lee said.
“Pinan cakes are very meaningful in Taiwanese society,” Lee added. “How to preserve and pass on the traditional culture is something I constantly think about.”
As a sales manager at Lee Cake, Lee’s philosophy of conserving traditional culture is fully demonstrated in her products—in the food itself and the packaging.
Lee pointed to the store’s green bean cakes as an example. Made from rice, they retain their freshness for a long time. As a result, in the past people would carry a few such cakes whenever they were about to travel—to the old Chinese capital Beijing, for instance, where many scholars went to take the imperial exams.
In an effort to preserve this historical context, green bean cakes sold at the store are packaged in little boxes, with attached booklets describing the cake’s history. The booklets contain Chinese idioms related to promotions and success in life. For example, one contains the saying “to climb higher and higher step after step,” which is a play on words: gao, the Chinese word for cake, sounds exactly like the word for “higher.”
Other goods at the store are also full of meaning. The bride cake gift box, for example, has a paper cutting piece done on flannelette, often seen on tables of open-air banquet weddings in the old days, Lee said.
Inside the box are a chopstick stand and a pair of chopsticks, a pouch with candies, a small bamboo steamer with green bean cakes, and other pastries such as puffed rice cakes and Pinan cakes.
Each of these items, Lee explained, involves a pun of some sort.
“Thus ‘chopstick stands’ is a homonym for ‘get married soon.’ As to the significance of the pouch—in the past families would prepare pouches with gold and jade pieces inside, and they would give these pouches to their daughters on their wedding days.
“The steamer, on the other hand, refers to the Chinese saying ‘prosperity rising upward like steam.’”
The puffed rice cakes are associated with the marriage of young girls, because there is a common Taiwanese saying that a lady can marry a good man if she has a puffed rice cake.
The bride cake gift box, then, is also a microcosm of Taiwanese culture, especially as it relates to marriage, Lee explained.
Plenty of thought and discussion is put into designing the goods and their packaging, according to Lee, adding that many items undergo an entire year of product development before they are allowed onto shelves.
“We hope to give our cakes and pastries a meaning and value, selling not just the product itself, but also the culture. The aim is to use the products to pass on Taiwanese culture, which might otherwise be forgotten as time goes by.”
While many of its competitors have gone out of business, Lee Cake has survived two world wars, the Japanese colonial era, competition from western pastries during the 1980s, and, most recently, the financial crisis of 2008.
“We are fortunate to have made it through the difficult times,” Lee said, stressing that the key to the store’s success lies in being persistent in producing products with Taiwanese culture elements and in holding onto the belief that fine products can only be made slowly and with patience.
“This operating philosophy is the secret that persuades customers to come back to our store again and again,” Lee said.
As she spoke these words, a patron walked into the store and, as if on cue, placed an order for several boxes of Pinsi cake. (HZW)
Write to Grace Kuo at morningk@mail.gio.gov.tw