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Food Literature: Savoring the Flavors of Life
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SAILING ONTO THE WORLD STAGE：THEMES IN TAIWAN LITERATURE
Food Literature: Savoring the Flavors of Life
⧉ Taiwanese Snacks
（Provided by Courtesy af Nisan International Ca., Ltd.）
"Food is the staff of life." Diet is of paramount importance for Taiwanese people. Whether it's pearl milk tea, street snacks, or gourmet banquets, every type of food is closely intertwined with life in Taiwan. By writing about food, authors convey their unique tastes and personal connections to food. Taiwan's early food essays often carried a nostalgic tone, where the foods in question represented the writer's longing for their hometown, loved ones, or the good old times.
A hollow pastry with a thin layer of brown sugar paste at the bottom, Tainan brown sugar bun cakes go best with hot sweet soups like apricot kernel drinks or roasted wheat flour drink. Once purchased, they're to be carried with care, because broken bun cakes look especially heart-breaking. Of course, the best-seller at Jia Fu Cheese Cake, next door to Ten Cake, may be their signature puff pastry cake. However, they also bake exceptionally thin bun cakes! Break up a bun cake, dip it in a bowl of peanut soup or apricot kernel drink, and even the coldest winter will get a little warmer.
——Hung Ai-Chu : A Girl Can Cook: Street Foods, Traditional Markets, and Home Cooking from Taiwan and Beyond (2021)
Hung Ai-Chu masters exquisite descriptions of the details of cooking and dining, and also uses foods to connect them to fond memories of family.
Since the 1990s, food literature of all kinds has flourished. Combining themes like historical memory, politics, gender, and power, food literature furthers discussions on the relationship between food, power and society. In Jiao Tong's "Erotic Recipes: A Complete Menu for Male Enhancement", for example, food analogies were used to convey anxiety about male performance, while satirizing the nationalist myths created by the government.
⧉ Tainan Brown Sugar Bun Cakes
（Photo by Wei Ying）
After cutting, each piece of steak has a bone in it, as hard as the inscribed rock on Taiwu Mountain in Kinmen. Preparing this dish requires tremendous patience, bravery at the stove, courage against hardship, and the spirit to get up again.
—— Jiao Tong: Erotic Recipes : A Complete Menu for Male Enhancement (1999)
By naming his short rib recipe "Wu Wang Zai Jyu," Jiao Tong uses the homonymic pun of "Ju" to mock incompetence in re-erecting one's lost virility / country.
In recent years, food literature has become almost ubiquitous among the general public. Writers not only document the diversity of local food customs, but also record a wide variety of exotic cuisines. Through the magic of writing, authors have captured the beauty of food, memories of the past, and historical references, all in a feast of words.
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