Turkey Rice: Taiwan's Comfort Food

A recent month-long on-line poll conducted by the government’s Council of Agriculture named Chiayi chicken rice as the tastiest rice dish in all of Taiwan, garnering over 400,000 votes. For those who don’t know, the moniker “chicken rice” is a misnomer since it is actually made from turkey meat. This is due to the Chinese word for turkey, literally “fire chicken”. Anyway, winning first place does make a lot of sense. It is a simple meal that is eaten anytime of the day, consisting of slices or shredded chunks of boiled turkey breast served on top of a bowl of rice with grease and some other “sauce” spread over it to add flavor. Different shops offer various side dishes, such as sautéed cabbage, tofu stewed in soy sauce and my favorite, pidan doufu, or thousand-year-old-egg with tofu. There is also soup, including fish balls in clear broth or miso, or bean paste, soup, a dish borrowed from the Japanese.

Though I have never been to it, the Fountain Chicken Rice Shop in the center of the city is the most famous in town and is always packed from morning to night, with tourists and regulars alike. A shop previously located near my old house has that rustic quality that would make American health inspectors cringe, but there was always a line at lunch time. I personally prefer a small shop on Chueiyang Road owned by the parents of one of my son’s old classmates. The clientele are office workers or students, usually male, in for some Taiwanese fast food, only cheaper and better for you than a Mickey Dee’s meal. Whenever my Taipei in-laws come down for the holidays, they always have one meal of chicken rice.

My sister-in-law ran a chicken rice shop for a few years and did rather well with it. Shortly after she had opened shop, however, the city government had instituted a one-way street law and stationed police on corners to enforce the new ordinance. The problem was that my sister-in-law’s shop was merely ten meters from the corner, but in order to get to it, even a scooter driver would have to go around the block. Within six months, businesses, including my sister-in-law’s, had successfully petitioned the city government to make scooters exempt from the one-way traffic code, making Chiayi apparently the only major city in Taiwan to have such a privilege.

These accolades are a reward for the government’s efforts last year in declaring one month “Chicken Rice Month”. (I think it was August.) There were taste-testing contests and educational events giving the public a greater appreciation of this ultimate Taiwanese comfort food. However, I wonder how popular it will remain. With seven McDonald’s, a half dozen KFC’s, three Starbucks, as well as Domino’s and Pizza Hut, how many of today’s youth in Chiayi will one day think back on their Saturday lunches and remember turkey and rice or burgers and toys. Even when I heard about the survey from a TV news report, I was in a small Italian restaurant woofing down some spaghetti carbonara.

Almost Au Naturel in Yilan

The Japanese, thanks to their appetite for building materials, created Taiwan’s logging industry almost overnight by constructing six railways around the island. However, by the mid-eighties, lack of upkeep and restrictions on logging had reduced the system to one line still in extensive use, the Alishan Railway, which transported tourists to the national park. I remember seeing tractor trailers hauling two or three huge trees cut down somewhere in the Central Mountain Range to lumberyards in Chiayi when I first arrived. However, most of these lumberyards to the north of the city are shutdown now as a result of the above mentioned prohibitions on timber. On the flip-side, there has been a marked increase in forested areas across the island over the last two decades, from government-protected parks and reserves to privately-owned recreational areas, complete with hotels, restaurants and special exhibitions areas.

One of the attractions of Cilan Forest Recreation Area in Yilan County is a bungalow at which former ROC President Chiang Kai-shek stayed twice, sort of making it his Camp David. There are pictures of “this extraordinary person” looking admiringly at his wife’s ink and paper art. Other enlargements have him holding the hand of his “beloved” as they leave a village home on Kinmen Island. Why there was a picture of the First Couple hundreds of kilometers away is beyond me, but the pieces of original furniture in the CKS Villa give the visitor that homey feeling of a loving couple enjoying a weekend away from the affairs of state, right down to their separate bedrooms.

Though this trip down history lane is interesting, Cilan’s main attraction is a two hour trail above the bungalow that provides spectacular views of a valley at the confluence of three rivers. The flora includes large red cypress and Japanese cypress trees providing a canopy under which soft ferns and vines with inch-long needles thrive. Butterflies flutter, caterpillars crawl and birds fly from branch to branch, but the best was a small tribe of macaques we came upon seconds after my son said, “I wish we could see some monkeys.” It sounded like two dozen simians scurried down the mountainside, but in retrospect, there were probably no more than six that ran away. Meanwhile, a mother and her baby had hid under a branch just beyond the trail edge and waited until my wife passed before I saw it putting some fruit in its mouth. Tina was able to return and get some photos of the pair.

And then big daddy arrived. At one point, he got up on some branches and shook them violently, but otherwise, he was as calm as I was nervous and excited. He lowered himself onto the trail and followed us by only a few meters, close enough for us to wonder how he survived the summertime heat in such thick fur. While I was staring at him, he would ignore me and look off into the forest, probably keeping an eye on his little harem of two females and their infants that had not followed the retreating stampede. However, I always had the feeling that he was watching us out of the corner of his eye, just making sure we kept going.

In contrast, the Sin Liao Waterfall Nature Trail is a newer “eco-trail”, one of many paths created by local governments around the island offering recreational and learning experiences, ranging from an extensive system of trails in mountainous Chiayi County to this kilometer-long walk through a lush green valley in Yilan County. With no betel nut trees in sight, the hills had the feeling of an area untouched by civilization. These kind of easy trails have proved popular by granting access to natural beauty unknown in urban Taiwan.

The path ends at a scenic waterfall that empties into a jade green pool. The cool water flowed down a boulder-strewn stream, in which several middle-aged couples were wading up to their knees. I myself splashed some refreshing water on my head, face and neck to get a break from the noonday sun. When I looked at the waders again, I noticed that one of them was actually sitting, fully-clothed, in a pool created behind a pair of large rocks, between which a small meter-high cascade had formed. I was surprised to see this since we were a kilometer from the parking lot and the nearby public restroom where she could change. And then she started lathering up her hair. I hadn't seen any bottle of shampoo, but she was foaming at the top of her head. After a few minutes, she leaned back into the mini-niagara between the rocks and rinsed. She then rose out of the pool, walked past the waders, grabbed a plastic shopping bag and proceeded out of the stream to some trees on a different path with, I guess, her husband. Five minutes later, she emerged in a warm-up suit and was combing her wet hair while her man lugged the bag now filled with her wet clothes.

Two things struck me. First, the planning involved to bring the hair care products needed for her all-natural treatment, as well as towels and a change of clothes, was in stark contrast to the dozens of “eco-tourists” rambling along the Sin Liao Waterfall Nature Trail in flip-flops or high-heel shoes and mini-skirts. Second, since the great outdoors of Taiwan are never so isolated that you can’t run into someone, the sheer audacity of stripping in the great outdoors was so un-Taiwanese. Again, kudos to her planning because she must have realized that by meeting her beauty needs at around noon, the path on which she changed clothes was all but empty.

In the past two and a half decades, the Taiwanese have become more ecologically responsible. Though they still have a long way to go, it is amazing the lengths some of them will go to embrace the natural beauty of their country.  

Bubble Tea Help

Under the word “ubiquitous” in the Taiwan Picture Dictionary, one would find a snapshot of a tea shop. These purveyors of sweetened potions are surely leading this country to the fat farm, and, with straw and cup in hand, I am at the head of the pack. I am a bubble milk tea addict. This concoction of non-diary creamer, high-fructose corn syrup, black tea and tapioca balls is certainly bad for me, but it’s just too sweet and fun to drink. I always order the smaller pearls, about the size of a pea, because I prefer to let them glide down my gullet as opposed to chewing and choking on the bigger ones. That’s probably why I gulp down a large cup within ten to fifteen minutes, while my wife needs more than an hour.

I have two favorite shops. One of them was the first to introduce the smaller globs years ago, as well as offer fresh milk as opposed to the creamer as a health-conscious choice. The other is just around the corner and uses a mechanism similar to a paint mixer, into which the mixing cup full of ingredients is attached and shakes them to a frothier consistency. Though it is the taste that keeps me coming back for more, the work force at these two establishments also acts as an enticement.

The shaker shop is owned by a young guy in his late twenties. He is probably one of those typical Taiwanese entrepreneurs that worked for a year at one place to learn the ropes and then decided to leave his below-minimum-wage position to be his own boss. Instead of letting his folks buy him a house like typical Taiwanese parents do, it seems likely that he took the money and opened up the shop on a busy intersection, where he staffs it with attractive young women wearing the company shirt and short skirts or shorts underneath. Currently, one of them has long, tri-color hair, with the black roots already grown out to at least six inches, the reddish hue popular among young girls and bleached inch-long tips. Add bangs, pouty lips, and cheetah-pattern Converse hi-tops and you get “Taiwan cute”. In contrast, the other looks like a volleyball player with long tanned arms and legs, which plays well off the co-worker’s look. Whenever I go, there are always young men, ranging from white-collar guys in ties to construction workers in dirty pants waiting for drinks and more pulling up as I leave. The only women I ever see are usually moms picking up an order they have called in. While I try to make myself appear less lecherous by occasionally looking up at the TV silently playing a news station, I have seen a gaggle of gawking adolescents from the junior high down the street crowding the shop after school and drooling on the counter.

As for the other shop, the staff used to represent a counter-culture of Chiayi. The bastion of the Taiwan’s rice basket, Chiayi is very much like the American Midwest in its middle-class mores and values of Taiwanese life. However, whereas the above tea shop employees has a certain “ka-wai-i” (“cute”, but to a sickeningly Hello Kitty level) quality, the workers at this shop would prefer Heavy Metal. The girl taking orders had a hoop going through an eyebrow and a stud in her tongue, which threw me off more visually then orally when she repeated me order back to me. The guy who prepared drinks had dyed his hair brick red, but had shaved the sides of his head about an inch above his ears, giving him the widest mohawk I had ever seen. It also offered a good view of the dozen piercings in his ears. Another guy had a pair of black with white trim half-inch hoops stretching his earlobes, like those Mursi women in Africa or those hill tribeswomen in Thailand, only his hoops matched the rims of his glasses. The manager was a woman with a Sinead O'Connor haircut and tattoos running down both arms. One ear alone would set off a metal detector from ten meters away and made me wonder what else was pierced.

Unfortunately, they are all gone now. I went to the shop the other day was greeted by an over-anxious college boy with a normal haircut, jeans and T-shirt. The guy who made my drink wore Clark Kent glasses and an apron. A thin, slightly homely girl with a ponytail was washing cups. The tea brewer in the back even smiled at me. Maybe upper-management had decided to pursue a customer base that was less into post-punk. I will probably continue to go, as long as they don’t alter the formula. It doesn’t need to be any sweeter.

Weddings Before and Now

The first “wedding” that I attended in Taiwan wasn’t actually the ceremony, but it was the Saturday afternoon reception given by the family of the groom. I found out later that a similar feast was to be given by the bride’s side in her hometown in the south of the island the next day. At the time, I was not aware that the actual ceremony, if it could be called that, was strictly a family affair and that the reception functioned as an announcement and a witnessing of the nuptials. Since the mother of my host family was friends of the groom’s mother and not of the bride’s, we only feted with the former. As I watched other people entering the room, one man caught my eye. He was wearing a shirt with islands of thin crisscrossing black lines in a sea of cream. At least, that’s what I saw from the back. From the front, the shirt was wide open and flapping, his prominent beer belly sticking out, covered by a white a-shirt with a betel nut juice stain directly below the left corner of his mouth. His tailored trousers were gray, while his shoes were dusty and old. What struck me most about his attire was the new, cheap, navy blue baseball cap on his head, pushed back from his brow and pointing upwards at a sharp angle and to his right. As he walked past me, he raised a thick, rough farmer’s hand to wave to some friends sitting beyond our table and started yelling Taiwanese at them.

My second memory was my host mother, telling me to slow down as the second course was being served. I had already woofed down almost two full bowls of hors d’oeuvres and was filling up a second bowl of shark fin soup when she told me that there were ten more dishes to come. In the end, my gut was a miniature of the farmer in the baseball cap.

Things have changed since then, but some have stayed the same. First, I have seen less shark fin. This has led to other “delicacies” to be served, such as goose feet. It is actually not too bad when it is served with the right sauce and cooked to the proper tenderness that allows the webs to fall off the half-inch long toe bones that one spits out. Another is rooster testicle soup, in which the bloated gonads float on top and appear to be the same size a human male’s. When the waitress told me what the dish was, I incredulously pointed out that the castrated cock had to be as tall as me, to which she walked off mumbling something about stupid foreigners. They have little flavor, but it is apparently the texture of the swimming stones that leads to their appeal.

There are no wedding gifts. Invited guests put crisp new bills in lucky red envelopes, usually in an amount with a six in the hundred’s digit. Odd numbers are inauspicious because they are odd and indivisible, while “four” in Chinese sounds like death and is totally unacceptable. Two is too tiny and eight is a bit extravagant, even if it is the Chinese equivalent to “lucky seven”. So, that leaves six, like $600 or $1,600. Amounts divisible by six hundred are sometimes used, but not often. The amount one gives is also dictated by how much the upcoming wedding party may have given at a previous wedding within one’s family. Such information is accessed by examining the wedding donation register, a tally completed at the check-in table manned by siblings, close cousins or trusted friends at the entrance to the dining hall. As guests enter, they are greeted and directed to the table, where they sign a silk banner and turn in their red envelope. It is accepted with gracious smiles and gratitude, checked to see that a name has been written on it and then passed down the line to the counter, who scribbles the name in the log, counts the contents and enters the amount below the name.

Before, an album would be placed on the check-in table for guests to “ooooh” and “aaaahh” at studio photos taken usually a few weeks before the reception. Most of the pictures had the groom standing tall or sitting proudly while the bride would be at his side or just behind in a pose of adoration. He would wear the same suit in all of the pics while she could have as many as four different costumes, ranging from a traditional western white gown to one of Chinese imperial yellow, from a fortuitous red dress to a Japanese kimono of dark jade green. With the advent of digital cameras, a wider variety of shots are now presented on screens from overhead projectors within the dining hall itself, with a sound track of the couples’ three favorite songs, often including Grant and Barrymore, playing throughout the meal in a loop ad nauseam. Though most of the presentation still presents “traditional” poses as before, they also have others that are more romantic, almost to the point of seductive, such as her in a blue sleeveless gown leaning back on a settee with a beguiling look and placing a naked foot on his lap, or simply playful, like him doing a jumping jack over her. Then there is the PowerPoint production of the happy couple’s childhood snapshots and those of when they dated, along with a short biography of their relationship.

One significant change of late is the throwing the bouquet, à la Taiwan. Instead of witnessing a free-for-all of young women vying for the prize, six misses are led up to the stage where each grabs a long lacy pull attached to a posy held by the bride. The young ladies fan out in a half-circle with the bride at the center and, on the count of three, yank the strings, one of which is tied securely to the flowers. The winner gets the arrangement, as well as a prize, such as perfume. In an effort to provide equal opportunity embarrassment, the whole process is repeated by the groom and six of his single friends.

The one thing that seems of have stayed constant over the years is that the women, no matter how old, dress up for weddings, while the men are much more relaxed. The women participating in the bouquet “toss” at a recent feast were in short dresses and high heels while their hair was coiffed to perfection. Of the six guys in the male go-around, three were in jeans, four had their shirt tails hanging out and none wore a tie. At the table next to mine, a middle-aged man wore a white T-shirt that read down the middle of the back in bright red, “Exercise! Eat! Sleep! Exercise! Eat! Sleep! Exercise!” At least there weren’t any betel nut stains on it.

When A Picture Doesn't Say a Thousand Words

When I first arrived in Chiayi, I was told how it used to be a center for youth gang activity in the 70’s. Just like most criminal stratum around the world, tattoos were symbols of membership and a mark to be feared. I’m not sure why, but it seemed that a calf would get tattooed first before the upper body, usually with a green-bluish ink and at times of the barest outlines. I noticed this when the swimming pool that I trained in came under new management and the clientele changed. I was later told that it was an elaborate process that sometimes lasted weeks, even months, before the finished product would be completed.

Now, just like most of the western world, tats have gone mainstream, sort of. Chiayi boasts a number of tattoo parlors that proudly display skulls and wings on their signs and windows. More and more university students are sporting small markings, sometimes rather indistinct, on their ankles, inside wrists and shoulders. A few days ago, while waiting to check out at the supermarket, a tall young woman stood in the next lane. She had that aura of being a working girl, meaning the 9-to-5 respectable type. Since her short, ginger-dyed hair was tied back, I could see three stars just behind her right ear on her neck, one red, one green, one blue, each about 1-2 centimeters in width. My first thought was that I realize tattoos have become a form of expression, but these stars seemed so insignificant, what was she trying to say? This was followed by the devil’s advocate argument that they didn’t really need to express anything, but then again, since they seemed so insignificant, why get them anyway? Finally, showing that I have been in Taiwan far too long, I noticed how white her skin was, that typical pale coloring that comes from women being very careful to maintain that ultimate in Taiwanese beauty, and I wondered what Mom and Grandmom must have said to her when they saw them.

Then there is the other extreme, which I witnessed a few days ago. While buying some tea, a woman in a black tank-top showed up with ink seemingly bubbling up from between her shoulder blades, rising onto the top of her right shoulder and ending with a panther going halfway down her upper arm. Though the jumble on her back was hard to determine, the big cat was impressive, as was the eagle perched on her right ankle bone, its wings going up her shin and Achilles tendon almost five centimeters. There was a green circle on the left inside wrist that might have been a yin-yang symbol or some other Buddhist symbol, as well as another circular tat on the front of her left ankle.

The only thing I could think was which one hurt the most. A friend said that getting one on the sole of your foot is the worst, but why would anyone want to get one there anyway. My son has told me that the one he got on his lower rib cage hurt more than the one on his belly.

Personally, I have no desire to get one. I won’t deny that there is a bit a fear involved, but it has more to do with indecision than anything else. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so what would I pick to express my … likes, dislikes, loves, national pride (Canadians are big on this one.), strengths, desires, weaknesses, basically, my personality.

And, though I have seen part of a poem on a foreign woman’s rib cage, I have yet to see a Taiwanese with “WATER”, “FIRE” or “ENLIGHTENMENT” wrapping around their waist.