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6.9 The Bakery: Bread and Breakfast

The Chinese love affair with bread and cakes is red hot and shows no sign of cooling off. The Taiwanese diet, as has been already explored, does not shy away from the use of sugar, and bread is certainly no exception (pers. observ.).

In Japan, Emiko has suggested that, “the invasion of foreign bread as a dietary component was instrumental to the decline of rice consumption in the breakfast menu.” This trend it would seem has also been realised in Taiwan. Furthermore, it was the breakfast meal especially that was the vehicle for change for the food-habits of these two nations. The author further discussed the love of bread by the Japanese as uncharacteristic of the culture, given that bread baking was not a skill included in the traditional Japanese culinary heritage, the same being true of the Taiwanese model. The popularity of bread in Japan, according to Emiko, “is largely limited to the breakfast genre and does not enjoy such popularity during other meal times.” However this is not entirely true of the Taiwanese model. The popularity of bread, whether baked or steamed, has become a permanent across-meal fixture across Taiwan’s culinary landscape.

The author of this research paper has noted that within urban Taiwan society bread is not merely limited to the cameo role as an accompaniment to the main attraction (eg regular meal-time), but is enjoyed as a snack, on its own, at any time, in much the same way as a western child might enjoy an apple.

It is precisely this behaviour that has contributed to the localisation of the western bread industry in Taiwan, with the Taiwanese consumers managing to smudge the lines of demarcation between bread and cakes. First, to the western palate, Taiwanese bread appears intolerably sweet, but then the cakes are the exact opposite (pers. observ.). Secondly, Taiwanese bread (to the horror of the foreign community) is filled with a “surprise”, of which the Taiwanese cannot get enough, this surprise “stuffing” ranging from dried pork to custard or even the sweet red bean paste often found in Chinese desserts (pers. observ.).

The bread industry on the island of Taiwan is certainly not an example of cottage industry bread is available at small independent bakeries, food halls, supermarkets, and a multitude of convenience stores, with virtually every reasonable hotel (Evergreen Laurel, Formosa Hotels, Ritz Landis) sporting a delicatessen pedalling in-house bakery produce. By contrast to their European equivalent, the local bakery pastry shops tend to produce a “Post-Fordist” retail formula, in that the bakers’ lazy Susan consists of a myriad of bite-size varieties of bread products, in contrast to the larger farmer style loaves of the western world.

The first western style birthday cake was commercialised in the late 1950’s, and the “My Store Bakery” chain was the first bakery shop in Taichung to offer western style pastry/bread products, of which the birthday cake was included. According to Ho Chi Tsen, son of the owner of “My Store Bakeries, the U.S. military introduced the birthday cake to the local people during the Vietnam war era with the Taiwanese locals  whole heartedly adopted the birthday cake as their own. Ho Chi Tsen sincerely believes that “the birthday cake symbolised affluence for the Taiwanese people, as in the 1960’s, only the rich could afford such extravagance.”   

That the birthday cake has found such popularity amongst the Taiwanese is more than likely due to the cakes’ somewhat garish prettiness and obvious conviviality for which a birthday cake is made and for which it is appropriate. Therefore it could be suggested that, it is the relative conviviality of the birthday cake that has endeared this western food icon to the Taiwanese people, this researcher would suggest that, the western style birthday cake could therefore be yet another marker of change in contemporary Taiwanese food-habits.

The humble lazy Susan as a metaphor for a new era in Taiwan’s culinary history is now being realised through the explosion of western style food hall eateries, where the individual dishes of the lazy Susan would no longer appear to be just a sampling of this country’s own culinary heritage but more a representation of international gastronomic culture.

Jean-Louis Flandrin concluded his writings relating to the global culinary history of food with the statement, “every culture is contaminated by other cultures; every tradition is a child of history and history is never static.”

Taiwan, from this researcher’s perspective, appears to be not necessarily a victim of cultural “contamination”, but perhaps more precisely, a country suspended in a “buffet-like state” of gastro-cultural sampling, whole heartedly sorting through the best and the worst of international culinary culture at a pace that is decidedly Taiwanese.

In summary, it would seem appropriate to record a non-exhaustive list of the markers of change in Taiwanese foodstuffs over the last 25 years, as seen through the eyes of the researcher. These items are iconic and are considered by the local Taiwanese as markers of a western food product, with such items including cracked black pepper (especially as an accompaniment with steak), salads (raw foods) and oils, birthday cakes, and snack foods such as candy and chocolate.

The researcher suggests that the inclusion of cheese, in the changing food-habits of the Taiwanese people today, is being realised through the popularity of Italian style eateries throughout Taiwan, as authentic Italian foods typically include many different cheese products.

7.0 Increased Wealth: The Catalyst for Change in Taiwan’s Food-Habits

Taiwan’s economic boom started in around 1965 with the explosion of export trade through the manufacturing sector, and the process has continued unabated until recently. However, over the past five years it has been quite obvious that the production of many of the labour-intensive manufacturer products are being re-located to countries featuring a cheaper work-pool, namely Mainland China and Vietnam.

In 1993, Lee Teng Hui addressed the foreign business community in a speech entitled, “The Taiwan Experience and China’s Future”. In his speech he outlined his own government’s participation in the Taiwanese success story, and it is from Lee speech I quote, “In the four decades between 1950 and 1990, annual economic growth in the Taiwan area averaged 8.8%.  Per-capita income rose from US$137 to US$7,997, a 58 fold increase.”

In 1993, Lee Teng Hui addressed a meeting with the members of the American Chamber of Commerce. In his keynote speech, Lee outlined the progress his government had made since taking office, of which this researcher quotes, “In 1950, the R.O.C’s international trade was a paltry US$300 million. Last year (1992) it reached US$121.9 Billion, more than 400 times, making the R.O.C the fifteenth largest trading nation with foreign reserves totalling US$75 Billion.” These figures clearly establish a major shift in the wealth of the average Taiwanese citizen over the last five decades.

Taiwanese export businesses opened the local entrepreneur to working relationships with international clients. Just as in the eighteenth century, the betterment of the French economy and efforts by the monarchy to improve roads and bridges led to an increase in adventurism and travel, opening many French residents’ eyes to another world. So too were the Taiwanese forced to travel on business, often visiting lands that they may have never seen previously, were it not for the opportunity of trade.

As Peter Atkins commented in his work Food in Society, “The growth in international trade encourages the adoption of new foods.” It would appear that cultural borrowing has travelled along a two-way street, with the Taiwanese businessman’s exposure to new foods as, initially a guest in another country, followed by the reciprocal (very Chinese) need to provide culturally acceptable foods for their foreign guests, when they (the Taiwanese) are the hosts.

The increase in the personal expendable income of the Taiwanese people was partly the result of a number of decisions made by the Taiwanese government intended to liberalise the economic, social and political lives of the residents on the island of Taiwan. Increased wealth led to an explosion of restaurants, and market saturation led to diversity in the restaurant field. Sydney Mintz, as quoted by Watson wrote,” economic viability leads to a clientele economically able and willing to try new foods.”

Anderson’s six month empirical research of the Hong Kong Chinese family’s daily eating habits reported a noticeable increase in household expenditure for food when only a reasonable increase in family income was realised. The researcher of this dissertation suggests that the increasing affluence of Taiwan society has led to a more sophisticated diner, and that the long-held tradition of entertaining outside of the home has contributed to greater restaurant market diversity (pers. observ.).

 It was the “Chef of Kings”, Escoffier, who said, “Supply will meet demand.” Clearly the consumer is the driving force behind market changes. The culture of increased wealth has been a catalyst for change in Taiwanese food-habits on a number of different fronts.

Increased wealth provided the confidence for political change and this of course, (as for most of developing Asian countries) led to the realisation that to sustain growth at a heady 8.8% the need for higher education becoming paramount. The sector of Taiwanese society in the belly of nation- building throughout the 1970’s recognised the need to educate their children and progressively demonstrated that they had the necessary money to achieve it. Thus, Taiwanese students in their thousands were sent abroad to study, and it was during this time that those students were introduced to new foods and food-ways, many of them eventually returning to Taiwan with changed palates, eager to influence their friends and family once they were back home back home (pers. observ.).

The researcher suggests that some of the answers to such radical changes of food-habits over such a brief period of time for the Taiwanese people were attributable to the simple fact that the opportunity for change was available to the Taiwanese people and a shrug of the shoulders said, why not try something new? Growing confidence through the increasing affluence of Taiwan society is making the experimentation with “new foods” all the more possible.

7.1 Who’s Fuelling the Changes?

Tu Wei Ming suggests that, “cultural identity” is the core problem defining Taiwan’s position in the Chinese world.” That the Taiwanese have been struggling with a crisis of identity over the last 300 years has been well documented by many scholars, such as Tu Wei Ming, Alan Wachman and James L.Watson . Elizabeth Zeitoun, Yu Ching Hua and Weng Cui Xia, in the 2003 research paper relating to the indigenous tribes of Taiwan, argued that, “one of the stumbling blocks to the achievement of national identity amongst the Taiwanese people was the lack of historical text in the language of the aboriginal people of Taiwan.”

The lifting of martial law in Taiwan (1987) and the removal of virtually all ideological constraints to social change in the following year appeared to open the floodgates of freedom for the Taiwanese populace. According to Tu, “the liberalisation of newspapers, television and radio suddenly made all things possible.” The changes we now see in the food spectrum for Taiwan are really only recent changes. The players responsible for the changes in Taiwan’s food habits are the present generation, living in the information age and decidedly more comfortable with changes than the previous generation, and more importantly, better educated than their forbears.

The “now” generation (in Taiwan) want it now whilst the previous generation laid down the groundwork for such evolution, they thus creating a financially secure base. The players fuelling the radical changes in today’s changing food-habits in Taiwan seem to be like kids with a new toy. The sons and daughters of tee-totalling parents have not only discovered the “highs” of alcohol use but have made plans to move in and buy the liquor store. Tu claims that the “recent transformation of marketing and the democratisation in Taiwan’s political economy as had a profound impact on all dimensions of the cultural world-literature, art, dance, music and drama.”

This “now” generation appears to have been raised in a culture of neo-traditionalism, conservatives and conformist. A recent study by Lee Mei Lin and Sun Te Hsiung pertaining to family demographics in Taiwan, concluded that the “delicate balancing act of conforming to the will of the Taiwanese residents’ cultural heritage is rapidly being steamrolled by the pursuit of a new modern era.” Tu Wei Ming shared a similar position, albeit focusing his gaze more on the political leadership than the family when he wrote, “Taiwan’s polity is caught between modernity and tradition, its contemporary society between foreignness and nativism, and its culture between cosmopolitanism and localism.”

The search for a cultural identity amongst a generation of Taiwanese that is still struggling to rationalise the atrocities of the Kuomintang elite in the late 1940’s, whilst at the same time attempting to find parity with the issues of “Taiwanese-ness” as ideologically separated from “Chinese-ness”, appears to be gaining momentum rapidly. For example, the leading English daily newspaper The China Post, recently headed up the front page with the headline, “Double Ten, Losing Chinese Flavour.” “Double Ten”, refers to Taiwan’s national day, celebrated on the 10th day of the 10th month. Up until this year, the Taiwan’s National Day celebrations have been resplendent with Chinese folklore and history. The connection between Taiwan and China, bridged together by way of a common ancestry, was obvious for all to see. This year would appear to mark a significant change in Taiwanese celebratory rhetoric.

The researcher, from earlier experience, suggests that the, “now” generation in Taiwan is using “other foods” and associated traditions as one of a number of cultural spheres to establish a pathway to a new cultural identity, apparently not greatly different to their “now” generation counterparts in neighbouring countries.

The culinary pathways now being trodden by the “now” generation in Taiwan appear to be at times, bewildering, even verging on what might be fairly labelled, by some, as a gastronomic orgy, Taiwanese style  (Appendix One).

In order to fully appreciate the cultural quandary the Taiwanese people currently face, a rudimentary sketch of past history focusing upon the period between Japanese colonialism and Kuomintang dictatorship would appear to be of benefit. As has been already established, the Japanese were ruthless rulers over the Taiwanese but not necessarily corrupt. The Kuomintang, under the leadership of Chiang Kai Shek, unleashed a period of ethnic cleansing upon the native Taiwanese aimed at the local Taiwanese intellectual community (February 28, 1947). This “moment of madness” was responsible for the murder of thousands and is firmly etched into the minds of today’s youth, who are but a generation removed from that era, and significantly, the first generation to experience an open press with the freedom of public and political discourse.

The euphoria experienced in Taiwan during the collapse of Japanese rule in 1945, coupled with the hope of future Taiwanese sovereignty, was shattered during the 2/28 incident. Through his work relating to “Contemporary Taiwan” Tu suggested that, “as Taiwan moves into a new era of self understanding, it is not inconceivable that de-Sinicisation may be a precondition for a new Taiwanese cultural identity.”

The specific sector of society presently entering the workforce in Taiwan is the engine responsible for the changes in contemporary Taiwanese food-habits. They are the ones calling for an internationally recognised Taiwan, and they are the ones with the education and wealth to change the status quo (pers. comm.).

There is a need, within the broad parameters of the so called “now” generation to define a specific population nucleus. There exists a core group of the “now” generation, not merely bolstered by talk and innuendo, but more specifically an emerging vibrant sector of Taiwanese society consisting of citizens, who by their very lifestyles, are quietly leading the charge towards a new national identity and changing the rules of operation of traditional Chinese society and powering the changes in food-habits that are but a brushstroke of the overall picture.

This researcher argues that the core members of the, “now” generation who are responsible for fuelling the changes in Taiwanese society are, women. Recent confirmation that Taiwanese women are leading the charge towards recognisable national identity gains credibility through a variety of international women’s organisations that are increasingly using Taipei as a locale for forums and workshops, highlighting awareness amongst young educated women and declaring out loud that in the new democracy, they now have a voice. As recently as August 2004, a YWCA International sponsored a Global Forum dubbed, “Young Women Leading Change.” The writer defined young women, in this instance, as females aged 18 to 30 years.