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7.2 Why such rapid Change?

As the Taiwanese population has tended to move from rural to urban areas, structural shifts in food demand patterns appear to have also occurred for a variety of reasons, including:

  • A wider choice of foods is available in urban markets than their rural counterparts.
  • People are more likely to be exposed to a variety of dietary patterns from foreign cultures in urban areas.
  • Urban lifestyles place a premium on foods that require less preparation.
  • Urban occupations tend to be more sedentary than rural ones.

 
Average diets may change dramatically in countries experiencing rapid economic growth and structural transformation. However, this work chooses not to focus only on the statistical evidence of the changes in food consumption over the stated period, but to investigate why the Taiwanese people have, over the last 25 years, appeared to have embraced such a diversity of culinary cultures.

In 1996 Tu Wei Ming took aim at the rise of a Taiwanese consciousness among the youth in her work entitled “Contemporary Taiwan”. His arguments embraced the recognition of a sense of restlessness in the nation as many Taiwanese, choosing their specific futures, rightly assessed despondency within Taiwanese society through an, “apparent lack of what they perceived was a recognisable national identity.”

Thomas Shaw addressed the heart of the issues concerning Taiwanese cultural identity and the relentless changes experienced by contemporary Taiwanese society when he explored “Fun, Leisure and the Discovery of Self in Taiwan’s New Middle Class.”

In keeping with the majority of Asian countries, (Japan, Korea, China) where the importance of an education is tantamount to any sort of reasonable future, Shaw suggested that, “Taiwan’s young people today are emerging from an environment where education, both its symbolic and its practical reverberations, is dominating the transition to adulthood for a substantial proportion of the Taiwanese young people.”

The restraint of the individual in the Taiwanese education system, supported by what Shaw terms the “gatekeepers” (living ancestors) of traditional Chinese cultural heritage, is inadvertently supporting a youth subculture that stridently yearns to be recognised and which, one could be permitted to say is “chomping at the bit.” Shaw further explains that, “the youth of today, educated, accompanied by inherited wealth, is choosing to marginalise the importance of work and commitment and is instead focusing on a life with more fun.”

The researcher therefore suggests that if one can grasp the ideological changes experienced by the youth of contemporary Taiwanese society, then one perhaps could use this framework of thought as a guideline with which to better understand the last 25 years of Taiwan’s changing food-habits. It is surely not a substantial stretch of the imagination that the founders of economic change in Taiwan were also the youth of their respective generations, that the young people of Taiwan could create the genesis of change towards a more liberalised social structure is not inconceivable.  

In 1994, Thomas Shaw argued, “the individual’s personal pursuit of fun, as opposed to a collective pursuit by the participants of the group, was the driving force behind the evolution of a new middle class.” Elaborating upon results derived from his survey data, Shaw claimed that, “many of the subjects he had interviewed had a specific aim when choosing a fun activity, and that their personal goal may well have been far removed from the group’s ambitions.”

Shaw’s observations pertaining to Taiwanese society combines leisure, sport and entertainment and contextualises the collective as the pursuit of fun, with the classification of study subjects as Taiwanese youth. The age group of Shaw’s subjects was not specified, although the main thrust of the topic appears to take aim at those having graduated from a college level education, but who had not, at that time, “settled down”.

7.3 National dish: A Diplomatic Stew

The researcher suggests that the explosion of ethnic restaurants in Taiwan over the last decade is an indication of a society “giddy” with cultural globalisation; all the while searching for a dish they could truly have claimed as being their own.

The various short lists of Taiwanese indigenous dishes mostly appear to have origins from countries other than Taiwan, e.g. breaded pork cutlet [Japan], congee [Fujian], steamboat [Mongolia], beef-noodle soup [Beijing]. Many are hybrid, with also others having been “borrowed” from neighbouring cuisines. At first glance, the popularity of these dishes with the Taiwanese populace would suggest that these foods, as for a number of others, were home grown favourites, yet upon closer inspection, the origins of each dish would actually appear to derive from cultures resident outside of Taiwan. This researcher suggests that there are too few Taiwanese dishes that can truly lay claim to the title of a national culinary heritage.

The researcher suggests that, foods classified as truly representing Taiwan’s gastronomic heritage are perhaps only to be found amongst the aboriginal people. However, in order to rightfully claim these foods as part of Taiwan’s gastronomic heritage, the producer of the food-stuffs must produce a record of the consistent production, consumption and supply of the said foods from the same location over a period of (say) 75 years, in accordance with internationally recognised guidelines pertaining to the food authenticity specifications.

It would appear that two major obstacles stand in the way of verification for the aforementioned classification of authentic Taiwanese foodstuffs:

  • The aboriginal language has no written text; therefore all recorded aboriginal history has been recorded in a foreign language, either Japanese or Mandarin, making authenticity of their unique cultural heritage virtually impossible.
  • The Taiwanese elite have marginalised the aboriginal community over the past 50 years that it is impossible for the latter to promote the foods of a people that the former have, until recently, considered to be barbaric.

Taiwan’s restless culinary history has paralleled the island’s turbulent political journey from Portuguese/Dutch occupation through Manchu rule, the occupation by the Japanese and Kuomintang rule, the country finally coming to rest in the late-1980s on the precipice of democratic self rule.           

In today’s global marketplace, one dare not rely upon the authenticity of ancestral culinary heritage. For example, Indian cuisine is now considered the most popular ethnic cuisine in England and Chicken Tikka Marsala has taken up the top spot as the number-one food choice amongst the British consumer today. Unlike the Taiwan experience, the U.K. diner has a long association with Indian culture through (a) colonialism, and (b) immigration, thus, it would appear that the culture and customs of the Indian race has been gradually assimilated albeit reluctantly into every day life in England over an extended period of time.

Taiwan’s historical connection to food-culture assimilation would appear to be realised through (a) ancestral culinary heritage and (b) the fifty-year occupation/colonisation by the Japanese. According to Davison, “it would appear that the resulting contemporary cuisine of the Taiwanese people boasts a striking resemblance to Fujian regional gastronomy, coupled with what would appear to be a strong Japanese influence.
          
This researcher’s review of literature and subsequent summation of the reasons behind such radical changes in the Taiwanese daily diet encourages him to suggest that, “today’s Taiwanese young people are cleverly using the playground of other cultural spheres (food, hairstyles, tattoos, body piercing, fashion, art and music etc) to drive a wedge between the old traditions of the family and their (the Taiwanese youth’s) locus of identity and selfhood through service to the family, with a penchant for individualism.”

The increasing affluence of the Taiwanese population over the last twenty-five years has resulted in today’s Taiwanese youth enjoying the benefits of a higher education, they are increasingly more affluent and therefore seek legitimacy as a body of people, recognised not as being part of the traditional Chinese family but, as Tu Wei Ming suggests, “a common-life community” In essence, the burden of traditional Chinese family lore, for the “now” generation has become too heavy a burden for today’s youth to bear.

7.4 Narrowing the gaze           

One of the markers of change in the Taiwanese family structure can be seen through the country’s spiralling divorce rate. The researcher has already suggested that women are the driving force behind many of the changes in Taiwanese society (5.1). It would appear to be a tall order to place sole blame for social change on the Taiwanese women, and in particular “divorced women” for such a radical about face in Taiwanese traditional family culture, but it may be fair to propose that the changes to centuries-old family traditions that Taiwan is witnessing today, can serve as a marker of change within Taiwanese society as a whole, thus “sub-generating” changes within other areas of local culture.

Public opinion as to the reasons behind the high divorce rate in Taiwan would appear to be varied and voluminous, most writers on the subject echoing the view of the Taipei Times columnist who wrote, “feminists blame the rising divorce rate partly on women’s rising intolerance of male chauvinism, as their (the women’s) education and job opportunities improve.”
           
The researcher suggests that increased wealth has led to a greater proportion of the Taiwanese youth receiving more opportunity to pursue a higher education, and the increase in knowledge is leading to changes in every cultural sphere of Taiwanese daily life. Furthermore, the researcher suggests that part of the reason behind women in Taiwan receiving a disproportionate high level of higher education than that of their male counterparts is, in part, due to the women’s increased wealth and also perhaps to the Taiwanese national defence policy, which advocates compulsory two-year military training for all Taiwanese men. It appears that the young men upon completion of college education are committed to their military training whilst the young women move on to higher education.

The changes evident today in the daily food-habits of the Taiwanese people can be seen as recognition that major cultural shifts are being realised throughout traditional Taiwan society, with food-ways and food-habits providing a significant marker of change in contemporary Taiwan.

8.0 Conclusion and Recommendations
          
As Taiwan careens down the path of experimentation with new foods and exotic cultures, the question arises will a consensus be reached? Will there come a time when the populace, uttering a collective sigh, finally become able to settle on a cultural gastronomic construct?      

Taiwan is a land featuring an abundance of people and precious little else; natural resources include meagre deposits of coal, natural gas, limestone, marble and asbestos. In 1977, the Kuomintang gambled the country’s agricultural strength by rezoning farmland as industrial in pursuit of the manufacturing dollar. At this time, the Kuomintang knowingly sacrificed the skills of a farming community that was the backbone of the country for the perceived skills of a factory worker, the gamble being that the world would always buy and consume Taiwanese manufactured products.

The lure of a cheaper labour market in neighbouring Southeast Asian countries in recent times has now left previously fertile land with empty factories, as a number of Taiwanese labour-intensive manufacturing businesses have moved off shore to the very land that some of these people had migrated from.
 
In the 1990’s, Taiwan woke up to the values of tourism in rural areas as a way to employ those coming from outside of the urban Mecca and are now scrambling to promote sustainable tourism, as a tool used by many nations, e.g. (Indonesia, New Zealand, Thailand) to increase national income while at the same time provide employment for the rural population.

Possibly one of the more interesting areas of socio-economic speculation to this researcher is, whether Taiwan, given its storied past and vibrant contemporary mood, could be a candidate as the first cultural construct to allow gastronomic globalisation to completely obliterate its own indigenous and unique food culture.

Although this dissertation has afforded only a brief sojourn into the rapidly changing food-habits of the Taiwanese, there are many areas of the Taiwanese gastronomic story yet to investigate. An interesting area of future research could explore the evolution and effect of Han Chinese culinary tradition on the Taiwanese aborigine diet. To this point, this research touched only on the subject (albeit ever so briefly) concerning the changes of the Taiwanese aborigine diet realised through such case scenario’s as globalisation.

The economic relocation of Taiwanese manufacturing coupled with a down turn in the Taiwanese economy over the last decade, has led to the realisation of whole communities of Taiwanese national “expatriates” on the mainland of China. The possibility that Chinese culinary traditions could return to their place of original culinary heritage presents us with a rather unique picture.

In other genres, this is not unprecedented. For example, the fashion industry continually re-invents itself season after season and the historical clothing of yesterday are now worn only for effect or displayed proudly as a reminder of the way we were. Food culture, as has already been acknowledged, is not static. By analogy, it would therefore appear to stand to reason that the foods that are considered trendy today will possibly be forgotten tomorrow, although one might well ask, what about the food “standards”, like for instance beef noodle soup, or the hot and sour soup with pork liver and tofu? Can a nation’s tried and true foodstuff, passed down from generation to generation and loved by all, truly be discarded?          

Taiwan with its eclectic mix of the world’s humanity is in no danger of a “lost culture.” Pushed to predict the island’s culinary future the researcher suggests that Taiwan will not embrace a food culture resembling the Peranakan cuisine model from Singapore, neither is a revival of aboriginal style indigenous foods (indicative of the hunter/gatherer times) likely or  feasible.

The changes seen from 25 years ago today in the food-habits of the Taiwanese people suggest that the trusted metaphor of the lazy Susan will provide a dining pattern unique to the Taiwanese’ love of spontaneity and inquisitive desire for variety, the world’s diverse regional foods will provide their own natural fusion of food-habits. The evening meal will boast its own heady mix of global gastronomy. The mix of French/ Japanese gastronomic fusion will not become a part of the Taiwanese dining scene of the future. Taiwan will not see fusion on a plate, but will instead embrace a lazy Susan of authentic foods all on the same table at the same time.

Taiwan and China share a storied past and would appear at the time of this writing, to be inextricably entwined in their futures. Any lessons learned in Taiwan today will inevitably prove useful for the China model and probably vice-versa. The huge disparity in population between China and Taiwan would appear to make the predictions of change and trends in the future of China’s food-habits virtually impossible, however the initial phases of the apparent explosion of hotel construction in China are already bearing an uncanny resemblance to the Taiwan experience of the boom times in the late 1970s to early 1980’s.

In a recent interview with Andre Joulian, long term resident of Taiwan and president of the Ritz Landis and consultant to the hospitality industry in Taiwan and China, Joulian mused over the prospect of whether or not China’s gastronomic future was likely to mirror that of Taiwan’s recent culinary journey, Joulian noting that China today is building grandiose, marble pillared hotel structures that Taiwan was in love with in the early 1980’s, but had recently grown out of. Joulian said, “Now the typical investor wanting to build a hotel in Taiwan was choosing the boutique model, similar to Singapore, small, one hundred and fifty rooms, leisure facilities, golf and fine dining.” A sentiment endorsed by Ruth Tay, a writer for Asia Cuisine publication. During the last decade, China’s urban centres have seen an explosion of restaurants and café’s all supported by the influx of foreign capital, a scenario mimicking that of Taiwan’s economic boom. An article by Ron Gluckman, published in Mondo Magazine (London), highlights the frenzied growth spurt that China’s urban centres are experiencing. The boom times in China’s metropolitan centres are reminiscent of Taiwan’s not too distant past.
If the trend in hotel architecture and the expansion of restaurants and cafés throughout China are markers of similarity with the Taiwan experience over the past 25 years, then the Chinese mainland, sporting a fifth of the world’s population, is in for a wild ride.

            Limitations

Although this dissertation was intended to only ever be a very basic investigation into the changes in Taiwanese food-habits over the specified time period, the author did observe that the single biggest difficulty faced throughout the conduct of this research project lay in relation to the relative paucity of relevant up-to-date information available in the English language-written literature. The researcher regrets the opportunity lost, through the lack of use of a thorough, rigorous, comprehensive, well-structured survey/questionnaire, (in Mandarin) with reliable translation, but given time and opportunity constraints, this pathway was never considered to be a viable alternative.

Recommendations for Future Research

 1)  Although this dissertation has afforded only a brief sojourn into the rapidly changing food-habits of the Taiwanese people, there appear to exist many areas of the Taiwanese gastronomic story yet to investigate. An interesting area of future research could be the exploration of the evolution and effect of Han Chinese culinary tradition upon the Taiwanese aborigine’s diet. To this point this research has touched only on the subject area (albeit ever so briefly) concerning the changes of the Taiwanese aborigine’s diet realised through such case scenarios as, for example, the impact of globalisation.
2) The economic relocation of Taiwanese manufacturing, coupled with a down-turn in the Taiwanese economy over the last decade, has led to the realisation of whole communities of Taiwanese national “expatriates”   relocating to mainland of China. The possibility that Chinese culinary traditions could return to their place of original culinary heritage presents us with a rather unique picture. The study of changing Chinese food-ways with-in China raises many questions relating to food ethnicity, hybridity and the effects of outside culinary influence on a cuisine with a history   such as the Fujian regional cuisine.     

 

             
                                       

 Appendix One

A Reasonable Spread

The riot of gastronomy before my eyes, for a moment, seemed but a lifetime away from the early days of my kitchen apprenticeship. Gone was the queasiness of a night on the pots with a belly full of the hotel kitchen’s riches. Yet as I took in the madness before me of plate after plate of food and drink, I reminded myself that what was here and now (in 2004) was not that far removed from the eating habits of my earlier pot-washing days, when food on the run was a mouthful of cake and hollandaise.

Sixteen people squeezed around a table for twelve, ordered food and drinks for twenty. Food from all walks of life arrived and included; bitter melon with tofu, sweet and sour fish, a black-forest gateaux that shared space with some nachos, dried squid, and of course, the ubiquitous cheesecake. The black, low, Japanese style table sitting just off the floor was laden with all that was considered “cool.” Some drank Beaujolais, others oolong tea, while frothy cappuccinos sat silent, the sight of dairy, all too much for the mob that were far from hungry. The table was vast, so I ate the nachos with chopsticks well aware that my participation in this time and place was not just a little surreal, but more importantly was indicative of the changing food-habits in contemporary Taiwanese society.

The combinations of the chosen items of that night’s menu were to the trained mind, totally obscene. No professional in the catering game could get away with that mix, and of course, no self-respecting chef could have dreamed up such a spread. But then again, in contemporary Taiwan, if everyone’s having fun, who cares?