Fourth Nuke: Premier Jiang met with the mayors of Taipei, New Taipei City, and Keelung to discuss their opposition to the Fourth Nuclear Plant. Interestingly, Hau of Taipei has been saying that no referendum is needed, opinion polls are enough. Clearly the idea of a referendum is scary for some politicians. The fact that there is no place to put the waste continues to be a problem. And the quake we had this week... lots of minds are probably thinking about how if we had one under the nuke plant..... yes, it was like a reminder from the gods how stupid it is to build nuke plants on the ring of fire.Taipei Promotion: Another piece from WSJ promoting Taipei: Eating in Taiwan beyond Din Tai Fung. Just makes me want to rant so brace yourselves -- there are many food bloggers in the city who know the place well, innumerable knowledgeable foreigners who are regularly published in major international media, yet, once again, a major western publication sources its information from someone located in Beijing with obvious and powerful Chinese biases and who doesn't appear to know Taipei very well. She writes in her usual excellent style:
It is, in other words, no longer that special. Don’t get me wrong: Din Tai Fung is my standby in Beijing. It’s where I can count on good service and a decent meal without having to worry about the provenance of the ingredients. But in Taipei, DTF—even the original shop on Xinyi Road, which aficionados claim produces superior dumplings—is not on my hit list.Argh. I've been eating in Taipei for twenty years and here's a sentence I have never heard: "Let's go to Din Tai Fung, it's special!" I've been there once, it was totally forgettable. Going to Taipei for good food and then debating the relative merits of Din Tai Fung vs Kao Chi is like going to New York City for Italian and then arguing about whether The Olive Garden or The Spaghetti Factory has better pasta. If you look in the comments there my man Feiren, who knows some fantastic places to eat in Taipei and isn't hung up on comparing Taiwan to China, leaves a few suggestions.
With just three branches in Taipei, Kao Chi isn’t seeking global domination. And despite the swish décor at the Fuxing South Road restaurant (my preferred choice), it feels resolutely local. No tourists were in sight the night we popped by.
Yes, the xiaolongbao are a must, but Kao Chi dabbles in other Shanghainese snacks as well as specialties from other regions in China. (One of the many joys about eating in Taipei is that menus aren’t limited by geography.) At the Fuxing branch, you can order Northern-style pancakes stuffed with beef with Cantonese claypot chicken and Wuxi braised spareribs.
Note how the piece relates everything to China in the best "Taiwan is an outpost of China" fashion, even to the point of focusing on two chains run by mainlanders. Like this...
As a coda, make sure to have the lianghuang jianguo bing—a chestnut-paste-filled, sesame-encrusted pancake, a rebuttal to those who think Taiwanese desserts are just mountains of shaved ice with stuff piled on top.It's only a "rebuttal" if it is "real Chinese", because the standard is the production of "authentic" Chinese dishes (that implicit claim of superior authenticity itself is a pretentious colonial construct, one that has long been used to attack Taiwanese culture as inferior). Sorry, but it's the other way round: a real Taiwan mango ice made by a sturdy old machine in its third decade of productive work is a rebuttal to a pompous lianghuang jianguo bing any day; god knows what goes on in the kitchens of chain restaurants, and anyway shaved ice is a real Taiwan treat. It would be nice after some excellent local restaurant food like Japanese-style eels with Taiwan beer, or a heaping bowl of beef noodle in some serious hole in the wall where the old husband's hands tremble as he carries the bowl of steaming soup across the room to you and if you work hard, you can make his wife cackle at one of your jokes.
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Daily Links:
- Making the rounds: Camera lost in Hawaii, found in Taiwan.
- Yet another KMT official busted for corruption. Changhua and Nantou local government heads busted in recent months. Not going to blog, the litany goes on.
- Taiwan, the bridgehead for the Vatican's assault on China
- Drew on the Tour of Taiwan's future being in doubt.
- Hear in Taiwan with a couple of pics of the recent quake
- F-16s. Jokes on you, Taiwan supporters. Gov't says it may suspend efforts to acquire F-16 C/D fighters. There was never any "effort" on the part of the Ma government and the US government never wanted to sell them. Hopefully this dance is now over. Time to build lots and lots of missiles.
[Taiwan] Don't miss the comments below! And check out my blog and its sidebars for events, links to previous posts and picture posts, and scores of links to other Taiwan blogs and forums!
You are right of course. But how do you explain to pretentious food critics that the best food in a place is not served by a snobby restaurant but is, in fact, often at the cheapest holes? And that lowly stinky tofu, luwei, tianbula and other cheap treats are indeed the pleasure of eating in Taiwan? In other words, Taiwan does not and has never excelled in high culture, and anyone who goes there looking for high culture of any part of the world will come away disappointed. Your pretentious critic is grasping at the only twig she sees because she cannot see the green forest around her.
ReplyDeleteI say bravo to the reviewer. Let the tourists go to DTF thinking there's no better place. Who wants them hanging out in our secret places?
ReplyDeleteLet us know your favorite choice for 小龍包 in Taipei.
ReplyDeleteI never eat 小龍包 in Taipei or anywhere else. Low-carb diet. :)
ReplyDeleteMichael
I dunno, I think she serves her market - WSJ readers, for chrissake! They are not going to tramp around in back alleys with their wingtips looking for food, let alone sucking goat bones :)
ReplyDeleteYes, WSJ should have picked a Taiwan-based writer (MT, hint-hint), but I thought she was fair, putting DTF in it's place, and she even differentiates China from Taiwan & HK (that's gotta be a win, no?):
"Asian breakfasts are usually negligible, watered-down versions of what’s for lunch. Taiwan proves that rule wrong. From fresh soy milk to street-bought scallion pancakes, thinner and more delicate than what you get in Hong Kong or China, you can’t go wrong by going local at breakfast. "
Maybe invite her to Taichung for her next trip and show her around.
"""Asian breakfasts are usually negligible, watered-down versions of what’s for lunch. Taiwan proves that rule wrong. From fresh soy milk to street-bought scallion pancakes, thinner and more delicate than what you get in Hong Kong or China, you can’t go wrong by going local at breakfast. """"
ReplyDeleteDifferentiates in a very trivial way. She really doesn't get Taiwan, because she sees it through mainlander eyes. Like when she asked her people where they go to eat at the beginning, she was really asking where mainlanders go to eat to retain and re-experience their separate identity.
Why does WSJ hire people like this to cover Taiwan? Jennifer Chen after her last poor article on HuaShan is my new least favorite writer. I'm going to have to rip apart each of her articles from now on.
ReplyDeleteBefore throwing criticism at the writer of the food piece, you may want to actually check who she is - an American who has actually lived in Taipei before, has spent most of her time in Asia based in Bangkok and only relatively recently moved to Beijing.
ReplyDeleteBefore throwing criticism at the writer of the food piece, you may want to actually check who she is - an American who has actually lived in Taipei before, has spent most of her time in Asia based in Bangkok and only relatively recently moved to Beijing.
ReplyDeleteLOL, I know who she is. You might want to read the criticism, before you respond with irrelevancies. She sees Taipei through mainlander-colored glasses because that is her family background as she has courageously made clear in both her articles, each of which shows that she sees Taipei in a very superficial way. That is why this article is so China biased, not because she lives in Beijing. Beijing or Bangkok, why is she being sourced for an article on Taipei when the city is filled with people who know what they are talking about, write well, and don't think China is the only proper context for talking about Taiwan?
Michael
LOL, I know who she is. You might want to read the criticism, before you respond with irrelevancies. She sees Taipei through mainlander-colored glasses because that is her family background as she has courageously made clear in both her articles, each of which shows that she sees Taipei in a very superficial way. That is why this article is so China biased, not because she lives in Beijing. Beijing or Bangkok, why is she being sourced for an article on Taipei when the city is filled with people who know what they are talking about, write well, and don't think China is the only proper context for talking about Taiwan?
ReplyDeleteWTF??? Did you even read the article? The part where she mentions her Taiwan born and bred family? Or her bio - born and bred in the US? There's nothing "Mainlander" or "mainlander-colored glasses" about it.
There may be better writers here but you don't know why she was chosen for this article. She could well have been in Taipei anyway (perhaps visiting her family here) and the WSJ decided to take advantage of that. Perhaps the editor knows her and has worked with her and would rather use someone known instead of an unknown local writer.
Actually, I know why she was chosen.
ReplyDeleteWTF??? Did you even read the article? The part where she mentions her Taiwan born and bred family? Or her bio - born and bred in the US? There's nothing "Mainlander" or "mainlander-colored glasses" about it.
Speaking of reading, perhaps you should get some bifocals or something. As she clearly states, her uncle was born in Taiwan, everyone else was not. Now go and read her previous article to learn her roots. "...As a child of Chinese parents living in the U.S...:
I know you won't actually apologize for being an idiot because high-minded trolls with an inability to read like yourself never do that, but I don't expect any further trolling from you.
Michael
When you take it out of context and only read "...As a child of Chinese parents living in the U.S...:" you're going to get the wrong impression. When you read the rest of what she says, "This isn’t the city I grew up with" and "obligatory family visits " it's pretty obvious that her heritage has a healthy dose of Taiwan in it.
ReplyDeleteAs I'm sure you know, a lot of Taiwanese, particularly expat or OC, use the terms "Chinese" and "Taiwanese" interchangeably, which is certainly what she appears to have done here. It in no way suggests she's from the mainland, any more than the 90+% of Taiwan's population who trace their ancestors back to the mainland are.
She's born and raised in New England the child of Chinese parents. She comes back to Taipei and we get a slew of Chinese-centric writing and recommendations from the local uncle who sends her to a mainlander run nostalgia-capitalizing joint, and then an avalanche of chinese-contextualized food writing occurs. You'd have to be deliberately deaf to miss the obvious POV and mainlander subtext-- deliberately. Note how at each step the food is related back to China -- the pork buns are Shanghaiese pork buns (20 years I've lived here not once has anyone ever referred to them as "Shanghaiese pork buns", the guabao with dong pou rou are "fusion" of Hangzhou, the food is constantly compared to the "real" China and of course, the pretentious too-Chinese dessert is rebuttal to shaved ice, which, as everyone knows, is a low class Taiwanese treat (heh, a bonus class dig at Taiwanese food). She may have visited here in her childhood, but the mainlander bias is very obvious. I am not the only one who spotted this, a great number of people did, some of whom forwarded this to me. It also made the rounds of some email discussion lists I am on for the exact same reason. Her biases are obvious and the only reason you can't see them is because you're trolling. Good bye.
ReplyDeleteMichael
1) I know it's your blog, but calling posters "trolls" ain't cool. I like your blog. I don't like it when you start doing that.
ReplyDelete2) The article in question isn't _that_ bad.... You do self-identify as a 'rant' here, of course.
3) I'd like to see you review the Taiwan "cuisine" at Shin Yeh.
I don't even know what Shin Yeh is, sorry.
ReplyDeleteHer parents grew up in Hualien and Taidong.
ReplyDeleteReally? You'll "love" it:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.shinyeh.com.tw/index.php