John Chen (
Chen was born and raised by a humble family in Hualian. His parents come from Zhejiang Province, in China. Chen learned the art of cooking when he was 14 and worked as an apprentice at the Three-Six-Nine restaurant (三六九飯館), near the back entrance of 228 Memorial Park. Chen emigrated to the US with his parents in 1980. A few years later, he opened the Garden of Plenty restaurant in Long Island and has built up his reputation ever since.
Chen is an easygoing guy and fun to talk with, which are two keys to his business success. He returned to Taiwan in 1994 and, by coincidence, bought the restaurant where he had his apprenticeship, turning it into a very classy three-story eatery. His private kitchen, named Fantasy Palace (
PHOTO COURTESY OF FANTASY GARDEN
It was here that Chen shocked the local culinary community in 2004 by being the first chef to present a banquet of marvelous dishes adapted from a very special recipe. The recipe was recorded in a classical Chinese poem that was pictured in one of grand master Chang Da-chien's (
Last year, Chen was encouraged by eminent culinary critic Chu Chen-fan (
Fantasy Garden changes its menu every two to three months and its new dishes are quickly copied by many restaurants all over Taiwan.
"Shanghai cuisine is like a big ocean which takes in different traditions of the Jiang-Zhe cuisine (
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not
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