Under the cool white lights of the World Trade Center, Yeh Min-wen (葉敏雯), a mother of two, stops to consider a glistening mound of dongpo pork (東坡肉). “It’s expensive,” she pronounces. “But spending money feels better than cooking.”
We’re at opening day of the New Year Shopping Fair, Taipei’s first trade exhibition for Lunar New Year supplies. It doesn’t look quite like Dihua Street (迪化街), which is lined with sellers of dried scallops, crinkled rare mushrooms and other ingredients used in seasonal dishes. There isn’t much of that here. Instead, this emporium offers an extensive range of pre-made festival food, like hearty soups in bags, or frozen dishes that are ready to eat with minimal preparation.
In one wing, restaurants display fully composed entrees available for takeout. There are platters of Peking duck, shell-on lobster and cold cuts with roe. Vendors shout the choicest ingredients in their Buddha Jumps Over the Wall, a savory stew. There is plenty of fish head casserole.
Photo: Enru Lin, Taipei Times
“Past generations were able to cook these dishes, but I don’t know a lot of younger people who can,” Hsu Heng-chia (許恆嘉) says at his booth for Malaya (馬來亞), a wedding reception venue and restaurant near Dihua Street.
“People still want to spend New Year’s Eve with family around the hearth. Maybe that’s why they are so open to the concept of takeout ... Most Taipei restaurants are starting to push takeaway service,” he says.
At the trade show, Taipei’s Garden Restaurant (青青食尚花園會館) offers its two marquee dishes, a shark-fin soup and Buddha Jumps Over the Wall.
Photo: Enru Lin, Taipei Times
“I think some consumers want to make their own food, but with time-consuming dishes, they tend to want to do takeout,” says Pan Chia-ching (潘家慶), who is manning the Garden Restaurant booth.
“Buddha Jumps Over the Wall takes about twenty hours to make,” he says.
This year, Hsu’s Malaya is offering banquets for on-the-day takeaway, with a meal for ten priced upwards of NT$10,000. Choosing not to go a la carte is risky, but Hsu sees easy sales ahead.
“The market is maturing. Five years ago we sold about 100 sets. Now we are planning to make 300 sets and it won’t be enough.”
A NEW YEAR, A NEW MOSQUITO SCREEN
The New Year Shopping Fair is the Taiwan External Trade Development Council’s first effort at centralizing Lunar New Year commercial opportunities at a full-fledged trade show.
The event, which runs to next Wednesday, brings together 300 local businesses that sell ready-to-eat dishes and ban-shou-li (伴手禮) — classic gifts like pastries and nougats.
There are also booths offering washing machines, mosquito screens, toothpaste, beer shampoo and a rocking horse, with vendors hoping that the seasonal shopping spree will be a wave that lifts all the boats.
“It’s not Dihua Street, but there’s a lot of weird and fun stuff here,” says Hung Hsiang-bin (洪祥賓), a purveyor of beans and dried organic snacks.
“The strategy is to say, hey, here are some New Year’s supplies — now look at this,” he says.
Last week Joseph Nye, the well-known China scholar, wrote on the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s website about how war over Taiwan might be averted. He noted that years ago he was on a team that met with then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), “whose previous ‘unofficial’ visit to the US had caused a crisis in which China fired missiles into the sea and the US deployed carriers off the coast of Taiwan.” Yes, that’s right, mighty Chen caused that crisis all by himself. Neither the US nor the People’s Republic of China (PRC) exercised any agency. Nye then nostalgically invoked the comical specter
Relations between Taiwan and the Czech Republic have flourished in recent years. However, not everyone is pleased about the growing friendship between the two countries. Last month, an incident involving a Chinese diplomat tailing the car of vice president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) in Prague, drew public attention to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) operations to undermine Taiwan overseas. The trip was not Hsiao’s first visit to the Central European country. It was meant to be low-key, a chance to meet with local academics and politicians, until her police escort noticed a car was tailing her through the Czech capital. The
April 15 to April 21 Yang Kui (楊逵) was horrified as he drove past trucks, oxcarts and trolleys loaded with coffins on his way to Tuntzechiao (屯子腳), which he heard had been completely destroyed. The friend he came to check on was safe, but most residents were suffering in the town hit the hardest by the 7.1-magnitude Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake on April 21, 1935. It remains the deadliest in Taiwan’s recorded history, claiming around 3,300 lives and injuring nearly 12,000. The disaster completely flattened roughly 18,000 houses and damaged countless more. The social activist and
Over the course of former President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) 11-day trip to China that included a meeting with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping (習近平) a surprising number of people commented that the former president was now “irrelevant.” Upon reflection, it became apparent that these comments were coming from pro-Taiwan, pan-green supporters and they were expressing what they hoped was the case, rather than the reality. Ma’s ideology is so pro-China (read: deep blue) and controversial that many in his own Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) hope he retires quickly, or at least refrains from speaking on some subjects. Regardless