While enjoying the beautiful scenery in Hsinchu County, don’t miss out on the gourmet food that is available, Hsinchu County Commissioner Cheng Yung-chin (鄭永金) said as the county launched the 2009 Hsinchu Gourmet Festival yesterday.
“When tourists plan trips to Hsinchu, they usually think about watching fireflies, the beautiful landscape, strolling through historic streets and Hakka villages — but make sure you don’t miss the cuisine,” Cheng told a news conference in Taipei. “A wide varieties of Hakka ban (粄) — served sweetened or salty — for example, are specialties easily found in Hsinchu as the Hakka dining culture is closely related to rice.”
VARIETIES
The Hakka term ban refers to a variety of food made from rice flour.
Bantiao (粄條), for example, are rice noodles, banyuan (粄圓) are rice balls with or without stuffing ande mianpaban (面帕粄) — or “handkerchief ban” —are flat and thin like a handkerchief.
Hakkas also make cakes and breads with rice flour for different celebrations.
FESTIVAL
To highlight the Hakka ban culture, different types of ban dishes will be featured during the Hsinchu Gourmet Festival at the Kuang Ming Shopping District (光明商圈) in Jhubei (竹北), Hsinchu County, through June 27, Cheng said.
“On June 26 and 27, we will hold a ‘King or Queen of Ban Tiao’ contest in which a panel of judges will select the best bantiao restaurants that sign up before June 15 based on skill, taste, creativity and display,” Cheng said, adding that winners will receive cash awards.
BEYOND BAN
However, Hsinchu’s gourmet cuisine is not limited to ban.
“At the festival, you can find other great specialties from Hsinchu such as the Oriental Beauty tea of Beipu Township (北埔), the Persimmon cakes of Sinpu Township (新埔), zongzi with white ginger lily from Neiwan (內灣) and fresh green bamboo shoots from Baoshan Township (寶山),” Cheng said. “You can find great Japanese, Italian and Thai food in Hsinchu County too.”
GOURMET PASSPORT
Those interested in participating in the festival may ask for a copy of the 2009 Hsinchu Gourmet Passport from the county government or download an electronic version from the festival’s Web site.
The booklet includes information about featured restaurants, tourist attractions and suggested itineraries.
For more information, visit www.hcfoods.tw.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater