Sunset in subtropical Chiayi (嘉義) is as many-hued as the local palate. The afternoon rain on the streets reflect the sky as it turns pink and purple. As the city’s neon lights flare into life, everywhere, it seems, signposts dinner.
Evening commences along the half-a-kilometer long night market on Wenhua Road (文化路). This strip featured in the Netflix series Street Food Asia.
There are fish-head noodle stalls and grapefruit bubble tea vendors, onion pancake and squids-on-sticks, Vietnamese sandwiches, tofu and sizzling pork skewers.
Photo Thomas Bird, Taipei Times
The heady scent of barbequing king oyster mushrooms catches my attention. After a fungi-licious appetizer, I sit down for a main course — cold noodles, Chiayi-style — with cucumbers, beansprouts, sesame seed paste and special ingredient, mayonnaise.
“That’s how we do it here, it holds the noodles together,” the vendor says.
FIRST PORT OF CALL
Photo Thomas Bird, Taipei Times
With my stomach lined, it’s a short hike to the end of Wenhua Road, where, at the crossroads of the Alishan mountain railway, I aim for Calgary (卡加利美式餐廳), which was recommended to me by an old-Chiayi-hand as “a pub with a railway flavor.”
The bar manager tells me Calgary has been in business since the late-1990s although the building itself, where “Timber was brought from the mountains to be chopped and turned into furniture,” is far older.
Logging officially ended in 1988 but much of city’s sites still allude to Chiayi’s former life as Taiwan’s “city of timber” and the railroad culture that kept that resource economy rolling.
Photo Thomas Bird, Taipei Times
Calgary’s vintage address is redolent of old Chiayi, but it is otherwise the kind of watering hole you might find in any small city in Asia — a place where barflies prop up the bar and put the world to right over pints of Carlsberg (NT$220) and Hawaiian Pizza (NT$360) until the weekend band kicks in. Notwithstanding its “last chance coral” vibes, I like Calgary, which boasts many of the “elements of a great bar” Anthony Bourdain once listed in A Cook’s Tour, notably convivial staff ever eager to top up your glass.
COCKTAILS AND FOOD PANDA
Walking through the curtains into Bar Bingsen (秉森酒室) is like stepping into a wormhole leading directly to Shinjuku, Tokyo. This perfect imitation of an izakaya is only a five-minute walk along the railway from Calgary but it feels a world apart.
Photo Thomas Bird, Taipei Times
Despite its imitative pretentions, there are no suited company men bonding over whisky and cigarettes as you might find in Japan. Instead, Bingsen is the habitat of hip Chiayi locals sipping Instagramable cocktails while ordering snacks from their phones via the Food Panda app.
“You can order outside food but you must buy drinks here,” the barman says of the house rules.
I’m well-fed but getting watered won’t be quite so economical, I soon discover, while eying the drinks list with average drink prices between NT$300 to NT$400.
Photo Thomas Bird, Taipei Times
Still, what is cool about Bar Bingsen is the range of locally-inspired concoctions — cocktails with poetic names like Sea of Flowers Amidst the Bustle (NT$420), a sumptuous gin-based beverage infused with cherry blossom and camphorwood and Town With and Ocean View (NT$360) made with vodka, buckwheat, elderflower and honey.
Equal attention has been given to the service — from the debonair attire of the barmen to the immaculate open bar, where they mix beverages to a jazz soundtrack.
Yet while Bingsen’s young clientele seem satisfied fetishizing colorful drinks, the place is bit stiff for a laidback southern town.
Photo Thomas Bird, Taipei Times
TIKI IN CHIAYI
Following the directions of a Bingsen regular, I pass Chiayi Railway Station’s forecourt and facing the Chiayi Art Museum find HOT Hi-End Of Tiki.
The exterior is adorned with collage of wild tropical animals, the interior decorated like a classic American cocktail lounge.
“I learned to be a mixologist in Taipei but wanted to bring this culture back to my hometown,” says Wang Wei-chi (王湋際), who opened the bar in 2021.
Wang survived coronavirus enforced restrictions and now employees two local students to help him cater to a regular cast of patrons.
“Old people don’t get it but young people like what we do here.”
I order a Seasonal G&T (NT$300) — a predictable tipple for a Brit in the subtropics — but Wang mixes it in an atypical way, with a liqueur that he makes with four different kinds of fruit.
I repeat what the barman at Bingsen had told me, that cocktail bars were mushrooming in Chiayi, because it’s “a fresh market” that’s “not been saturated like elsewhere.”
Wang agrees, although he notes low rent when compared with Taipei keeps overheads down, which, combined with a flow of tourists bound for Alishan, makes opening a cocktail bar in Chiayi a more sensible idea than it might first appear.
I conclude with a Jungle Smack (NT$300), a delicious, banana-flavored bourbon with bitters, then stumble off to my hotel.
En route, I think about Street Food Asia and TV chef Johanna Liu’s (劉韋彤) assertion that, “Because of the secluded location, Chiayi has not been very influenced by foreign culture.”
As one of Taiwan’s oldest settlements, Chiayi unquestionably maintains some fine Taiwanese traditions. But it’s also seen some history. From the eclecticism of night market through to its varied night haunts, I’ve tasted a myriad influences in my short tour.
Sure, Chiayi might be small, but provincial it is not.
Warning: Excessive consumption of alcohol can damage your health.
Nothing like the spectacular, dramatic unraveling of a political party in Taiwan has unfolded before as has hit the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) over recent weeks. The meltdown of the New Power Party (NPP) and the self-implosion of the New Party (NP) were nothing compared to the drama playing out now involving the TPP. This ongoing saga is so interesting, this is the fifth straight column on the subject. To catch up on this train wreck of a story up to Aug. 20, search for “Donovan’s Deep Dives Ko Wen-je” in a search engine. ANN KAO SENTENCED TO PRISON YET AGAIN,
Despite her well-paying tech job, Li Daijing didn’t hesitate when her cousin asked for help running a restaurant in Mexico City. She packed up and left China for the Mexican capital last year, with dreams of a new adventure. The 30-year-old woman from Chengdu, the Sichuan provincial capital, hopes one day to start an online business importing furniture from her home country. “I want more,” Li said. “I want to be a strong woman. I want independence.” Li is among a new wave of Chinese migrants who are leaving their country in search of opportunities, more freedom or better financial prospects at a
During her final years of high school, Chinese teenager Xu Yunting found an unusual way to make some pocket money: transforming herself into male video game characters and taking their female devotees on dates. The trend, called “cos commissioning,” has gained traction in China recently, with social media posts garnering millions of views as an increasing number of young women use their purchasing power to engineer a meeting with their dream man in real life. One early morning in Shanghai last month, Xu carefully inserted contacts to enlarge her irises and adjusted a tangerine wig to transform into “Jesse,” a character from
When the Dutch began interacting with the indigenous people of Taiwan, they found that their hunters classified deer hide quality for trade using the Portuguese terms for “head,” “belly,” and “foot.” The Portuguese must have stopped here more than once to trade, but those visits have all been lost to history. They already had a colony on Macao, and did not need Taiwan to gain access to southern China or to the trade corridor that connected Japan with Manila. They were, however, the last to look at Taiwan that way. The geostrategic relationship between Taiwan and the Philippines was established
RSS