Taiwanese Culture

If you're visiting Taiwan on business and your local business partners take you out for dinner, it's very likely they'll take you to some famous, expensive restaurant, in a prestigious location like Taipei 101. Even if you are here visiting friends, it's still likely they'll take you to some clean, well-staffed restaurants for dinner. Possibly your host will even take you to a western-style restaurant, even though you're in Asia.

Mazu temple's beer garden

Did you ever see a church with its own beer garden? Probably not, but in Taiwan people have a more relaxed attitude to such matters.

For example: the beer garden in the Temple to the sea-Goddess Mazu, near Dihua Street. You might think that it's very disrespectful to put a beer garden here, but I would say it must be the mercy of the Goddess, that more than 40 family-run restaurants could make a living by her temple, and the hard-working people could enjoy very good food and beer in her courtyard at a bargain price.

There are many street restaurants around the temple, and people enjoy eating and drinking under the banyan tree in the temple yard. It's a place the hard working people have traditionally gone to relax after work. There are more than 40 authentic Taiwanese street food restaurants and food stalls.

In the near future we will start offering this tour of historic Di Hua Street, and the Da Dao Cheng Area in Taipei. The tour will cover the morning market, temples, the traditional food stands and small restaurants.

September 5th, 2012: This morning, I unpacked my own Chinese tea set and went to sit in the guest house garden. I want to drink oolong tea on this sweet potato farm, and enjoy the view of Yangmingshan where my ancestors lived 100 years ago.

Stir fried green vegetables dishes are among the most common elements of Chinese family cuisine. Just a few pieces of garlic, sauteed with a few tablespoons of oil, stir-fried with some green vegetables: this is the simplest home-style dish.

If you are bored of Taipei city, take the train to Pingxi. In 40 minutes, it will take you back 40 years.

Pingxi (pronounced 'ping shee') was built about a hundred years ago. The coal mining industry attracted young people from all over Taiwan to dig black money from deep under the earth. The railway came: winding and climbing into the mountains. And so the remote town developed, deep inside the Keelung river valley. 

Many of my guests have asked me, "what do Taiwanese people drink when they have dinner?". Because they notice Taiwanese people often don't drink wine or beer when they eat. I thought it's quite normal not to have alcohol when eating, like we sometimes do in Taiwan. Then I realized that although we don't drink wine, we do have tea while eating.