An Appetizer for the GIO's "Food Culture in Taiwan" Website

Every year the Tourism Bureau of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications does a survey asking foreign visitors to Taiwan where they went and what they spent their money on, so the bureau can understand what travelers like best about our island and from there plot strategies for promoting more travel to Taiwan. In recent years, the top answer has been "the food." Obviously Taiwan can be marketed to tourists for the appeal of its cuisine.

Unfortunately, because Taiwan is culturally Chinese, for a long time now many people around the world have seen Taiwanese cuisine as little more than an offshoot of Chinese cooking, which is to say that Taiwanese cuisine has yet to establish an independent brand image. From a marketing point of view, it is necessary to define "Taiwanese cuisine" before you can sell it, to differentiate it from competitors, and to find symbols for it that become universally acknowledged as such. Such steps are essential to "brand recognition."

Toward this end, at the end of November of 2011 the Government Information Office of the Executive Yuan launched a new website called "Food Culture in Taiwan." GIO Minister Philip Yang explains: "In recent years governments around the world have been actively promoting their national cuisines as an expression of their cultural power. But we don't yet have any platform to thoroughly introduce Taiwan cuisine internationally and to explain its history and background to the world. This is why we want to put up the Food Culture in Taiwan website, which will be in Chinese, Japanese, English, Spanish, and French, so we can introduce to the world the rich variety and the cultural significance of culinary arts in Taiwan." In the future, Russian, German, and Korean content will also be added, shining a bright spotlight on Taiwan's place on the world map of gastronomy.

After consultations with countless connoisseurs and chefs, it was decided to divide the content of the website into seven major categories: Taiwanese cuisine, Taiwanese seafood, fusion Chinese cuisine, Hakka cuisine, indigenous peoples' dishes, night market foods, and "drinks, desserts, and gift ideas." Using abundant images and multimedia resources, the site introduces the history and the representative dishes of the culinary styles of Taiwan's different ethnic groups. There will also be links to newsworthy gastronomic events, such as Yunlin's Taiwan Coffee Festival, providing the latest up-to-date information to our webfriends.

On the website you will discover the refinement and diversity of Taiwanese cuisine. Take for instance chao mi-fen (炒米粉/stir-fried rice vermicelli). In early days it was considered haute cuisine, the kind of thing you would serve at a banquet. Later on, some brothers named Kuo from Hsinchu brought in methods to make the rice vermicelli by machine, and prompted the rise of a whole local industry. "Hsinchu mi-fen" became known throughout Taiwan, and stir-fried rice vermicelli became a dish that could be served in any household.

Another example is the Aboriginal dish known as ma-gao ji-tang (馬告雞湯/mountain-pepper chicken soup), which uses the endogenous pepper that can be found at medium-elevation locales across Taiwan. This spice, which carries a lemony fragrance, is what gives the dish its highly praised authentically Aboriginal flavor. Of particular interest is that the essence of lemon in the pepper promotes digestion and regularity, and can control bacteria, making it a great natural food preservative.

Foreigners visit Taiwan on account of the food, and Taiwan can use its cuisine to promote international exchange, and to express Taiwan's vitality and creativity. There's a lot here to be savored! l

The "Food Culture in Taiwan" website put up by the Government Information Office introduces Taiwan's rich and varied cuisine in a multilingual format, drawing on Taiwan's culinary arts to build connections across the world.