Lifestyle
Feast your eyes on Taiwan's distinct food (and understand a history of colonization)
Ivy Chen (left) and Clarissa Wei browse Shuixian Gong Market in Tainan, Taiwan, in January.
An Rong Xu for NPR
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Ivy Chen (left) and Clarissa Wei browse Shuixian Gong Market in Tainan, Taiwan, in January.
An Rong Xu for NPR
TAINAN, Taiwan — On a Friday morning in the southern city of Tainan, Shuixian Gong Market overflows with displays of shiny orange and silver fish, stacks of glistening pork ribs and crates of dragon fruit and guavas. Vendors wash out their stands with hoses, and Taiwanese cooks ask for parcels of raw drumsticks or breasts. People on motorized scooters ride carefully through the market’s corridors, laden with bags of dried goods.
It’s easy to think of Taiwanese food as a subset of Chinese food — after all, the island’s food shares many culinary traditions and techniques with those from mainland China. Yet Clarissa Wei and Ivy Chen would argue that Taiwanese food is distinct. They’re the creators of the cookbook Made in Taiwan.
That title declares something: Even though about 90% of people in Taiwan have Chinese ancestry, they have forged a cuisine that is, in many ways, their own.
A set of traditional Taiwanese cuisine staples: oyster omelet, lu rou fan, oyster soup and fish ball soup.
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A set of traditional Taiwanese cuisine staples: oyster omelet, lu rou fan, oyster soup and fish ball soup.
An Rong Xu for NPR
Fresh seafood is sorted at Shuixian Gong Market.
An Rong Xu for NPR
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An Rong Xu for NPR
Fresh seafood is sorted at Shuixian Gong Market.
An Rong Xu for NPR
“Taiwanese food is quite distinct in that we have our own pantry items that are made in and unique to Taiwan,” Wei says. “So the way that soy sauce and rice wine and rice vinegar are made in Taiwan are not made similarly elsewhere in the world.”
Another key difference: Taiwanese food is sweet. In Tainan, which used to be a sugar-cane-producing hub, it’s even more pronounced.
Chen also points out that Taiwanese food doesn’t tend to rely on a lot of spices. “When our ancestors moved here, they found we have so many fresh ingredients in this small island, so it’s very easy to get food very fresh, so we don’t over-season it,” she says.
These differences are all products of Taiwan’s unique history.
“Taiwanese food is, I would say, a combination of all of our waves of colonization and governance,” Wei says.
Dried goods on sale at Shuixian Gong Market.
An Rong Xu for NPR
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Dried goods on sale at Shuixian Gong Market.
An Rong Xu for NPR
Vendors at Shuixian Gong Market.
An Rong Xu for NPR
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Vendors at Shuixian Gong Market.
An Rong Xu for NPR
Take sugar. In the 1600s, the Dutch came to southern Taiwan, where they established a couple of forts and the sugar cane industry, bringing Chinese farmers to help raise the crops. During Japanese occupation from the late 1800s through World War II, Taiwan was Japan’s main source of sugar production.
“At one point, two-thirds of all Taiwanese families were in the sugar cane industry,” Wei says. “So it was a huge part of our culture.”
Sugar is so important in Taiwan that it shows up even in its savory dishes, like Taiwanese sausages or braised pork over rice. It’s also a key ingredient in some of the island’s religious offerings, like ang ku kueh, or “red turtle kueh,” which are bright-pink sticky rice sweets stuffed with fillings like red bean and black sesame and shaped to resemble a turtle’s shell.
And just like sugar, the types of rice help tell the story of colonization on the island.
A bowl of traditional wa gui, a savory steamed rice cake.
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A bowl of traditional wa gui, a savory steamed rice cake.
An Rong Xu for NPR
Tapiocas on sale at Shuixian Gong Market.
An Rong Xu for NPR
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Tapiocas on sale at Shuixian Gong Market.
An Rong Xu for NPR
“The type of rice that Taiwanese people eat on a daily basis has changed really depending on who has governed Taiwan, which I find is a really fascinating reflection of Taiwanese colonial history,” Wei says. “Taiwan is the only subtropical country in the world where short-grain rice are the grain of choice.”
Wei explains that early Chinese settlers who came to Taiwan hundreds of years ago brought over long-grain rice, which was commonly grown in mainland China. When Japanese colonizers came, she says, they craved the short-grain rice they were accustomed to eating. The problem: Short-grain rice doesn’t grow very well in Taiwan’s subtropical climate.
“They spent 10 years trying to cultivate short-grain rice on Yangmingshan, which is a mountain hill-ish area in Taipei,” Wei says. “After 10 years, they finally succeeded, and that has become our rice of choice.”
Order a rice dish from any restaurant in Taiwan, and your bowl will be filled with bright, sticky, short-grain rice. “And that was really through the efforts of the Japanese,” says Wei.
A selection of pastries on sale at the market.
An Rong Xu for NPR
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A selection of pastries on sale at the market.
An Rong Xu for NPR
Fresh wheel cakes being made at Shuixian Gong Market.
An Rong Xu for NPR
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Fresh wheel cakes being made at Shuixian Gong Market.
An Rong Xu for NPR
Foods like kueh are made using time- and labor-intensive crops, like sugar and sticky rice, so that makes them special and a worthy offering to one’s gods and ancestors. Chen says food culture in Taiwan is inextricable from religion.
“During the worship time [which could be] two or three hours, people are hungry, so they are hanging out in the neighborhood and looking for food. And that’s [why] the many small vendors [began] gathering in the neighborhood and start doing their business,” she said.
In fact, in Taiwan, temples and food markets often appear side by side. Shuixian Gong Market is also home to Shuixian Temple — a structure that is hundreds of years old. The temple is dedicated to water gods, with intricately carved stone pillars, red-painted wooden beams and gold dragons flanking its entrance. Paintings above the temple’s entrance depict scenes of maritime life, paying homage to the ocean that surrounds the island.
Just a few yards away from the temple stands a fish ball vendor. Trays of ice in front of her display neat rows of balls made from varieties of seafood: shrimp, flounder and milkfish.
Fish balls vendors serve up the goods at Shuixian Gong Market.
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Fish balls vendors serve up the goods at Shuixian Gong Market.
An Rong Xu for NPR
Just some of the fresh fish on display at the market.
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Just some of the fresh fish on display at the market.
An Rong Xu for NPR
“The milkfish is a very important aquaculture in the Tainan area,” Chen explains. The bony white fish also has a connection to the Dutch colonization of the island.
“The milkfish [has] been here for centuries,” Wei says. “When the Dutch came in, they started the aquaculture industry where they were breeding the fish, and this has become a staple of the Taiwanese diet ever since.”
Seafood makes up a huge portion of the Taiwanese diet — from fish balls in soups, to a dried flounder used by many Taiwanese cooks to make stock, to Pacific oysters, which are found in a variety of dishes.
Chinese migrants started farming these oysters along the island’s west coast hundreds of years ago. They’re smaller than the oysters seen in North America, and most of the time, they are not eaten raw. Most farmers lack the infrastructure to closely monitor the water quality, so they show up in cooked dishes, like o-a-tsian, oyster omelets.
These eggs are thickened with sweet potato starch and studded with oysters before being slathered in a sweet and tangy sauce made from pickled vegetables. Wei says the ingredients in this dish can show a lot about the island.
An oyster omelet.
An Rong Xu for NPR
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An oyster omelet.
An Rong Xu for NPR
Clarissa Wei and Ivy Chen share wa gui, a savory steamed rice cake.
An Rong Xu for NPR
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An Rong Xu for NPR
Clarissa Wei and Ivy Chen share wa gui, a savory steamed rice cake.
An Rong Xu for NPR
“It describes what Taiwanese food was 200, 300 years ago. It’s very simple. The bulk of it really is sweet potato starch, because sweet potatoes thrive [here in Taiwan] — it’s kind of like a weed,” she says. “And this isn’t a dish you associate with Chinese food at all. It’s something that’s very, very Taiwanese and unique to Taiwan.”
What distinguishes Chinese food from the unique flavors in Taiwanese food is a bit of a nebulous thing. Chen is a cooking instructor and has taught students from all over the world. She says they’d often ask her, “What is Taiwanese food? What is Chinese food? What’s the difference?” Figuring out the difference was a process for her.
“I can tell [the difference],” Chen says. “But I never think that people will ask me that way, that I need to give a definition about Chinese food and Taiwanese food.”
There isn’t a black-and-white definition of Taiwanese food. Wei and Chen argue that the food is unique because the flavors in Taiwan’s cooking, as well as its produce and seafood, are the historical record of colonialism and migration on this island.
And to them, that means the island’s cuisine deserves to stand on its own.
Jessie Buckley has been nominated for an Academy Award for best actress for her portrayal of William Shakespeare’s wife in Hamnet.
Kate Green/Getty Images
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Kate Green/Getty Images
Actor Jessie Buckley says she’s always been drawn to the “shadowy bits” of her characters — aspects that are disobedient, or “too much.” Perhaps that’s what led her to play Agnes, the wife of William Shakespeare, in Hamnet.
Buckley says the film, which is based on Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel, offered a chance to counter a common narrative about the playwright’s wife: that she “had kept him back from his genius,” Buckley says.
But, she adds, “What Maggie O’Farrell so brilliantly did, not just with Agnes and Shakespeare’s wife, but also with Hamnet, their son, was to bring these people … and give them status beside this great man. … [And] give the full landscape of what it is to be a woman.”
The film is nominated for eight Academy Awards, including best actress for Buckley. In it, she plays a woman deeply connected to nature, who faces conflicts in her marriage, as well as the death of their son Hamnet.
Buckley found out she was pregnant a week after the film wrapped. She’s since given birth to her first child, a daughter.
“The thing that this story offered me, that brought me into this next chapter of my life as a mother was tenderness,” she says. “A mother’s tenderness is ferocious. To love, to birth is no joke. To be born is no joke. And the minute something’s born into the world, you’re always in the precipice of life and death. That’s our path. … I wanted to be a mother so much that that overrode the thought of being afraid of it.”
Jessie Buckley stars as Agnes and Joe Alwyn plays her brother Bartholomew in Hamnet.
Courtesy of Focus Features/Courtesy of Focus Features
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Courtesy of Focus Features/Courtesy of Focus Features
Interview highlights
On filming the scene where she howls in grief when her son dies
I didn’t know that that was going to happen or come out, it wasn’t in the script. I think really [director] Chloé [Zhao] asked all of us to dare to be as present as possible. Of course, leading up to it, you’re aware this scene is coming, but that scene doesn’t stand on its own. By the time I’d met that scene, I had developed such a deep bond with Jacobi Jupe, who plays Hamnet, and [co-stars] Paul [Mescal] and Emily Watson, and all the children and we really were a family. And Jacobi Jupe who plays Hamnet is such an incredible little actor and an incredible soul, and we really were a team. …
The death of a child is unfathomable. I don’t know where it begins and ends. Out of utter respect, I tried to touch an imaginary truth of it in our story as best I could, but there’s no way to define that kind of grief. I’m sure it’s different for so many people. And in that moment, all I had was my imagination but also this relationship that was right in front of me with this little boy and that’s what came out of that.
On what inspired her to pursue singing growing up
I grew up around a lot of music. My mom is a harpist and a singer and my dad has always been passionate about music, so it was always something in our house and always something that was encouraged. … Early on, I have very strong memories of seeing and hearing my mom sing in church and this quite intense mercurial conversation that would happen between her, the story and the people that would listen to her. And at the end of it, something had been cracked between them and these strangers would come up with tears in their eyes. And I guess I saw the power of storytelling through my mom’s singing at a very young age, and that was definitely something that made me think I want to do that.
On her first big break performing as a teen on the BBC singing competition I’d Do Anything — and being criticized by judges about her physical appearance
I was raw. I hadn’t trained. I had a lot to learn and to grow in. I was only 17. I think there was part of their criticism which I think was destructive and unfair when it became about my awkwardness, or they would say I was masculine and send me to kind of a femininity school. … They sent me to [the musical production of] Chicago to put heels on and a leotard and learn how to walk in high heels, which was pretty humiliating, to be honest, and I’m sad about that because I think I was discovering myself as a young woman in the world and wasn’t fully formed. … I was different. I was wild, I had a lot of feeling inside me. I could hardly keep my hands beside myself and I think to kind of criticize a body of a young woman at that time and to make her feel conscious of that was lazy and, I think, boring.
On filming parts of the 2026 film The Bride! while pregnant
I really loved working when I was pregnant. I thought it was a pretty wild experience, especially because I was playing Mary Shelley and I was talking about [this] monstrosity, and here I was with two heartbeats inside me. Becoming a mom and being pregnant did something, I think, for me. My experience of it, it’s so real that it really focuses [me to be] allergic to fake or to disconnection.
Since my daughter has come and I know what that connection is and the real feeling of being in a relationship with somebody … as an actress, it’s very exciting to recognize that in yourself and really take ownership of yourself.
I’m excited to go back and work on this other side of becoming a mother in so many ways, because I’ve shed 10 layers of skin by loving more and experiencing life in such a new way with my daughter. I’m also scared to work again because it’s hard to be a mother and to work. That’s like a constant tug because I love what I do and I’m passionate and I want to continue to grow and learn and fill those spaces that are yet to be filled — and also be a mother. And I think every mother can recognize that tug.
On the possibility of bringing her daughter to travel with her as she works
I haven’t filmed for nearly a year and I cannot wait. I’m hungry to create again. And my daughter will come with me. She’s seven months, so at the moment she can travel with us and it’s a beautiful life. And she meets all these amazing people and I have a feeling that she loves life and that’s a great thing to see in a child. And I hope that’s something that I’ve imparted to her in the short time that she’s been on this earth is that life is beautiful and great and complex and alive and there’s no part of you that needs to be less in your life. You might have to work it out, but it’s worth it.
Lauren Krenzel and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.
Bruce Campbell
I’m Battling Cancer
Published
Bruce Campbell has revealed he has cancer, but says it’s a type that’s treatable, though not curable.
“The Evil Dead” actor shared the news Monday in a message to fans, writing, “Hi folks, these days, when someone is having a health issue, it’s referred to as an ‘opportunity,’ so let’s go with that — I’m having one of those.” He continued, “It’s also called a type of cancer that’s ‘treatable’ not ‘curable.’ I apologize if that’s a shock — it was to me too.”
Campbell said he wouldn’t go into further detail about his diagnosis, but explained his work schedule will be changing. “Appearances and cons and work in general need to take back seat to treatment,” he wrote, adding he plans to focus on getting “as well as I possibly can over the summer.”
As a result, Campbell says he has to cancel several convention appearances this summer, noting, “Treatment needs and professional obligations don’t always go hand-in-hand.”
He says his plan is to tour this fall in support of his new film, “Ernie & Emma,” which he stars in and directs.
Ending on a determined note, Campbell told fans, “I am a tough old son-of-a-bitch … and I expect to be around a while.”
Neve Campbell in Scream 7.
Paramount Pictures
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Paramount Pictures
The OG Scream Queen Neve Campbell returns. Scream 7 re-centers the franchise back on Sidney Prescott. She has a new life, a family, and lots of baggage. You know the drill: Someone dressing up as the masked slasher Ghostface comes for her, her family and friends. There’s lots of stabbing and murder and so many red herrings it’s practically a smorgasbord.
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