Written by Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley.
Image credit: President Lai meets with the author of “Taiwan Travelogue”, Yang Shuang-zi, and the novel’s English translator, Lin King, at the “Taiwan Literature Blossoms Worldwide” tea party on 30 June 2026 by Wang Yu Ching, Office of the President / Wikimedia, license: CC BY 4.0.
Taiwan has recently attracted international attention not only for its politics and technology, but also for its food. Bubble tea has become a global phenomenon, appearing in cities from London and New York to Tokyo and Sydney. Taiwanese restaurants have increasingly received recognition from the Michelin Guide, while international media outlets and television programmes have celebrated Taiwan’s night markets, beef noodle soup, pineapple cakes, and oyster omelettes. More recently, Yang Shuang-zi’s (楊双子) Taiwan Travelogue (臺灣漫遊錄, 2020) has introduced international readers to Taiwan through the language of food and travel, winning both the 2024 National Book Award for Translated Literature in the United States and the 2026 International Booker Prize. Yet to understand Taiwan through food requires looking beyond tourism and culinary fashion. In Taiwanese culture, food is rarely just something to eat. It is a language through which people express belonging, remember the past, and negotiate competing identities.
The inspiration for this essay emerged from an unexpected convergence of reading, viewing, and reflection. Recently, I read Taiwan Travelogue and watched Chen Yu-hsun’s (陳玉勳) latest film A Foggy Tale (大濛, 2025). The experience reminded me of Chen’s earlier food-centred comedy Zone Pro Site: The Moveable Feast (總鋪師, 2013). That recollection brought back a memory from many years ago when I presented a research paper on Ang Lee’s (李安) Eat Drink Man Woman (飲食男女, 1994). During the discussion, several audience members asked why I had not compared Lee’s celebrated film with Chen’s Zone Pro Site. At the time, I had no satisfactory answer. Years later, after reading Taiwan Travelogue and revisiting Chen’s work through A Foggy Tale, I realised that these three works, despite belonging to different periods and media, all use food as a means of exploring Taiwan’s society, history, and identity. This essay is therefore a belated response to that question.
Although separated by decades and working in different media, Eat Drink Man Woman, Zone Pro Site, and Taiwan Travelogue suggest that food offers a unique way of understanding Taiwan itself.
At first glance, Eat Drink Man Woman appears to be a family drama. The film follows a retired master chef and his three daughters in contemporary Taipei. The elaborate Sunday dinners that open and punctuate the film have become iconic within world cinema. Yet the meals are never simply displays of culinary skill. They are attempts at communication. The father, Chu, struggles to express his emotions directly. Instead, he cooks. The daughters gather around the dining table each week, but conversation often fails. Family tensions, generational conflicts, and romantic relationships remain unspoken. Food becomes both a bridge and a barrier: it brings the family together while simultaneously revealing the limits of communication.
For international audiences, Ang Lee’s film often appears to celebrate Chinese culinary tradition. Yet viewed from Taiwan, the film also captures a society undergoing rapid transformation. The traditional family structure is weakening. Younger generations pursue new lifestyles and aspirations. Taipei is becoming increasingly globalised. The meals, therefore, represent not only continuity but also change. Food preserves tradition even as society moves beyond it.
Nearly twenty years later, Chen Yu-hsun approached food from a very different perspective in Zone Pro Site. Here, food is no longer confined to the family dining table. Instead, it becomes a celebration of local communities, street culture, and popular memory.
The film revolves around a banquet competition, bringing together chefs, local businesses, and eccentric characters from across Taiwan. Unlike Ang Lee’s carefully controlled domestic interiors, Chen’s Taiwan is noisy, colourful, and exuberant. Traditional cuisine is treated not as a museum piece but as a living cultural practice. The film’s focus on pān-toh (辦桌), Taiwan’s distinctive outdoor banquet tradition, highlights forms of culinary knowledge that have often been overlooked in elite discussions of food culture. At a time when global fast-food chains and standardised dining experiences seemed increasingly dominant, Chen celebrated the local, the improvised, and the communal.
What makes Zone Pro Site particularly significant is its insistence that food embodies local knowledge. Recipes, cooking techniques, and ingredients connect people to specific places and communities. The film suggests that culinary traditions survive not because they are frozen in time but because they continue to adapt. Chen’s humour prevents the film from becoming merely nostalgic. Taiwan’s culinary culture remains vibrant precisely because it is creative, flexible, and deeply embedded in everyday life.
If Eat Drink Man Woman explores family and Zone Pro Site celebrates community, Taiwan Travelogue takes readers in a different direction altogether. Food becomes a way of exploring colonialism, identity, and cultural encounter.
Set in Japanese-ruled Taiwan during the 1930s, the novel follows a Japanese writer travelling around the island accompanied by a Taiwanese woman translator. Much of the narrative focuses on meals, local delicacies, and culinary experiences. At first, the endless descriptions of food can seem overwhelming. Readers may wonder why so much attention is devoted to dishes, restaurants, and ingredients.
Gradually, however, it becomes clear that food is central to the novel’s exploration of colonial power. Every meal raises questions about who is observing whom, who has the authority to describe a culture, and whose perspective shapes historical memory. Food serves as a medium through which Taiwanese and Japanese identities are negotiated and contested.
Importantly, the novel avoids presenting food as a simple symbol of authenticity. Culinary practices are themselves products of cultural exchange. Japanese influence, local traditions, Indigenous knowledge, and global connections all intersect on the dining table. Taiwan emerges not as a fixed identity but as a space of constant interaction and adaptation.
Taken together, these three works reveal how food functions as a powerful cultural language in Taiwan. In Eat Drink Man Woman, food expresses family relationships and generational change. In Zone Pro Site, it sustains community and local identity. In Taiwan Travelogue, it becomes a vehicle for exploring colonial history and cultural hybridity.
This may help explain why food occupies such a prominent place in contemporary discussions of Taiwan. Political debates often emphasise sovereignty, diplomacy, and security. These issues are undoubtedly important. Yet culture also shapes how societies understand themselves. Food offers an accessible but surprisingly sophisticated way of telling Taiwan’s story.
The international success of Taiwan Travelogue demonstrates that global audiences are increasingly receptive to such stories. What begins as a description of a meal can become a reflection on memory, identity, and history. Likewise, the enduring popularity of Eat Drink Man Woman and Zone Pro Site reminds us that food remains one of the most effective ways of representing Taiwan on screen.
Looking back, I now understand why that conference question stayed with me for so many years. At the time, comparing Ang Lee’s family drama with Chen Yu-hsun’s exuberant banquet comedy seemed unnecessary. Yet, viewed alongside Taiwan Travelogue, the connection becomes clear. All three works use food to ask larger questions about belonging, cultural memory, and the changing meanings of Taiwan. The dining table, whether in a family home, a bustling banquet hall, or the pages of a novel, remains one of the most revealing places from which to understand Taiwanese society. To eat in Taiwan is therefore never simply to consume. It is also to participate in a conversation about who Taiwanese people are, where they came from, and how they remember their past. Food may appear ordinary, but in Taiwan it often carries extraordinary cultural meaning.
Ming-yeh T. Rawnsley (蔡明燁) is a Non-Residential Research Fellow at the Taiwan Research Hub of the University of Nottingham.