Local delicacies on the menu
Following Shisanjian Old Street to its very end, Valai, a café-restaurant making cuisine from local produce, comes into view. In Atayal valai means “authentic” or “real,” but local Hakka have borrowed it to mean “awesome” or “phenomenal.” It is a great example of the melting pot of cultures that is Nanzhuang.
Valai serves food and drink of the chef’s own invention made from seasonal local ingredients. In spring they have makino bamboo shoots, and in winter chicken soup simmered with shiitake mushrooms grown on wooden logs by local Aboriginal residents. The shop’s pepper-and-honey tea uses honey grown by local small farmers, mixed with berries of maqaw (oriental spicebush—Lindera angustifolia) picked in the wild by indigenous people.
In days gone by the scenery along Provincial Highway 3, which runs through this area, was typified by “one stratum of rice paddies, one stratum of tea bushes, and one stratum of tangerines.” The local Hakka people adapted to nature by growing different crops at different altitudes. Sadly, this tradition and all of its cultural meaning have been fading away. That is why Valai sells things like fanzhuang tea (a regional specialty grown for Valai the traditional way by a tea farmer under special contract), tart tangerine tea (a uniquely Hakka drink), and orange-flavored rice-flour cookies, hoping that the rice/tea/tangerine vista can again become commercially viable.
The young people who have come together here on Shisanjian Old Street are another embodiment of Nanzhuang’s concoction of cultures that is always on the boil. Valai owner Chiu Hsing-wei says: “We want to turn Shisanjian Old Street into a cultural reader that people can peruse at their leisure.” This little town nestled deep amidst forested mountains, a town with surprisingly rich cultural offerings, is waiting for you!
Liu Ying-hwa (right) gave up city life to move to the country and Shisanjian Old Street. She threads together elements of Nanzhuang’s pluralistic culture with her own unifying design theme, expressing the idea that everyone’s well-being is interconnected.