A Bellyful of Fine Food and the Classics

In his 57 years, Chu has eaten more than 50,000 dishes and sampled more than 1,000 Western and mainland Chinese alcoholic beverages. He’s planned themed banquets based on the classic novel The Dream of the Red Chamber, artist Chang Dai-chien’s favorites, and poet and gastronome Yuan Mei’s Sui­yuan Shi­dan; trained 36 famous female apprentices; and published 30 books printed in traditional Chinese characters and 11 in simplified. Though his life hasn’t always been wine and roses, he’s managed to eat and drink like an Immortal for many a year, enjoying a veritable cornucopia of culinary delights, beautiful women, and the arts.

 

There’s an old saying that runs, “Big businesses bully their customers; big customers bully businesses.” Chu is the kind of VIP customer whose presence in a restaurant sparks a terrified torrent of activity in its kitchen.

As for accepting only female apprentices, Chu explains it as an homage to Qing-Dynasty poet and gastronome Yuan Mei, who likewise took only female apprentices. Chu has admired Yuan Mei since first reading “Ji Mei Wen,” Yuan’s elegy to his sister, as a high-school freshman. Chu was particularly captivated by descriptions of moments when “papers flew, dust rose, and the north wind whipped across the plains.” When he later learned that Yuan was also a gourmet who had left the world a manual on food and drink, he became even more infatuated.

When you consider the grandiose life Chu has lived in this era of finding happiness in small things, how can you not envy him at least a little?

As Lin Che-hui, now deputy director of the Ministry of Justice’s Department of Legal Affairs, once told Chu: “If I could live my life over again, I’d want to be you.”

Having made the rounds of Taiwan’s restaurants for decades, Chu has earned a variety of sobriquets, including “the leading authority on the gastronomy of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and mainland China,” “the sage of food,” and “the modern god of food.” Yet he remained uncertain of his own influence until his retirement from the Investigation Bureau three years ago enabled him to begin making regular trips to the mainland. At that point, he finally realized that he had developed real culinary clout.

Taiwan contains the quintessence of Chinese food and beverage culture, and no one in Taiwan has a deeper understanding of that culture than Chu. Barred from traveling to China while with the Investigation Bureau, Chu made his first visit soon after he retired. As he told the immigration officer who asked him the purpose of his trip, he had come “to sample delicious foods.”

Chu has made a number of visits to the mainland since then, and has found himself surrounded by hordes of journalists on every one. He has also received a variety of interesting requests, including one from a professor from Jiao Tong University to tell his fortune and another from the White Horse Temple to make a calligraphic inscription. The mainland media treats him as a Taiwanese eccentric, describing him as an old-school civil servant with a halting voice, a kind of natural theatricality, and a profound knowledge of food and drink.

Chu has also rubbed shoulders with the entertainment industry. He has shared three meals with Shu Qi, and reportedly gave Hong Kong film director Mabel Cheung the idea for a Chinese version of Babette’s Feast at a banquet both attended.

Though we may envy Chu his life, the odds of any of the rest of us living a similar one are effectively zero. Chu became a titan on the culinary scene through his own unique combination of natural gifts and personal circumstances.

 

A large part of what has made Chu Chu is his wide-ranging knowledge. Over the years, he’s read even more than he’s eaten.

Chu simply loves to read. Never much interested in acquiring wealth, he prefers to spend his money on food and food-related items. He lives in a very ordinary fifth-story apartment in ­Yonghe that he purchased in 1999 and doesn’t own a computer, but he has collected several thousand volumes on food and gastronomy that he keeps in a 330-square-foot study on the roof of his building. As a young man, he spent one-and-a-half months’ salary on the complete set of Calligraphy Through the Ages in the National Palace Museum just two months after joining the Investigation Bureau. Later in his career, he used the entirety of a bonus to acquire the complete works of Shakespeare. More recently, Chu made a point of picking up a copy of the Shan Jia Qing Gong, a Southern Song Dynasty cookbook, in Shang­hai because the city’s Zhong­hua Book Company is reputed to publish the best available edition of the work.

A quick glance at his shelves reveals a series on Ming and Qing dynasty history and a volume on the history of Chinese cuisine, not to mention the collection on calligraphy standing behind an inkwell and a few brushes. All in all, it is an outstanding private library with an incredible collection of works on food. Chu passes his days here, emerging at twilight to pen a bit of calligraphy in the sun’s last rays. If not scheduled to attend a banquet, he then mulls where to have dinner with his wife, Guan Hui­ming.

Without the enormous erudition acquired through his study of these many books, Chu would never have become the leading authority on gastronomy he is today. At best he would have been a mere gourmet.

Chu’s family background also contributed to the person he has become.

Born prematurely after his mother took a fall, Chu weighed just 1.7 kilograms at birth. A fortune teller told Chu’s parents that the boy’s elemental makeup included equal parts of gold and fire, but lacked wood, water, and earth. The horoscopist explained that Chu would have a “general’s fate,” and further predicted that he would be fundamentally unbalanced, excelling at his strengths and being utterly useless at his weaknesses. Seeking to provide a counterbalance, Chu’s uncle recommended that the boy be named with the character “fan,” one that contains elements suggesting both water and earth.

Chu comes from an accomplished family, and culture is in his genes. According to the family’s genealogy book, he is a 21st-generation descendent of the Song-Dynasty scholar Zhu Xi. More immediately, his mother is an excellent cook specializing in the cuisine of Zhe­jiang and ­Jiangsu, and his father, a judge, was a gourmet who used to spend 20% of the family’s income on food. “We never skimped on meals,” recalls Chu.

By the fourth grade, he knew that serious eating meant patronizing chefs, not restaurants. The family ate meals prepared by Tang Yong­chang (known as “Ah-Tang”), the top Zhe­jiang–­Jiangsu chef of the day and trainer of the chef who founded Red Bean Dining, and by Lü Jiang­quan, head chef at the then famous Xu ­Xiang Yuan Restaurant.

These family meals helped Chu refine an already sensitive palate. He has sharpened it further in the years since, honing it to such a fine edge that he can “tell at a glance whether a dish has been cooked at the proper temperature, and enumerate from a single taste the origins and historical antecedents of an ingredient.” Truly a gastronome of the highest order, he can even offer insights on ordinary instant noodles.

Chu’s “general’s fate” is apparent in his addiction to books on exercise and the military arts, and in the natural athleticism that allowed him to master new sports effortlessly. He pitched for Ta­tong Elementary School’s baseball team at the age of 12, and was known for his unhittable sinker. Similarly adept at tennis, he took to the court for his first match just moments after being shown how to hold a racket. While a student in Fu Jen Catholic University’s Department of Law, he branched out even further, becoming the goalie of the department’s championship intramural soccer team. He also pitched and played left field on a slow-pitch softball team and center on a basketball team, and was known as a formidable spiker for his volleyball team. But the high point of his athletic “career” came during an Investigation Bureau basketball tournament when, at the age of 45, he scored ten points in just four minutes. He hung up his sneakers soon after, choosing to express his love of sports through avid ­support of the Boston Red Sox. He almost changed his mind after watching Swiss tennis star Stan Wawrinka defeat Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, and Rafael Nadal. The underdog’s victory sent endorphins coursing through Chu’s brain, making him momentarily forget the sciatica that had been hobbling him for a year.

 

But Chu is far more than just a natural athlete. He picked up painting and calligraphy as easily as he picked up sports, and loves immersing himself in classical Chinese, particularly Yuan drama and couplets.

At the age of 14, Chu received a copy of Guwen Guanzhi from his father. Intrigued, the boy read the collection of essays in his free time, absorbing the texts and so completely internalizing the style that he ultimately lost the ability to write in any other. At the age of 17, he came across a manual on physiognomy. Finding that he grasped it intuitively, almost as if he were remembering something learned in a previous life, he went on to study and memorize the classics of the field. He then moved on to Chinese astrology, and learned that he was a natural-born fortune teller.

Of course, nobody’s perfect. When Chu scored just 91 on his high school’s intelligence test, his teacher had to take him aside to offer consolation and encouragement. Chu’s strengths were his understanding of classical Chinese, his physical education and his sensitive palate. By excluding these areas, the exam had obscured his natural gifts.

Chu’s weaknesses included mathematics, English and music. Those weaknesses were particularly apparent on his university entrance exam, where his English and math scores together totaled just three points. He took the exam three times after completing his military service before finally gaining admittance to Fu Jen’s law department (a program more his parents’ choice than his own).

Chu also has difficulty with electronic devices. To this day, he still writes everything by hand, and avoids computers like the plague.

After graduation, his background in law and his writing skills landed him a job with the somewhat mysterious Investigation Bureau. While Chu handled some cases over the course of his career, he eventually asked to be transferred to a “marginal” position, such as managing the kitchen or bureau dormitory, so he wouldn’t be subject to the bureau’s three-year ban on travel to mainland China after his retirement.

At the bureau, Chu led a lunch group. On weekends, he was an active member of a supper club that sought out good meals costing less than NT$2,000 per table. Members took turns picking restaurants for the club’s outings, and those who made three bad choices were required to write the group a letter of apology. Chu’s participation in the club took him to restaurants throughout Taiwan and helped him accumulate an enormous stockpile of dining experience.

 

Known far and wide both as a gourmet and as a writer capable of discoursing on both food and history, Chu receives a near-constant stream of requests for pieces from newspapers and magazines. He recalls one particularly hectic period in which he was “working by day [at the Investigation Bureau], telling fortunes on Tuesday and Friday evenings, teaching calligraphy on Wednesday evenings, and playing tennis on Sundays, while also trying out restaurants ­every weeknight.” In the interstices, he was also producing more than 20,000 words per month. Perhaps surprisingly, he wrote his first book not on food, but on phrenology.

His first food book was 1995’s Taiwanese Fine Food. His most recent is Tasty Temptations, which its publisher, Dragon Totem Cultural Ltd., celebrated with a grand banquet at Uncle John. Attendees ran the gamut from government officials to commercial and cultural luminaries, and included the likes of author (and Chu protégé) Li Ang and Taiwan Lottery vice chairperson Liu I-cheng.

A year of intensive acupuncture and moxibustion therapy eventually brought Chu’s sciatica under control. Back on his feet, he’s been able to lunch out again, enjoying a tableful of tasty dishes with a bottle of good wine. Cleansing his palate with pu’er tea, he typically caps his meal with a cup of fine coffee.

His bohemian lifestyle regained and endless good food, good drink, and good books ahead, he nonetheless has any number of unfinished projects on his plate. Among these are three novels he’s had brewing in the back of his head for some time, including one on Shi Da­kai, one of the leaders of the Tai­ping Rebellion. Another involves Yuan Mei’s Sui­yuan Shi­dan. Chu has long felt that his annotation of the book’s opening chapter is his signature work, and he would like to annotate the other 13 chapters as well. But considering that his discussion of that first chapter ran to some 190,000 words, he’d need to produce another 2 million or so to complete his magnum opus.

Accomplished though he is, Chu recognizes the absurdity of his life. As he’s humorously written of himself:

“A self-proclaimed fortune teller and accomplished phrenologist / A scryer of fates also versed in feng­shui / Student of martial methods and teacher of strategy / Lover of history and literature who grasps their significance / Long enchanted by the scholarly path and never tiring of its charms / My greatest delight remains food and drink. / I’ve written column upon column, the majority on food. / For nigh on 20 years, I’ve delivered the masses their savor / Joyfully partaking of meat and wine, fluently discoursing on topics gastronomic / I am whimsically known as the god of food. What a laugh!”

Chu’s life truly is a never-ending banquet.

Chu Chen-fan lives a life of refined decadence, his days revolving around food and drink, literature, painting, and beautiful women.

Chu (second from left) is an inveterate reader of the Chinese classics who happens to have written his own classics on gastronomy. His literary talent seems to draw well known beauties into his orbit, including (from left to right) Claudia Lin, Rose Chao, and Chen Lanshu.