Anyone Can Be a Slow Foodie:

Where is your food from?

“At first we simply wanted to run a stall and earn some money. We were surprised to learn that the Slow Food Festival didn’t automatically take on board every stallholder who applied. We had to meet their criteria,” recalls Qiu, describing how she and her husband lighted upon the slow food movement. “They visit potential participating businesses to gather information such as your view of slow food and where your food ingredients come from, while explaining to you that the festival doesn’t allow disposable tableware.”

“They asked me where I sourced my dried tofu. ‘The traditional market,’ I replied. And the pork balls? Well, they just came from the wholesale market, didn’t they? What else was I supposed to say?” The slow food movement places a high premium on food traceability, so the couple had to start all over again and design new menus that complied with the organizer’s requirements and special themes.

Subsequently Qiu and Sun relocated again within Taitung, to Luye Township, where they made some new friends who often gathered for feasts prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. On these occasions, each family would contribute a dish. “They would inquire where the foods on the table came from, who grew the vegetables, and so on,” Sun says. “The whole shebang became so stressful that I said I was going to quit. The vegetables came from either PX Mart or RT Mart—what else did they want to know?”

With the passage of time, however, the couple came to realize that Taitung is richly endowed with natural resources. In this fertile part of the island, people can buy fresh foods directly from farmers and get to know their farming methods. Having discovered that “our diets are actually so very intimately intertwined with the land, we became willing to spend a bit more money and opt for farming methods that are friendlier to the environment,” Qiu says.

Sun and Qiu set up a market stall in order to earn a living, but since entering the world of slow food, they have put slow food principles into daily practice.

Thematic challenges

The couple’s food business, Wei Yu Ji, is most widely known for a spicy sauce packed full of the flavors of various kinds of chili peppers and spices such as fennel and Sichuan peppercorns. Qiu tells us that because Wei Yu Ji specializes in condiments rather than meals or fresh agricultural produce, she and Sun find it particularly challenging to respond to the varying themes of the Slow Food Festival.

For example, the theme of “Future” in 2023 set them thinking: “The future is necessarily an accumulation of past experiences. To reach the future, we must first retrieve traditions from the past.” Embracing the concept of “inventing the future by recovering traditions,” they looked for inspiration in time-honored food ingredients. In light of the declining popularity of rice in modern Taiwan, Qiu came up with the idea of combining rice flour with local red oolong tea to make rice dumplings. These were accompanied with pork from Guanshan Township in the Huadong Valley and white shrimps from the East Coast, enhanced by Wei Yu Ji’s own creations: chili pepper sauce, and pineapple and chili jam. Qiu and Sun thus paid tribute to local flavors as they presented their vision for future ways of dining.

The slow food movement avoids the use of disposable tableware. Sun Yinliang and Qiu Yiqian look to nature and scrap materials for inspiration, seeking to give pre-used items a new lease of life. (photo by Lin Min-hsuan)

Family flavors

Sun says with a smile that these are “one-off” culinary displays, never to be repeated. Born into a family of migrants from China, Sun was raised in an environment different from the Hakka background of Qiu, who originally hails from Hsinchu. But growing up, neither of them was encouraged to dabble in the culinary arts, so they were unable to recreate the delicious flavors they were brought up with—the beef noodles and braised beef shank Sun’s father used to cook, and the Hakka dishes made by Qiu’s grandmother—and their recipes were lost. “Taking part in the slow food movement prompted us to go and rediscover our culinary roots, and we want to preserve those flavors enshrined in the memories of our families.” They learned to cook from scratch and began to present their culinary inventions at the Slow Food Festival. When these meet with a warm response there, the couple develop them into frozen ready meals for all to enjoy at home.

As the American animated film Ratatouille has it, “anyone can cook.” The motto also applies to slow food. Anyone with a sense of commitment can become a slow foodie. Sun and Qiu are perfect examples.

The Slow Food Festival has a special theme every time, putting vendors’ creativity to the test. This photo shows Wei Yu Ji’s contribution to the theme of “Delicious Aromas” in 2022: Shiokoji Pork with Ailanthus Prickly Ash Seeds and Vegetables.

Wei Yu Ji has turned its popular offerings at the Slow Food Festival, such as the spicy stinky tofu shown here, into frozen ready meals.