History on the Tongue:

Clarissa Wei was born in Los Angeles. Her parents came from Tainan, celebrated as Taiwan’s culinary capital. Brought up in a community with many residents of Taiwanese heritage, she recalls her parents’ weekly hour-long drive to 99 Ranch Market, an Asian supermarket established by a Taiwanese-American merchant. She also visited Taiwan with her parents during winter and summer breaks. Growing up, she “never thought there was anything unusual or exotic about Taiwanese food.”

Taiwanese heritage

In 2020, newly married, Wei and her husband relocated from Hong Kong to Taiwan. She has been in Taiwan for six years, and both of her children were born here.

Wei started writing about food 15 years ago, while studying at New York University. Her academic background and special upbringing enable her to capture the essence of Taiwanese cuisine while highlighting cultural elements that attract people in Western countries.

Her first book, Made in Taiwan, appeared in 2023, just as Taiwan was gaining considerable international ­visibility. The volume drew substantial attention in both America and Taiwan.

Things had been very different when she first approached publishers in 2019. Many people still confused Taiwan with Thailand and showed little interest in Taiwanese topics. But in 2020, with the implementation of the National Security Law in Hong Kong and the Covid-19 pandemic, Taiwan found itself at the center of international attention. In response, Wei changed her book’s direction. Rather than merely introducing Taiwanese recipes, it would explore Taiwan’s unique culture and history through its cuisine.

Clarissa Wei’s books Made in Taiwan and Sitting the Month have a wide readership in the English-speaking world. (courtesy of Clarissa Wei)

Clarissa Wei promoting Sitting the Month on a book tour in the USA. (courtesy of Clarissa Wei)

An identity of its own

The cover of Made in Taiwan features a dark green frame that pays tribute to Taiwan Beer, around a photograph of three-cup chicken (sanbeiji) and chilled bamboo shoots, two staples of local stir-fry eateries.

“Like me, many people of Taiwanese descent form their views of Taiwanese food through their parents. But their parents’ impressions of Taiwanese food may be stuck in time, dating back to when they left Taiwan 30 years ago,” Wei says. With Taiwanese food treated as a branch of Chinese cuisine or reduced to stinky tofu, beef noodles, and pearl milk tea, “few people really understand what Taiwanese food means.” “As no book had been published on the subject, I thought I’d write one myself.”

Through firsthand interviews, as well as historical and cultural research, Wei has proven that Taiwanese food is as complex as Taiwan’s history, and has come into its own. For example, while soy sauce, rice vinegar, and rice wine originated in China, their production in Taiwan was gradually standardized and industrialized during the Japanese colonial era (1895–1945).

Chinese immigrants brought black soybean soy sauce to Taiwan in the 18th century, but the kind most commonly sold today in Taiwan is made from soybeans and wheat, as in Japan. Meanwhile Taiwan’s most popular rice, Penglai, is a japonica variety developed by the Japanese in the colonial era to suit Japanese palates and Taiwan’s subtropical and tropical climates. Taiwan is the southernmost place in the Northern Hemisphere where this short-grain rice is grown and consumed on a large scale.

“These insights all demonstrate that Taiwanese food can’t be subsumed under Chinese cuisine. It has an identity entirely its own,” says Wei. “My parents’ families put down roots in Taiwan several hundred years ago. It’s just like the USA, which is only 250 years old, but that’s enough to make the country what it is now. My white friends don’t say they’re eating ‘British’ food, because the recipes and flavors have changed so much over the ­centuries.”

Clarissa Wei believes that once stereotypes are set aside, much of Taiwan’s rich culinary culture is worth introducing to people from other countries: for example, the diverse range of rice foods, vegetarian dainties, and stir-fried dishes that reflect the spirit of modern Taiwanese cuisine. (MOFA file photo)

Distinctively local

To reflect Taiwan’s culinary landscape, Wei includes a chapter on “Beer Food” in Made in Taiwan. It introduces rechao—“hot stir-fried” dishes typically enjoyed with beer at streetside eateries, a culinary tradition which arose in the 1980s. Many such dishes are also served at home, and are down-to-earth examples of “modern Taiwanese cuisine.”

Wei recommends the cooking classes at Siang Kháu Lū Cultural Kitchen in Taoyuan’s Daxi District, where international visitors can make rice cakes from scratch and explore Taiwan’s rich rice culture. She also recommends local vegetarian self-service restaurants, with their dazzling diversity of soy-based foods and plant-based vegetarian “meats.”

Wei’s seemingly effortless descriptions are rooted in her passionate explorations of Taiwanese culture, and distil the daily lives of people across these islands. Her words exude a confidence that is grounded in solid facts and a clear sense of her own identity.

To introduce Western consumers to Taiwan’s time-honored, down-to-earth flavors, Clarissa Wei has established Heydoh, a condiment brand focused on traditional Taiwanese black soybean soy sauce. (courtesy of Clarissa Wei)

Clarissa Wei looks happy and relaxed while enjoying street foods outside Cisheng Temple in Taipei’s Dadaocheng area.