“Nga’ay ho!” Wu Hsueh-yueh, the head of the Hua­lien Indigenous Wild Vegetable Center, greets us with the Amis hello before leading us to the Chongqing Morning Market. There we find a rack full of fruits and vegetables of various shapes and sizes. Upon inquiring, we learn that they include the flower of the common reed (often called the brush vegetable), the tender stem of the Formosan rattan palm (Calamus formosanus) and gac fruit (Momordica cochinchinensis).

Markets in Hualien also offer foraged snails, which are hard to find elsewhere in Taiwan. Some stalls will prepare them for you. Stir-fried with basil and ginger and drizzled with rice wine, they make a great snack food when drinking. “You’ll find that two glasses ­aren’t enough when munching on these,” laughs a stall proprietor. “You’ll want a third and a fourth!”

Trying these delicious foods, particularly the foraged ones, is an authentic local experience not to be missed on a trip to Hualien.

Foraged vegetables are a special feature of produce markets in Hualien. Here they are on sale at the Ji’an evening market.

Foraged foods for every day

What are foraged foods? “Our elders taught us at a young age that when we grew hungry outside and had nothing to eat, we should look for plants with tender leaves. If your tongue doesn’t tingle when you lick the leaves, that’s a sign it’s a wild herb you can forage.” Sensing my incredulity, Wu explains: “Any edible plant that is growing wild, even weeds in a farmer’s fields, can be gathered for food.”

In 1995, when Wu was teaching at National Hua­lien University of Education, she began fieldwork to systematically survey wild herbs. Her Edible Wild Greens of Taiwan’s Pangcah People had its 20th printing in 2023. In addition to the original Chinese, there are also Amis and English editions.

Any discussion of edible wild plants in Taiwan inevitably involves the Amis, the most populous of Taiwan’s indigenous peoples. The Amis live in the East Rift Valley, on the Hengchun Peninsula, and along the East Coast. Wu explains that the matriarchal Amis are big consumers of wild foods. They remember how their mothers and grandmothers would pick the wild herbs that they came across when they went out to work in the fields. Even if most Amis these days are too busy with their jobs to gather wild food themselves, they still go to morning and evening markets to buy foraged vegetables to bring home to cook.

Hotpots, all the rage in Taiwan these days, are standard fare for the Amis. “We began eating hotpots when we were little,” explains Wu. “Take the famous Amis ‘ten vegetable soup,’ which contains ten different wild herbs. Foraged vegetables have always been a part of our daily lives.”

In a section of Hualien City’s Dongdamen Night Market that specializes in the foods of Taiwan’s indigenous peoples, proprietors cook foraged plants to order.

Known as “the godmother of foraged plants,” Wu Hsueh-yueh was the first person in Taiwan to systematically survey and collect the island’s wild edible plants.

Arrowroot is rich in starch, and indigenous people in Taiwan used to feed it to babies when their mothers lacked sufficient milk.

Recovering the right to forage

Every Amis has his or her own secret foraging spots. Says Wu: “Amis eat and gather herbs, and ­wherever they live, they will eat wild tender leaves and grasses. The Amis who live along the coast also forage for the snails, shellfish and seaweed in the inter­tidal zone.”

When Wu served on the Indigenous Historical Justice and Transitional Justice Committee, she proposed revising the regulations governing indigenous people’s rights to forage for foods in forests. The revisions were passed in 2019, loosening restrictions on indigenous people’s rights to forage and permitting them to gather herbs, grasses and fruits in the areas where they have traditionally lived, as well as on public lands such as national forests.

“But we don’t pull out the plants by the roots and we never pick an area so clean that the plants won’t grow back. Our foraging is sustainable in practice.” Wu explains that in December of 2020 Hualien County magistrate Hsu Chen-wei proposed using a vacant county lot near Meilunshan Park as the site for the Hualien Indigenous Wild Vegetable Center, which holds hands-on courses and exhibitions that shine a spotlight on local practices that embody the traditional food culture of indigenous peoples. These disseminate greater understanding about the value of wild edible plants.

Star jelly, or “lovers’ tears” as it is known in Taiwan, tastes great fried with eggs.

A fixture at restaurants featuring foraged foods, star jelly is now being farmed.

Covered with thorns, yellow rattan is hard to handle, but its heart is a popular ingredient in many restaurants’ spare rib soups.

Biodiversity and lowered carbon footprints

Italy gave birth to the Slow Food organization and movement, which has spread around the world. Currently, one of its top goals is advocating for biodiversity plans that help to preserve endangered foods and safeguard culinary traditions. That objective is perfectly in step with the foraging culture of the Amis.

“Wild edible plants are an expression of biodiversity,” says Wu. Austronesian nations also eat wing beans and pigeon peas, and she saw ornamental eggplant (Solanum integrifolium), fiddleheads (young fern fronds) and other vegetables common to Amis cuisine in small farmer’s markets in Paris and Italy. Fiddleheads, which in Hualien are usually Pteris wallichiana, tend to be sticky and bitter, but blanching reduces their bitterness. They are delicious stir-fried or deep-fried.

She continues: “Indigenous communities around the world are similar in that their food cultures are in sync with the ethos of the slow food movement.” For instance, eating locally grown food in season means that the food will be fresher and more nutritious, while also reducing food miles and carbon footprints.

Foraged foods used to be a way to ease hunger and malnutrition and were truly wild. Because they are very hardy, they can serve to combat food crises created by climate change. For instance, star jelly (Nostoc commune), known as “lover’s tears” in Taiwan, appears to dry out completely under the sun but then springs to life after a rain.

With growing demand for bird’s-nest fern, more and more farmers are growing it.

An ingenious and creative chef, Sera Kahengangay of the Mu Ming Restaurant won a gold medal in 2023 at the Oceania International Master Chef Challenge in New Zealand.

Blanching reduces the bitterness of ornamental eggplant (a.k.a. “pumpkin on a stick”), but the plant’s distinctive flavor still comes through after roasting or frying.

Gold medal for wild food

In 2021 Hualien County sponsored the world’s first slow food forum with an emphasis on indigenous cooking. Sera Kahengangay, a member of the Taiwan Indigenous Peoples Cooks’ Alliance and spokes­person for Indigenous Terra Madre 2023, won a gold medal in 2023 at the Oceania International Master Chef Challenge in New Zealand. He recalls: “When I heard I had won, I teared up because I was so moved to be able to represent Amis cuisine from Taiwan, and see items such as alivongvong and Amis-style lobster balls with scallions gain international recognition.”

An alivongvong is a pouch woven from pandanus leaves that is stuffed with rice to be eaten when out hunting or working in the fields. Because it is so time consuming to weave, it is also known as “love’s lunch box.”

Sera explains that the concept behind his Mu Ming Restaurant is to show how Amis mothers cooked and how the Amis used to eat every day. For instance, when stewing pig’s knuckle, he uses shellflower (Alpinia) root instead of ginger, a technique learned from his grandmother. On the other hand, it was his grandfather who taught him to stuff fish bellies with lemongrass before grilling. It gives the fish a subtle lemony fragrance.

By making the most of wild vegetables, he challenges customers’ preconceptions about ingredients and broadens their horizons. For instance, he uses shellflower oil, ailanthus prickly ash (Zanthoxylum ailanthoides), aromatic litsea (Litsea cubeba), and Taiwan cinnamon berries (Cinnamomum insularimontanum) to make flavored oils and sauces that he uses for salad dressings and appetizers. Cinnamon is a member of the laurel family and the berries carry a scent hinting of lemon and ginger. Then there’s the Amis version of wasabi: wavy bittercress (Cardamine flexuosa), a wild plant that only grows from November to February or March. It is less pungent than Chinese onion and pairs well with sashimi or salted pork.

As for the flavorful soup made by boiling papaya, pumpkin, taro, and amaranth, Sera, with a sense of humor typical of the Amis, chuckles and says, “It’s so rich because I forgot to turn off the burner.”

Make a point of visiting local food markets when you find yourself in Hualien and Taitung. Offering so many wild herbs, they provide visitors with chances to discover flavors rooted deeply in local cuisine that will surpass one’s wildest imaginings.

Stuffing fish with lemongrass gives it a lemony flavor.

An alivongvong is a pouch woven from pandanus leaves that is stuffed with rice and steamed.

Featuring rich layers of flavor, the Mu Ming Restaurant’s “foraged vegetable soup” is authentic Amis cuisine.