Yeh Yilan, who has been editor-in-chief at Arch, Interior Design, and Vogue, got tired of managing people and in 1998 suddenly quit her job and went abroad to travel for two years. During this extended vacation, she roamed around in her own fashion, sampling the national cuisines of various countries, until she finally discovered the role that she wanted for herself. The experiences she had on this journey have been the foundation for her approach to food criticism since.
After returning to Taiwan, her media connections provided her with the chance to write restaurant reviews in various magazines. She also worked for a short time at TTimes, a pioneering Internet newspaper. She was thus able to immediately establish herself within food-criticism circles, and had an opportunity to begin learning about Internet publishing.
At the end of 1999, URL announced that it was recruiting someone to run its own Internet e-paper. Yeh Yilan was a coveted candidate because of her strong background in the Internet and in cuisine, and was subsequently hired. Within a few months of its founding, the number of subscribers to "Yilan's House of Gourmet Living" soared to nearly 20,000. This was very encouraging for her, and she took her personal plunge: She quit her job, and began a more leisurely existence of writing what she wanted and "enjoying the finer things in life."
Food criticism is a relatively new thing in Taiwan, but it has been popular in the marketplace right from the start. In order to distinguish herself from the culinary reviews in magazines such as HERE and TaipeiWalker, Yeh Yilan had to develop her own style and approach.
"I concluded from my observations that culinary criticism in Taiwan generally had two defining features: It was data-heavy and Chinese-oriented," says Yeh. Most of the food magazines provided simple information, but could not provide genuine suggestions to readers, and most of the review articles were focused on Chinese food, with few articles addressing mass-market tastes. So she began to write articles about Taiwanese food and about small mom-and-pop type restaurants, creating a market niche for herself.
In addition, Yeh Yilan likes to use the first person in her writing. "I think of the paper as being like a letter. When readers receive their issue, it should be like a good friend telling them her thoughts about life and food."
Yeh says that the main reason she has been more successful than others is that she straddles the line between traditional print media and the new Internet media.
"Right now most people still place greater trust in the authority of those who write in the print media, but I also have an Internet following that print media writers do not enjoy," she avers. What is most exciting to her is that this cross-fertilization makes it possible that culinary writing will grow in Taiwan.
However, working independently means no fixed salary; her current monthly income is usually only about half of her previous take-home pay, and sometimes is less than a third. This poses a real problem. However, Yeh says that she really enjoys what she is doing, and when she produces each issue of her e-paper she does the best possible job she can, without calculating costs or time. She has also invested in learning new skills like webpage software use. As a result her newsletter has set two records: It is the first e-paper in Taiwan to be published in color, and is the first e-paper to produce culinary criticism written in the first person that offers insights and ideas, not just basic information.
A hidden online population of gourmands has surfaced, threaded together by Yeh's e-paper. This group of subscribers, comprised mainly of office workers in their 20s and 30s, has also become the core group for Yeh Yilan's personal website.
"I did not set out deliberately to organize a group of people with common interests. Perhaps it is that people who really enjoy fine dining have a lot to talk about, so there's a great deal of interaction among the members of my website," she says. She has subscribers all around the world, and ordinarily, if anyone in any location has a culinary question, or if her e-paper is not updated quickly enough, she will immediately hear from her Internet friends. The result is that her website has become the center of an epicurean information network that stretches out across the globe.
The high loyalty of the Internet community and their passion for food have created numerous commercial opportunities for Yeh Yilan's e-paper and website. In addition to specialized books, which sell very well, she offers a number of other products and services to her Internet community. For example, she sells foods that she recommends but are not available in Taiwan; sells information about food and restaurants; and organizes various group dining activities.
"Web friends are really very enthusiastic, and a lot of my food products are gifts that friends from the Web have brought back from abroad," says Yeh Yilan. And each time there is a group meal, the available spots are filled up within three minutes after the announcement goes online. It's really gratifying.
But she is still not making much money.
"Because everyone is so nice, I'm embarrassed to charge too much for the food products. And I'm always afraid when we go for group dinners that there won't be enough food for everyone to eat their fill, so I often order so many dishes that by the end of the meal there's only a 'profit' of a few hundred NT dollars," laughs Yeh.
But Yeh is, after all, not doing this for the money, so she doesn't care. What she really wants to do is establish her own "name brand," so that the word "Yilan" will one-day become a guarantee of high-quality food.
You can find Yeh Yilan at: http://www.yilan.com.tw.
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Yeh Yilan, a new force in the Internet food criticism community, likes to try new things. In the photo she is trying a dish of Japanese curry, specially prepared for her by a chef, with fettuccini instead of oolong noodles. "It's certainly got character!" she says. (photo by Pu Hua-chih)
