Old Flavors Never Die, They Just Fade Away

ne of Taipei's oldest military depend-ents' villages-"44 South Village" in Hsinyi District, built in 1950-is about to be demolished and redeveloped. This has aroused a wave of regret and nostalgia in society. But as well as telling stories recalling the early days and how they built their homes from nothing, many former residents also ask after the village's noodle shop, known far and wide for its spice-stewed foods. "Whatever happened to the 'Little Hyatt'? Have they shut up shop, or moved away? And where to?"

The Sichuan-style sausage and cured pork of Hsinchu City's Air Force Fourth Village are made by the same methods which Chu Yang Pi-ching brought from her old home years ago. Though nearly 100, she still keeps a watchful eye on her grandson Chu Chien-kang to see he gets it right.

The large numbers of ordinary servicemen and their families who came with the ROC government when it moved to Taiwan at the end of the civil war brought with them all kinds of local dishes from every Chinese province. Such dishes not only staved off these displaced mainlanders' hunger and provided a focus for their homesickness, but also enriched Taiwan's cuisine, transforming our little island into a gourmet paradise. The strongholds from which this culinary conquest began were the military dependents' villages, where service families lived in the greatest numbers.

Shandong-born Chang Chao-yu didn't have the capital to start up a large business, so instead he invested his own labor and opened a breakfast eatery serving shaobing and soybean milk. Thirty-odd years later, his shaobing are still part of the traditional food scene o f the military dependents' villages around Tainan's Nanmen and Hsimen Roads. （photo by Hsueh Chi-kuang）

Today, as more and more military dependents' villages are being redeveloped, where has the wind carried their cuisines?

After plans to redevelop 44 South Village were confirmed, the "Little Hyatt"-or, to use its official name, the "South Village Cafe"-moved to a spot opposite Hsinyi Junior High School, to become just another regular eatery among the ground-floor shops of a long row of tall buildings.

"Now we only have half the space we used to, and we're in a residential area and close to a school. It's not suitable for late-night business, so we've gone over to only opening from lunchtime till dinnertime. But that way we've lost half our old customers." Owner Li Yun-mei says that back in the village their premises may have been dilapidated, but there was more free space outside, and along the alley they had rigged up an awning under which they could set up folding tables for customers as the need arose. When business was good they could serve as many as 40 or 50 tables, and they stayed open from late afternoon until well past midnight. The long row of crowded tables in the lamplight under the awning made for as lively and heartwarming a sight as the throng at an outdoor theater performance. It looked as bustling as the nearby Hyatt Hotel, so customers called the cafe the "Little Hyatt."

Although its old atmosphere is gone, the cafe still offers a handsome selection of dishes. Noodles, luwei (foods stewed in a spicy gravy), steamed crabs and gherkin salad are the specialities of the house. They hand-roll their noodles themselves; the flavors of their luwei beef, duck wings, chicken livers, seaweed and tofu skin are just right; their steamed crabs taste fresh, sweet and natural; and the sesame sauce with which they top off their gherkin salad gives it an enticingly rich and mellow aroma.

Li Yun-mei, whose parents came from Shandong Province, says that about 20 years ago when her father retired from the army, his military pension was very small. With six children to feed, her parents decided to set up an eatery in the village to make ends meet. They had never studied under a chef, so the dishes they served up were all ones they often cooked at home. Because they prepared the food carefully, used good ingredients and did not skimp on the portions, they attracted a large clientele, mainly from among nearby Hsinyi District office workers.

"At first they sold jiaozi [ boiled filled dumplings ] and baozi [steamed stuffed buns]," recalls Li Yun-mei. "It took a lot of work, all by hand. First you had to mix the filling, make the dough and let it rise, and roll the skins. Then you had to take the skins in the palm of your hand one by one, fill them and pinch them shut. We worked till two or three o'clock every morning, but we still only made three or four thousand jiaozi. When we opened up at lunchtime the next day these would sell out in no time, and we were too busy to make any more. Later, we switched to things that were less work, such as hand-stretched noodles, with which we made thick noodle soup, fried noodles and so on." Even so, says Li, it was hard to keep up with all the work. Her father died three years ago, and today she runs the cafe with her two sisters. As the one in charge, she has to work 16 hours a day on average, and when her daughter comes home from junior high school each day she too has to help by making gherkin salad.

The Chen Family Salted Duck Shop in Tsoying has been open more than half a century. Nanjing-born Chen Chia-li has taught all his skills to his devoted daughter-in-law of 28 years. （photo by Hsueh Chi-kuang）

Compounded nostalgia

In 1949 the ROC government relocated from mainland China to Taiwan, and from 1950 onwards, to accommodate married servicemen and their families, all over Taiwan makeshift shelters were built with wooden frames and walls of bamboo lattice daubed with a mixture of rice straw and mud. Each unit in each branch of the armed forces would build its own compound, separated from the outside world by a wall. These were the settlements known today as "military dependents' villages."

In the words of Professor Lu Yao-tung of National Taiwan University's history department, by the time these refugees who had been driven from their homes by the fighting, or had simply panicked and fled the mainland with the retreating government forces, had begun to get over their terrifying experiences, "the days when people believed the mainland could be retaken from the communists in 'three years of counterattack and four years of mopping up' were over. Youthful dreams of returning home with their comrades were fading, and their homeland itself seemed ever more dim and distant. When autumn winds blew they would be struck with nostalgic melancholy. As time went on, in many cases their interest in events back home may have waned, but what they missed most was the food of their native place." Lu, a well known epicure, comments that these newcomers differed little in this respect from earlier settlers-the ancestors of the "Taiwanese"-who came from the mainland bringing not only statues of Matsu, the guardian spirit of sailors, but also various downhome recipes.

Lu Yao-tung notes that when snack-type foods from various parts of mainland China made their appearance in Taiwan, they served not only as an antidote to homesickness, but also as a means of earning a living. Armed forces pay was rather low at that time, and many servicemen's families supplemented their income by selling snacks and other foods. Thus the military dependents' villages became a repository of local snack cuisines from various parts of the mainland.

Serving cheap but generous portions of good-quality, simple food with the authentic flavor of back home became the forte of dependents' village eateries. Compared with the fashion in today's catering industry for creating a trendy marketing image through commercial design and advertising, they seem to give especially good value for money, which is why so many experienced eaters-out are always on the lookout for them. But with the march of time, many of these little eateries are closing down or moving.

Edible propaganda

Four years ago, a "Dependents' Village Everyday Culture" event was held in the Peiyuan neighborhood of Tainan City, which is made up mainly of military dependents' villages. One of the items featured was a display of "Mother's Secret Recipes." A long table was filled with all kinds of dishes: deep-fried mahua (dough twists), gangzitou (hard wheatcakes), wheat-flour porridge, puffed-rice cakes, lardy rice, roasted sweet potatoes, cold noodles, huibing (soft wheatcakes cut up and cooked in soup), dough drop soup, rice gruel with mung beans. . . .

Some of these dishes are seasonal, while others are staple foods, and quite a few are similar to local Taiwanese snacks. "Back then both Taiwanese and mainlanders were poor, so everyone ate whatever was cheapest!" says event organizer Tsao Sen. Over a dozen dishes were on display, but on closer inspection, he says, they were all based on just three main ingredients: wheat flour, rice and sweet potatoes.

With a wry smile, Tsao explains that although these three ingredients are very cheap today, foods made from wheat flour or rice did not become common in military dependents' villages until after 1953, because it was only then that their residents began to receive grain rations. If they wanted to eat rice or noodles they had to barter their valuables for them. Their staple food was mostly sweet potatoes, which they ate steamed or in rice gruel.

Even after they had grain rations, most service families still continued to scrimp and save. For instance, it takes a lot of oil to fry mahua, and the dough is made with eggs, so this "high-class food" was rarely eaten. It was only at Chinese New Year, when the grown-ups loosened the purse-strings a little, that Mother would fry up a big batch. But even then many would be given away to neighbors to add to the festive spirit.

Puffed-rice cakes were also a luxury snack which was only made once in a while. In those days rice and oil were both very dear, so although mothers couldn't stop their children pestering them, they couldn't bring themselves to buy puffed-rice cakes either. Later someone came up with the idea of providing one's own rice and oil, and only paying the vendors for their work. But even then, because the rice ration was not very large, eating puffed-rice cakes was a dream which only came true once in a very long while.

However, many of the other items were everyday fare in the military dependents' villages. Such things as large Shandong flatbread, roast mantou (steamed bread), and especially gangzitou-sometimes imprinted with such slogans as "Fight communism, resist Russia"-were thoroughly typical northern Chinese foods. They were hard, took a lot of chewing, and kept well, and because they were often eaten in the armed forces, army cooks from north China could all make them. Thus these cheap, filling items were the first to become popular among ordinary people in Taiwan.

Another northern Chinese food, wheat-flour porridge, was also a mainstay of dependents' village life. It is made by stir-frying wheat flour in a dry wok, then adding hot water to make a porridge-like mush with a taste similar to rice milk or oatmeal porridge. Wheat-flour porridge was usually eaten for breakfast by adults and as a snack by children, but if times were hard it could also stand in for milk powder as a staple baby food.

From a modern culinary perspective, these foods tend to be bland or greasy in flavor-belly-fillers at best. They would not really live up to today's gourmet standards, but having been a part of people's childhoods, they are a reminder of the joys and sorrows of those difficult years, and as such they still have a very special place in people's memories.

To market, to market

If the food seemed tasty, the markets where it was sold were interesting places too. In the early years, the families of servicemen, civil servants and teachers were allotted grain rations, but vegetables, meat, fish and other non-staple foods still had to be bought in the ordinary way. Back then the inhabitants of military dependents' villages did not understand Taiwanese dialect and had their own distinct lifestyles, so they rarely went out to shop at local traditional markets. Instead, traders mostly went into the villages and set up markets on squares or empty plots of land, and as a result vegetable markets became an obligatory part of the dependents' village scene. Especially later, as people's lives became more settled and they had more money in their pockets, they could afford to eat out now and then, and going to the market for breakfast became one of their main leisure activities.

Chou Chao-ching, who was born in 1964 in a military dependents' village in Hsinchu City, recalls how when she was little, every morning when she got up she would ask her mother for NT$2 to go to the market for breakfast. "In those days the market not only had stalls selling mainland-style foods like shaobing [sesame-covered wheatcakes], youtiao [deep-fried twisted dough sticks], soybean milk, wonton-and-noodle soup, mantou, baozi, congyoubing [thick, oily pancakes with chopped scallion], jiucai hezi [fried pasties filled with Chinese chives etc.], xiaolongbao [small open-topped steamed meat dumplings] and egg pancakes, but also local Taiwanese foods like fagao [sweet steamed rice-flour sponge cake], honggui [red, turtle-shaped glutinous rice cakes], wan'gao [glutinous rice cakes molded in a bowl] and broad rice noodles, and even foreign foods such as bread and sponge cake. You could eat something different every day-it was great fun."

Another function of the village market was as a place where culinary knowledge was exchanged and where cooking styles merged. As housewives and older men, shopping basket on arm, chatted with whoever they met at the market or at roadside stalls, they would ask: "How do they cook this back where you come from?" Thus they swapped all kinds of recipes. Chou Chao-ching says that in this way her mother learned to make all kinds of tasty foods, such as candied ginger, candied garlic, chilli sauce, zongzi (steamed glutinous-rice dumplings), sausage, cured pork and fermented beancurd. "The women in military dependents' villages in those days all seemed to get along very harmoniously on the surface, but secretly many were very competitive, and this was revealed most clearly in the way they tried to outdo each other in the kitchen. Even the most ordinary housewife might be capable of making dishes in the style of several different Chinese provinces."

Mrs. Feng of Chihkai Air Force New Village in Tainan is of Taiwanese descent, but after marrying into a military dependents' village she learned how to make dishes from all over mainland China. Today, with time on her hands, she sells some of her home cooking at the market, thereby bringing comfort to many who yearn for the old tastes of home. （photo by Hsueh Chi-kuang）

Dachen rice cakes

Most military dependents' villages contained a mix of people from all over mainland China, and were culinary melting pots. But some were well known for being home to people from a single region.

For instance, after mainland China fell to the communists, Dachen Island off the coast of Zhejiang Province was used by the ROC government as a base from which to launch counterattacks. The islanders were organized into a guerrilla force to help the ROC forces attack the communists on the mainland. But in 1954, in the face of heavy communist bombardments, the government decided to abandon the island and move its more than 10,000 residents to Taiwan, where they were settled in various cities and counties, particularly Taipei, Ilan and Hualien. Thus many Dachen military dependents' villages came into being.

They too brought with them their traditional local cuisine, such as white, unsweetened new year rice cakes in the style of the Zhejiang city of Ningbo; fish noodles, made with fish meat as an ingredient of the noodles themselves; and dried eels. In the early years the residents of the Dachen villages around Chungho and Yungho in Taipei County used to dry fish and fish noodles on the dikes along the Hsintien River. The rows of drying frames stretching for many yards, and the aroma of fresh fish, seemed to authentically recreate the scene of life in a Dachen Island fishing village.

Today, with the redevelopment of military dependents' villages and the growth of the cities, the Dachen communities in Chungho and Yungho have been scattered. But the Chou Family New Year Rice Cake Shop under Chungcheng Bridge in Yungho is still one of the main places where Dachen islanders and their descendants go to stock up with the foods of their old homeland. The shop's owner, Chou A-fa, relates how back on the island his father lived mainly by fishing, but supplemented his income by steaming rice cakes and drying fish. After Chou A-fa came to Taiwan he couldn't go fishing, so he made his living by making and selling traditional foods. Today, he lives three generations under one roof with his children and grandchildren, and although he has handed over the running of the business to his third son Chou Kuo-ming, he still works in the shop from morning till night making rice cakes.

Chou Kuo-ming says that not only the Dachen islanders, but also people from elsewhere in Zhejiang including the Wenzhou area, along with Shanghai and parts of Jiangsu, eat new year rice cakes in the same Ningbo style. The Chou family make their rice cakes completely in the traditional manner, and take care to use good-quality rice, so the cakes are properly pliable and chewy. Hence as well as doing good business throughout the year, in the fortnight before Chinese New Year they do a roaring trade, and have to grind nearly 1200 kilograms of glutinous rice to cope with the demand. "In the past most of our customers came from nearby military dependents' villages, but now they come from all over Taiwan, and even people who have emigrated overseas come in person or send someone to buy rice cakes to take back abroad with them."

The Chou family rice cake shop in Taipei County's Yungho City. In the run-up to the Chinese New Year, the whole family has to pitch in making rice cakes to keep up with the demand from customers in search of that authentic Zhejiang flavor.

Over the bridge and far away

Chungchen New Village, near Lungkang outside Chungli City in Taoyuan County, is a stronghold of people from Yunnan Province. During the withdrawal from mainland China, one army regiment slowly retreated from the border area between Yunnan and Burma, fighting a guerrilla campaign as they went. When they eventually arrived in Taiwan, most were settled around Lungkang. Being well away from Chungli city center, these villages have not yet been affected by redevelopment. The traditional lifestyle has been retained to this day, and the Yunnan cuisine is still thoroughly authentic. Here one can eat many Yunnan foods which are difficult to find elsewhere, including snack foods such as "over the bridge" rice vermicelli (rice vermicelli and other ingredients cooked at the table by dipping them in hot chicken soup), migan (rice flour cakes cut into strips) and pea jelly, and restaurant dishes like steamed chicken, pork skin, fish gelatin and deep-fried milk curds.

"Life here doesn't seem to have changed in decades," says Hu Chiung-hua, who was born in Chungchen New Village but has lived in a nearby neighborhood since her marriage. She is still in the habit of going shopping at the market in Chungchen every morning, and while she is there she goes to her friend's cafe for a bowl of migan and a chat. The old village, the old flavors and her old friends mean that she rarely feels threatened by the pace of social change. The Hsinienlai migan shop, run by her childhood playmate Chen Mei-lien, is one of her favorite haunts. "Just like me, she's almost never left the village, so she's carried on completely in the same tradition as her parents, and she cooks really authentic Yunnan food," says Hu.

Chen Mei-lien was born in 1959, and her mother opened an eatery when she was five months old. Growing up in the shop, she naturally learned how to make all these traditional foods, and as a teenager she was able to help in the kitchen. After she graduated from the home economics department of Shih Chien College she didn't go out and find a job, but went straight back home to help her mother with the business. Later, when her mother passed on the shop to her eldest brother, she found other premises and opened another branch. She doesn't feel at all that this line of business is outdated. "I'm interested in these things and I have a talent for them, and as a child I lived through the hard early years of the business, so I feel proud to be carrying on with it," she says.

World Soybean Milk Magnate, located in Yungho near Chungcheng Bridge, grew into a 24-hour-a-day operation under its founder, Li Tseng-yun （right）. Now his son Li Ching-yu （left） has brought in modern management methods, and plans to expand the business b y opening a chain of branches.

A homegrown McDonald's

No doubt rejecting change is a way of maintaining tradition; but to survive in the real world one may have to embrace change. Despite the disappearance of their former environment, many military dependents' village snack foods have found a wider appeal and entered the life of the Taiwanese public at large. Eateries selling shaobing, youtiao and soybean milk are the most widespread example.

This trio of products was once the monopoly of people from Shandong Province, but because they are easy to make-all that is required is the willingness to get up in the middle of the night to crush soybeans and bake the shaobing-many NCOs learned to make them from army cooks or their fellow officers, and on leaving the forces opened a shaobing shop to earn a living. In the early days they paid little attention to decor-in fact the more ramshackle the premises, the less they cost. Before they had electric ovens, they would bake the shaobing in makeshift furnaces made from a large earthenware water pot set inside an oil drum with the top cut off. They would light a charcoal fire inside the pot, and when the coals were glowing and the pot was hot they would stick the shaobing against the inside of the pot to bake.

When one talks of shaobing and soybean milk shops today, the name Yungho takes pride of place. In the streets and alleys of communities throughout Taiwan, one can find shaobing and soybean milk shops which claim to have their roots in Yungho, and which stay open from breakfast time until late into the night, or even right around the clock.

World Soybean Milk Magnate, the first such shop in Taipei County's Yungho City, was opened by Li Yun-tseng after he first came to Yungho in 1955. In those days, he recounts, the city did not have a large population. Trade came in fits and starts, and he was on the verge of closing down. But then around 1961 the project to widen Chungcheng Bridge and Yungho Road brought large numbers of construction workers into the city, and they became his clientele. From then on business picked up, and other operators were attracted to start up in competition. By 1971, along only a 100-meter stretch of Yungho Road under Chungcheng Bridge, over ten shaobing and soybean milk shops were concentrated, and these became a well known Yungho landmark.

"With more and more customers coming in all day, Father had to stay open longer and longer, and in 1975 he started opening 24 hours." Second-generation owner Li Ching-yu, who now runs the business, says that at that time growing prosperity was bringing an increase in night-time leisure activities. After, say, an evening's mahjong, people would come out looking for a midnight snack. Thus in addition to shaobing and youtiao, Li senior also started selling snacks such as xiekehuang (a type of small, refined shaobing with flaky pastry and a sweet or savory filling), deep-fried shredded radish cakes, and Malay steamed sponge cake.

Twenty-eight-year-old Li Ching-yu went to senior high school and university in Canada, and graduated in economics. After he took over his father's business four years ago, he introduced modern management methods. He not only redecorated and enlarged the premises, set up a limited company and instituted a profit sharing and stock ownership scheme for employees, but recently also embarked on an expansion plan calling for opening new branches, like a home-grown McDonald's. "Shaobing and soybean milk are traditional foods, but they still have a lot of potential. Soybean milk is seen as a health food both here and overseas, and shaobing are well accepted too," says Li. "We're also working hard to develop and introduce new products such as fried radish cake and Portuguese egg tarts, to attract a younger clientele."

Chen Mei-yun of Chungchen New Village near Chungli has stepped into her mother's shoes as an expert Yunnan-style cook. Customers come from far and wide just to taste her rice noodles.

"Sichuanese" beef noodle soup

However, examples like Chen Mei-lien and World Soybean Milk Magnate are the minority. Over the past half-century social change in Taiwan has been rapid, and military dependents' villages are being relocated and redeveloped at an ever-increasing pace, so that these special foods are losing their "habitat." For instance, because Tsoying in Kaohsiung City is home to a naval base and is surrounded by military dependents' villages such as Mingte, Chienyeh and Tsuli, eateries sprang up near Tsoying's Chungshan Hall selling all kinds of foods like northeastern-Chinese pickled cabbage, Nanjing-style ruyicai (a stir-fried mixture of seven or eight different vegetables) and crispy rice balls. The area became a major leisure attraction, but a road widening scheme a few years ago forced the vendors to move away, and the area has lost its previous liveliness, much to the dismay of former patrons.

Due to changing values, second-generation residents of military dependents' villages are not eager to take over their parents' eateries, so that the skills are being lost and businesses are closing for want of a successor. "The older generation were pragmatic and content to be clothed and fed. But the kind of hard work required in this business is second only to heavy manual labor, so few encourage their children to carry on in the same trade. Instead they urge them to study hard and go up in the world. Hence when military dependents' villages are redeveloped, or the chef gets too old to carry on, many close down." So says Feng Chih-jen, owner of Five and Six's Little Shop in Tsoying, which mainly sells xiekehuang.

Happily, however, this does not mean the end of dependents' village snack foods, for their seeds have been quietly spreading to neighboring fields. For instance, among Taiwan's shaobing and soybean milk vendors, many of those associated with Ssuhai Village near Tsoying are Taiwanese Hakka. "The Hakka are no less industrious and willing to endure hardship than Shandong people, but they are even more skillful, so that in their hands these foods often turn out even better," comments Lu Yao-tung, who says that a shaobing and soybean milk shop near his home is run by a Hakka man whose six brothers also all have shops in different neighborhoods.

Today, craft skills can be learnt by many avenues-they are no longer passed down only within families. In former times, to learn a trade which was not practiced in one's own family one had to serve an apprenticeship, working as well as studying, and it would be years before one could become a master craftsman and set up on one's own. Today, more stress is laid on specialization, and there are teachers available to teach all kinds of skills. Anyone can enroll at a catering school or attend cookery classes, and there are both courses and professional services available in everything from cooking and business management to wholesaling.

With some popular foods such as beef noodle soup and various other snacks, restaurant chains and franchise operations have appeared, and naturally these are not restricted to people from military dependents' villages or of mainland Chinese descent. Thus in beef noodle soup restaurants which present themselves as "Sichuanese," the people in the kitchen and serving the customers are mostly southern Fujianese dialect speakers of Taiwanese descent. Meanwhile, when many second-generation mainlanders who grew up in Taiwan go to the mainland to visit relatives or to travel, they find that in Sichuan itself there is no sign of the "Sichuanese beef noodle soup" to which people in Taiwan are so accustomed.

"This is a very important change which has taken place in Taiwan's catering industry over the past several decades," says Lu Yao-tung. "At first you had all kinds of cuisines coexisting, each with its own distinctive flavors. But then they began to draw on each other, and later combined with local Taiwanese cuisine to gradually develop new flavors." Lu says that as food and drink are habitual components of everyday life, they may easily change as the living environment changes. Chinese cuisine itself, over its long history, has undergone countless amalgamations and changes, not only eliminating dietary differences between people but also eroding regional differences, thus making terms such as "authentic" or "traditional" difficult to define.

"Sichuanese" beef noodle soup is a case in point. Lu Yao-tung, who is very partial to this dish, once checked this out. In Taiwan the most popular style of beef noodle soup is Sichuanese, so on a trip to Chengdu, Sichuan's provincial capital, Lu went out in search of authentic Sichuanese beef noodle soup. But after tramping the city's streets and alleyways for a full two hours, he drew a complete blank-there was no sign of such a dish. He merely discovered that snack foods in Sichuan include small bowls of beef soup, and he surmised that when Sichuanese came to Taiwan years ago they brought with them the recipe for beef soup; later, someone had the idea of adding noodles. If this is so, beef noodle soup may be a purely Taiwanese invention.

The simple life tastes sweetest

In fact, what has been passed down with these foods is not only their taste. "When I was little I often saw how those men in the village, young and old, worked themselves half to death every day for the sake of a few hundred NT dollars, but they still seemed to be happy and enjoying life," recalls 43-year-old Feng Chih-jen, who grew up in a military dependents' village near Tsoying. When he was an ambitious young fellow with his sights set high, this baffled him.

But three years ago, after a series of setbacks in his career, he opened a shaobing shop at the suggestion of a friend who taught him how to make them. Now he spends his all days in his little shop selling shaobing at NT$10 apiece. Yet he is usually very happy, and now he understands how the older generation felt: "Not having to ask anyone for favors, not having to suck up to anyone-carefree and content!"

Perhaps what people miss most about the foods of the military dependents' villages is the taste of that ordinary but vanishing lifestyle!

In their "Five and Six's Little Shop," brothers Feng Chih-jen （left） and Feng Chih-chiang （right） bake xiakehuang sesame rolls the old way, by sticking them onto the inside of an earthenware oven. This sight reawakens people's memories of the plain but slower-paced and caring lifestyle of military dependents' villages in earlier times. （photo by H sueh Chi-kuang）