All The Food @ Taiwan's 2024 Inauguration
+ Book Tour! 👋 Chicago and SF Bay
Before I get into today’s paid subscriber newsletter, a quick announcement: I’ll be in the States for a book tour!
Well, technically, I’m heading over to attend the James Beard Media Awards ceremony (Made in Taiwan is a finalist!)….and I decided I’ll do a couple of book events while I’m in Chicago and on an extended layover in the SF Bay Area. I think it’ll be good to connect with fans of the book in real life — a bit of vanity and community building before I head back to my bubble in Taipei.
RSVP for Chicago / Cupertino / Emeryville
All The Food @ Taiwan's 2024 Inauguration
Regarding Taiwanese food history, one of the biggest watershed moments was in 2000 when Taiwan-born Chen Shui-bian became the first elected leader of the Democratic Progressive Party. His presidential inauguration banquet menu signified a shift in how Taiwan presented its food internationally. For the first time, it featured street food snacks that had been around for centuries like local milkfish 四目魚 and steamed savory rice pudding 碗粿. Before him, state banquet menus featured what I call ethereal Chinese food. Think regional dishes like braised shark fin, Beijing duck, and northern Chinese knife-shaved noodles.
From 2000 onwards, inauguration banquet menus in Taiwan have become increasingly egalitarian. In 2016, Tsai Ing-wen’s banquet featured indigenous ingredients for the first time ever.
Since stumbling across this tidbit of Taiwanese food history, I’ve been fascinated by how state menus in Taiwan are essentially a microcosm for the changing tides of Taiwanese identity. I alluded to this in my book and even visited the Library of Chinese Dietary Culture in Taipei, which has a full archive of all the presidential banquet menus. The library staff kindly let me download them all onto my hard drive.
When the 16th presidential inauguration rolled around, I knew I wanted to cover the banquet. I didn’t score an invite (😔), but I did finesse a private tasting with the team that curated the menu.
I wrote a piece about that whole experience for Foreign Policy. Fun fact: the 7th course is rumored to be a nod to Chinese President Xi Jinping.
While I couldn’t attend the actual banquet, I did go to the inauguration which — surprisingly — had a couple of food references scattered throughout. Naturally, I documented all of them:
Hakka Delights
