This is Part 2 of Memoirs of Taiwan, find Part 1 here.

The start

My six weeks in Taiwan was in many ways the ceremonial start to my gap year. It was an easy trip to put together. I knew I wanted to go visit my extended family — grandparents, cousins, uncles, and aunts whom I don’t get to see very often due to the distance. Plus at this point, my brother was just about to end his stint in Tainan, a city on the south of the island, in which he had called home for the past two years due to a temporary work assignment. I picked my dates and booked my flights, knowing that plans would fall into place once I arrived.

And fall in place it did! Taiwan ended up being everything I expected and more — comfortable and familiar, yet somehow fresh and exciting all at the same time.

A familiar homey-ness

In those six weeks, I ended up bopping up and down the entire island. A week in Taoyuan. A weekend in Tainan (south). Back to Taoyuan (north). Day trips into Taipei. A long weekend in the central mountains (smack dab in the middle). A quick train over to Taichung (west). Another train back to Tainan (south). Day trips to Kaohsiung (further south). A train around the northern tip of the island to my mom’s hometown of Hualien (east). Backtracking through the mountains to Taipei (north). And finally, a final stop back in Hualien to round out my trip.*

Unlike previous trips I’ve been on, my schedule this time around wasn't determined by the places I wanted to visit, but rather by the people I wanted to see. In Taoyuan, I was greeted by my uncle’s familiar three-bedroom flat. In Tainan, I saw my brother for the first time since the pandemic started. In Taipei, there was the nostalgia of revisiting my favorite beef noodle soup stall (which has since relocated to a much larger permanent location) — a bowl of unforgettably QQ noodles that had occupied my daydreams for the past few years. In Taichung, seeing the childhood home of a college friend I had met during my first week of freshmen year. In Hualien, walking along the beaches that my mom grew up going to with her brothers.

The majority of my nights were found nestled in the homes of my friends and family. Immersed in the lives of those I hold dearest, I had the privilege of witnessing their daily routines unfold — morning rituals, evening habits, daily commutes to work and school, sharing meals at their favorite restaurants, and waiting in line together for boba from whichever the latest trendy spot was.**

*Note 1: Lapping the island back and forth sounds exhausting, but thanks to the HSR (high speed rail), you can actually travel along the entire western side of the island in ~1.5-2 hours. 

**Note 2: Every time I go back to Taiwan, THE spot to get boba seems to be on endless rotation. Most of the Taiwanese chains that make it to the US were popular in Taiwan many years ago.

Exploration and new discoveries

My favorite part about traveling is the exploration and discovery of new things that happen when I am on these trips. While exploring in itself is not exclusive to travel, it certainly makes it easier to get into the right headspace. Being far away from the comforts of home, I find it easy to devote all my mental energy to soaking in my surroundings — embracing the reality of being merely a visitor in a place with its own culture, people, language, and way of doing things.

Explore means to travel through, investigate, or examine a place or an area with the intention of discovering new information, resources, or experiences. It involves a curious and active engagement with the surroundings, seeking to understand, learn, and appreciate the features and possibilities of the location being explored. 

Exploring Tainan, the street food capital

When I first told my aunt and uncle that I was going to Tainan, their initial response was “Oh! That’s wonderful, Tainan is the city of XiaoChi 小吃 (small eats aka street food), you will have so much good food there!”

This statement caught me off guard because everywhere in Taiwan has XiaoChi. It's one of the main things Taiwan is known for. When you look down any given street, you will find endless options to get something to eat, with at least five bubble tea shops all lined up next to one another. And let's not forget about the famous Taiwanese night markets that light up the streets, full of vendors selling every type of XiaoChi imaginable. Additionally, as someone who grew up in the American suburbs, accustomed to national chain restaurants, I couldn't really imagine that the food in Tainan would differ that much from Taipei, which was only a couple of hours away.

Soon, the legitimacy of my aunt and uncle’s statement was validated by nearly every single person I talked to on my way down to Tainan — the man working the cash register at 7-Eleven, the train conductor, the nice lady sitting next to me on the HSR.

“Ah — the city of XiaoChi!”

“You must try the famous Tainan XiaoChi".”

“Oooo are you going for the XiaoChi?”

As I quickly learned, Tainan is widely regarded as having the best street food in Taiwan. After multiple regime changes (from the Dutch to the Kingdom of Tungning to the Qing Dynasty) in the 17th century, Tainan served as the country's capital for 200 years. Afterwards, the capital was moved north to Taipei, and the upheavals caused by Japan's colonization of the island and Chiang Kai-shek’s withdrawal from mainland China, didn't reshape the culture in Tainan nearly as much as they did in Taipei. The dishes here tend to be sweeter than their northern Taiwan equivalents, too, due to greater Tainan’s 400-year history as a sugar-producing region. -  Eater 2019, Steven Cook

Tainan, a brief history

1624: The Dutch East India Company (VOC) establishes a colony in Taiwan and establishes a fort in Tainan, making it their base of operations.

1662: The Tainan regime changes from Dutch control to the Kingdom of Tungning after the successful military campaign led by Zheng Chenggong (Koxinga). The Dutch surrender Tainan on February 1, 1662.

1683: The Kingdom of Tungning falls to the Qing Dynasty, and Taiwan, including Tainan, becomes a part of the Qing Empire.

1895: After the First Sino-Japanese War, the Qing Dynasty cedes Taiwan to Japan under the Treaty of Shimonoseki. Tainan comes under Japanese rule.

1945: At the end of World War II, Japan surrenders, and Taiwan is handed back to the Republic of China (ROC). Tainan comes under ROC administration.

1949: After the Chinese Civil War, the ROC government relocates to Taiwan, establishing Taipei as the capital, but Tainan remains a significant cultural and historical city.

Due to this history, today you will find that Tainan is full of historic small alleyways to explore, the remnants of old forts from Dutch colonization, Japanese-era architecture everywhere you turn, and XiaoChi that is markedly different than what you would find in other parts of the country. Yes, everything was sweet. Even the things that you expect to be primarily salt-forward were somehow still a little sugary.

*cue montage of different yummy foods*

Despite having visited Taiwan multiple times before, nearly everything I ate in Tainan was a new dish for me, highlighting the unmistakably hyperlocal nature of Taiwan's street foods.

Tainan Beef Noodle Soup

My go-to way of exploration when I travel is to learn about the food culture and the stories behind the dishes I discover. After sampling the vast variety of XiaoChi in Tainan, the one I kept coming back to over and over again was beef soup.

Yes, you read that right —  beef soup, aka 牛肉湯.

Unlike its more well-known cousin, beef noodle soup, Tainan's beef soup surprises with a clear and simple broth, served alongside minced pork rice instead of noodles. The deceptively unassuming broth offers a deeply rich and beefy flavor, which is achieved by simmering stock bones for hours overnight. Just before serving, raw beef slices are added to the bowl, and the piping hot broth is poured on top, cooking the beef to a tender medium-rare in mere seconds.

As I relished bowl after bowl of beef soup, I discovered two intriguing facts about this newfound favorite of dish of mine, shedding light on the history and context behind its creation:

1. At every beef soup stall, you will notice the chef slicing fresh beef to go in the soup. Tainan is a major agricultural region, long renowned for its abundant cattle farming. The city is also home to the country’s largest slaughterhouses, processing the cattle within a couple hours before the restaurants receive their daily meat delivery of truly fresh, never frozen beef (take notes, Wendy’s). In fact, the beef used in the soup is known as 溫體牛, which literally translates to “warm-bodied beef.”

2. This realization quickly led me to the second intriguing fact — much like Vietnamese pho, beef soup is a breakfast delicacy here, with most stalls opening between 4am to 6am to guarantee customers the freshest beef (which would’ve just been delivered to the restaurant ~2am that same morning). Once they run out of beef, the stalls will close (often before noon!) But don’t worry, you can find certain popular spots that stay open all day, ready to satisfy your soup craving at any hour.

As I experienced Tainan's uniquely sweet XiaoChi culture and witnessed first-hand the influences of Dutch, Japanese, Chinese, and indigenous traditions passed down to the plate in front of me, I found myself once again reminded of how exploring through food has always been an important part of how I travel and engage with the world.