“People’s memories of the taste of food are sketches of their cultures in different times and places, creating a cultural landscape that is both regional and national. In multiethnic eastern Taiwan, food memories reveal traits that are strongly unique to the locale and promote cultural reflection within the ever-changing historical destiny as well as movement and overlap of ethnicities.
“Today, the fissures caused by colonialism and the spurring of the market economy have prodded our mad pursuit for fine food, pushing us far from being able to experience and appreciate its original flavor. Having forgotten this original flavor, we now feel a need to try to break past this wall that blocks our food memories from the distant past and rediscover what the elderly remember. With every question we ask in our interviews, the name of a forgotten food has the opportunity to be resurrected, but for every step of “advancement” in food preparation we take, the food in our memories comes closer to disappearing.
“With such concern, a food memory research team organized by the Eastern Taiwan Studies Association (ETSA) has formed collaborative teams with residents of the indigenous villages of Kasavakan, Pasikau, Kaadaadaan, and Lalauran in Taitung County in jointly exploring local food culture memories. We are specifically looking at food memories and life stories affected by changes in the times and the environment and wish to turn them into a foundation of resources in helping these villages transform their memories and local knowledge into useful assets for the modern day.”
Rediscovering the taste of the past—Food memory records from Kasavakan
Big Trip interviewed the project organizer, ETSA member Lin Huei-Jen, who showed us the threads of these nearly vanished memories and brought us to the doors of flavors that are on the verge of closing forever:
Kirumonamon, a dish from Kaadaadaan
Kaadaadaan is a village in Taitung of Amis people whose ancestors came from Hengchun (an area to the south of Taitung), so they are distinct from the Amis of the rest of the east coast: instead of the ocean, their lives have long been closely connected to the nearby Beinan River, and each of the upstream branches has been given a name by them. For instance, they noticed the water birds who make a sound of ”temengan”in the area of one branch, so they named the branch Citemengan (“place where many such kind of water birds live”). Another stream was full of frogs, of whom make a sound of “teka”, so it was given a name “Ci’teka’an” that means “place of many these frogs.” So each stream was named based on the local ecology, giving us information on their early diets satisfied by fishing and foraging in and around the water. The main traditional method of catching fish, prawns, and crabs in the village requires the use of traps made of rattan and bamboo placed in the water. They mostly caught Taiwan shovel-jaw carp and Gobies, the latter now being a protected species. They would preserve small fish with a bit of salt and perhaps some chili pepper, and then eat it raw. It is called Kirumonamon. When the Japanese occupied Taiwan and reclaimed land for growing rice, most of the streams were diverted to irrigate the fields. Near Kaadaadaan, a cement embankment was built, which gradually changed the local ecology and reduced the number of fish. Also, at one point in the 1970s or 1980s, a craze for highland indigenous food took off and led to the creation of a popular deep-fried fish dish and commercialized restaurants. The restaurants flourished during those years when little was known about conservation. Everything from the mountains, such as deer, Reeves’ muntjac, and fish, became a commercialized product. With such consumption taking place, there were sure to be indigenous village residents who started hunting via non-traditional methods to boost their volume, such as by electrofishing, leading to overfishing and further reduced fish numbers. Meanwhile, Taiwan was embarking on a new era of industrialization and commercialization. Ignorant of the relationship between food and the environment, damaging work was conducted on streams and rivers, water was diverted to irrigate fields, and problems related to drainage and pollution arose. So the river was unable to recover its biodiversity, and with the disappearance of fish species, it became difficult to catch the fish the elderly in the village had been accustomed to making into Kirumonamon.
We later discovered shops in the village had cans of preserved fish meat and innards. The fish were not from the Beinan River; they had been caught in Pisirian (in Chenggong, a town in the northern part of Taitung County). In Chenggong, people fish inshore and preserve some of the meat which is called takidis. As the elderly in Kaadaadaan love Kirumonamon, local shops buy the closest substitute from Chenggong. The change in the environment has thus brought about changes in diet. Though the takidis from Chenggong taste similar to the traditional Kirumonamon, all the elderly will tell you the flavor and texture are different. Moreover, people in the village are now mostly buying their food from recently opened convenience stores, so young people do not even like Kirumonamon. Thus, there has been a gradual change in the taste memory of the village. As this continues, not only Kirumonamon will disappear, but the knowledge of the river, local species, fishing methods, and fish trap-making will be forgotten too.
Fishing movement of a whole village: Kasavakan
We then visited Kasavakan, another village near a river with a fishing culture. The villagers are of the Puyuma tribe, which has its own traditional fishing method that uses the vine called millettia (also known as “fish-poison climber”), whose roots contain a toxin. In the past, the entire village would dig up these roots in April and May (before the river rose during the rainy season). The whole villagers would then hike along the river upstream to the site of their old living area, which is the middle and upper reaches of the Zhiben River, and smash the roots against rocks to allow the juice to flow into the river. Upon ingesting the juice, fish would become intoxicated and dazed. Meanwhile, young and middle-aged members of the tribe built channels of river stones to direct the fish to a certain place where the final catch was made with triangular nets. Like Kaadaadaan, this village is also faced with the dying out of its fishing culture because of becoming accustomed to buying food from markets and other such reasons. Since the village is relatively close to downtown Taitung, it is becoming increasingly urbanized. In fact, it has been about 30 years since they haven’t caught fish in the traditional way. But this project has shown the elderly in the village the importance of this cultural aspect, and they feel that since they are reviving their culture, they should also teach it to the younger generation. Now, young people are brought to the traditional territory to be taught about millettia, river currents, and types of fish, as well as the Puyuma names for these fish, the names of places, and the relationships between the names and the ecology. We have cooperated with the village in aspects from the elderly’s instruction on catching fish to the recovery of past recipes. In the second and third years since its revival, this traditional skill was made part of the village’s cultural event as one of the parts of their knowledge system that needs to be learned and passed down to the next generation and as something that younger people partake in whenever they return to the old village.
The taste of family togetherness: pinuljacengan in Lalaraun
Millet was an extremely important grain to the Paiwan and other indigenous Taiwanese tribes. Whether it be memories of the clan or the age-old sacrificial ritual of the village, everything done during their regular schedule was strongly connected to millet. It was the village of Lalauran that was first to realize, “to revive our culture, we must first revive millet.” This is likely firmly connected to Taiwan’s indigenous rights movements of the 1990’s, which began with the movement to bring back traditional attire and gain a new understanding of one’s indigenous cultural identity. Next came the revival of traditional ritual. And for Masalut (the millet harvest ritual) to be reinstated, millet needed to be grown again in their village. As a result, the people became reacquainted with millet production, in turn inspiring other indigenous villages to start growing millet. With time, more and more villages have joined in, spurring the rise of the millet industry.
Pinuljacengan is a Paiwan millet dish which has a bland, neither sweet nor savory, flavor. While stewing, it must be continually beaten and stirred with a stick, making it a tiring task. Local herbs and vegetables are added. The result is what many outsiders would call congee, but the elderly of the village say there is a difference because of the springy, al dente texture. For them, it is a taste of nostalgia and something they feel fully at home with, just as most Taiwanese people are accustomed to eating rice. Many other tribes, including the Bunun and Rukai, cook millet in the same way. In the past, a great quantity was usually cooked in a huge pot, so the whole family would sit around it and eat together. While eating, the adults would tell the children to only eat what was near them and scoop from the edges, gradually moving inward, as opposed to scooping from the center. Besides strengthening the family relationship, this method of eating is an embodiment of domestic etiquette, including such aspects as the order of the age hierarchy in determining who gets to eat first, how food is to be eaten, and where one should begin to eat. Eating pinuljacenganr was thus a way to teach etiquette and harmony in the home.
Our interviewee in Lalauran, an elderly woman savan galajung, said she enjoys making this dish for her grandchildren, and that the thickly stewed, exhaustingly prepared pinuljacenganis something that brings everyone together. Clearly, what she really misses most is the atmosphere of eating with the family.
Millet is usually harvested in June, and a harvest festival is held in July or August. It is used to make qavai, a food typically offered as sacrifice. It is made by pounding millet with a pestle into a mochi-like texture and wrapping it up with fatty pork in ljavilu leaves(Nicandra physaloides). What is unique about the method in Lalauran is the addition of taro stems (the people of the village are very skilled with this plant). Mentioning millet often brings qavai to mind for the locals.
A flavor that demands hard work
During the interviews, our elderly subjects kept talking about flavors they missed. What is it that created these taste memories? And what has made it so challenging to bring those flavors back?
The elderly in Lalauran thought about why it is so hard to forget the taste of food from the past. They remembered that before pounding the millet, it had to be soaked in water for as long as more than a week to allow it to ferment, at times even producing maggots. This gave the qavai a particularly strong flavor, and whenever they eat it, they cannot help but think of the past. Nevertheless nowadays, to give millet a better appearance as a commercial product, it is now kept refrigerated, which gives it a different flavor and texture compared to pre-refrigeration times. Through interviews, while preserving the millet and bringing back its original flavor, we not only recorded the recipe and process of preparation but also considered how the food was viewed and what its flavor was like in the past among traditional society and the differing historical background. We also looked at the memories that come up while eating, such as how the food used to be prepared. When you do it on your own, the flavor you experience might be different.
The tipultangtang and putuhu(cornmeal mush) we brought back from the past in the Bunun-tribe village of Pasikau also required hard work despite the simplicity of the ingredients: corn. Flint corn is used as livestock feed now, but it used to be eaten by people. After being harvested, it was smoked and hung to dry out as a means of preservation to be used when millet was short. Preparing tipultangtang and putuhu takes much physical effort as it must be continually pounded with a pestle into corn flour and granules. Then, a sieve made of rattan is used to separate the two. While sifting it, you also have to constantly blow on it to blow away the pieces of membrane, which takes a high degree of skill. The cooking is the same as that of millet: It must be cooked slowly over a fire, all the while being stirred and beaten. After doing it on your own and experiencing that it takes three to four hours to finally be able to eat, even though it has an extremely plain taste, the way it feels in your mouth is so different from that of the modern equivalent.
Why do we care about original flavors from the past?
Let’s go back to the concept of original flavors. Due to globalization, people of today have had a lot of different kinds of stimulation to their sense of taste. We rarely taste the original flavor of food and may no longer be able to trust our sense of taste, as we experience taste very differently from the elderly indigenous people, who had to put intense effort into making their food. We are in need of getting to know the source of our food and the effort put into obtaining ingredients and preparing them, which includes how a traditional society views the food and the environment it comes from. This is a whole package for understanding the dietary habits of people in a locale. Some think that changes to and losses of dietary habits and flavors are an unavoidable part of the process of the evolution toward modernity. When I started becoming concerned with cultural memory of traditional dietary, besides considering my own previous research on globalization, how staple food crop production has been simplified (that is, the one crop of rice is mainly grown compared to the many grains grown in the past), and how the introduction of so many types of non-local food products has caused the disappearance of local production, I also thought about, during my recent years of work in indigenous villages and communities in Taitung, how frequently I noticed that the originally diversified food memories and dietary habits spoken of by the elderly are very rarely seen among the younger generation. Furthermore, the opening of convenience stores and supermarkets in indigenous villages seems to have made the traditional wisdom on food collection and dietary habits scarce. There is now a huge gulf between people’s modern dietary habits and the environment in which we live that we do not even see what has happened to our land. When we do not know exactly what we are eating or understand the traditional wisdom of elderly indigenous people regarding proper use of the environment, we might very easily ruin the ecology. This indirectly affects the diversity of our diets, which in turn indirectly affects environmental diversity. Gradually, we will lose the knowledge of how to interact with the environment, which animals live there, which can be used for food, and how they can be conserved. By conducting surveys, recording information, thinking about the original flavor of food, and reintroducing such food, we can allow the younger generation to understand what and how the elderly ate, why they ate that way, and the historical background and social evolution of their food. Then we can move on to understand the link between local ingredients and the environment. By learning about one’s own food culture while looking toward the future, people will learn what they need to preserve. Simply put, all of this is about something very important to us: learning and passing down knowledge.