Tourist Productions 2005

My food experience is rather different form other typical Taiwanese of my age--it is much slower. Though I was born in a Taiwanese speaking family, my food experience is pretty similar to that of Cantonese immigrants from Southern provinces of China. I was entrusted to a Cantonese nanny in the neighborhood and lived a Cantonese life during the day. My Taiwanese experience was mainly nocturnal for my actual encounter with Taiwanese people, my parents, started around 5pm after they came home from their work place. I never went to a kindergarten to learn the basic arithmetic or mandarin phonemes. As a small child I stayed with my nanny all day and observed Cantonese culinary practices in her kitchen. The “Slow Food Movement” reminds me of my childhood experience fading away in the fast-food-oriented context.

My nanny’s schedule was never hectic. She started her day with a visit to the traditional market to pick up raw materials needed for dishes of the day. I was her not-so-helpful assistant in the chaotic marketplace and, therefore, participated in the process of choosing produce, meat, seafood, as well as spices. After the visit to the market, we returned to her place and started to cook our lunch. If she did not run into to too many familiar faces, we normally got home three or four hours before noon and embarked on the slow food processing, which I cannot recall the details.

The standard lunch for two, that is, for my nanny and me, consisted of a plate of meat/seafood, a plate of vegetable, a side dish, sometimes a small dish of pickled vegetable, and a pot of soup, simmered for approximately three hours before it was places on the table. I rarely have such slowly prepared Cantonese style lunch after I officially entered elementary school. Cantonese slow food experience fades away in my memory over time.

Now, I am more adapted to the fast-food idea prevailing in the society and stop complaining about my mother’s super efficient cooking method. However, I firmly believe that my encounter with Cantonese slow food in childhood was a precious experience for the whole thing was about savoring the culture embodied in the culinary practices passed on for generations, migrated from another part of china. To some extent, I visited that part of China and experienced their culinary culture in this sense.