It’s become clear to us that there’s more to the Judeo-Christian story of creation than we originally thought.
God worked hard for six days and on the seventh day she rested. But as often happens when someone takes a break from creative labours, while resting, she came up with her best idea yet: Taiwan.
It’s not well known of course, but as regular readers of Taiwan-Tales will know, we’re making it our mission to explain this to the world.
There is so much that is glorious, stimulating, comforting, and enlightening about Taiwan.
The kindness of strangers; fabulous innovations; and let’s not forget dogs on scooters.
But not everything we appreciate would be a best-seller to the uninitiated.
These days, we often ask each other: “Does this pass the Kirkby test?”
Kirkby, or Kirkbymoorside to give it its full name, is a small town in North Yorkshire, in England. It’s pronounced ‘Kirby’moorside, with a silent second k.
It’s a traditional English town with a church, a doctor’s surgery, a post office and several pubs. On Wednesdays there’s a market in the High Street where people buy fruit, vegetables, and brush-heads. It has a fish and chip shop where you can acquire a bag of soggy chips, and there’s a British-Chinese takeaway selling chicken curry chow mein, and other dishes with questionable links to Chinese cuisine.
To us, Kirkby is a sort of anchor in the ground, a pin in an old map which indicates familiarity and comfort to many people. The Kirkby in our minds is the spiritual home of those who travel abroad once a year, who like a sous-vide duck with truffle mash and foraged vegetables every now and then, who enjoyed a fiery Pad Thai on a beach in Krabi, and who reckon that breakfast ought to look more like crunchy-nut cornflakes than steaming vats of soya milk.
We totally understand this. But still, we feel that this fondly-held picture of the English-speaking world makes it harder for us to share many of pleasures of Taiwan. It makes it more difficult for us to talk about the delights of something like a plate of turnip cake for breakfast, for example – scalding hot pieces of steamed inch-thick squares of partly gelatinous, partly starchy shredded turnip, mixed with potato flour, shallots, and little bits of pork belly, drizzled with thick dark soy sauce. (The turnip cake is on the plate at the back of this picture, minus the sauce.)
We don’t think frequenters of the George & Dragon pub in Kirkby would appreciate it much. Nor would they go wild for finely sliced pigs ears, even when they’ve been lovingly braised with star anise sauce.
And we’re pretty sure nobody will be opening a pop-up stall at the Wednesday market in Kirkby offering deep fried stinky tofu with its trademark smell of a robustly healthy farmyard, served with lashings of ginger and chilli sauce. That’s a shame because the deep fried version of this local Taiwanese delicacy is quite delicious.
Sushi and Shiba
What would a Kirkby’ housewife make a birthday cake that looks like a bowl of clam soup or a plate of sushi? Or a cake that looks exactly like a severed fish head, nestled on edible-cake-ice cubes and apparently ready for the stock pot? We know it’s delicious, but Granny Farndale in Yorkshire would probably balk at the thought of sticking a fork into those startlingly realistic, bulging fish eyes filled with cream.
Something else that Granny Farndale might raise an eyebrow at is the presence of cartoon animals in serious public service announcements.
For several years, the dominant cartoon guide of public decorum in Taipei was a Japanese Shiba Inu, a medium sized, short-haired dog with a slightly cat-shaped face and a tail that curls up and over its back.
Shiba is the definitive dog-du-jour in Taiwan, the darling of the new generation of pet-setters.
Depictions of these pooches are everywhere, from school notebooks to metro travel cards – and curiously, even the lightest sketches of them are always anatomically correct, with a little star just underneath the tail – attention to detail is important in Taiwan.
Given their obvious popularity as pets, what better than a humanoid-shiba hybrid to remind commuters of civic responsibility and common sense?
Shiba reminded us not to push on the metro. Shiba induced us to pay attention to staircases and escalators (see pic). Don’t read your mobile phone or text someone as you walk down the stairs in the metro station, the message said, or you’ll tumble to your doom, knock a tooth out, and end up in ICU, just like Shiba!
These cute inducements to social responsibility remain widespread, but can be easily misunderstood by foreigners, who tend to greet images of Hello Kitty and her Little Twin Star friends on trains and planes, with bemused scepticism.
Aren’t these cartoons a bit, well, childish?, they think.
When we come across these inducements to social responsibility, we sometimes imagine posters of large cartoon cats on bus shelters in Kirkby’ High Street. Would they make shoppers park their SUVs more considerately? Or would they be met with a frown? Would the good people of Yorkshire embrace or scoff at these softly compelling little anime creatures?
In London, Paris, and New York, subway-train passengers are bombarded with imperatives to mind the gap, pay for tickets or face fines and police action, not to deface public property, and not to abuse staff. All these messages are written in a very in-your-face, unfriendly, shouty tone. And frankly, it makes us feel a bit stressed and offended when we travel there.
But when a moon-faced little cartoon cat named Maji Meow thanks us with melting eyes for understanding her needs, or plaintively says ‘you’re squashing me’ to remind passengers that a carelessly-worn backpack may cause discomfort to others in a crowded carriage, we feel calm, civic-minded, and appreciated for our civilised behaviour.
None of these messages would be taken very seriously in Kirkbymoorside we think, which is a shame, because this cute depiction of life greatly diffuses potential stress.
The Taiwanese have adapted cartoon softeners for life’s spikiness, and it works.
During Covid, when people strolled in the park with their dogs, they all wore a face mask. Little children of five, cool dudes in super-hero anime costumes, politicians on TV, promoters of fancy new cars in shiny tailored suits, all wore masks without question, but often with great style.
Taiwanese creativity was evident in mask design. During the hungry ghost festival, masks featured multiple Hello Kitties, her consort Dear Daniel, and Little Twin Stars, emerging from the underworld with wispy spirit tails, coming to haunt the living.
We had face masks featuring chunks of Swiss cheese; spacemen floating through stars in anti-gravity suits; bright pink tropical flowers; taels of gold; lace stocking tops; and firecrackers for Lunar New Year.
There was a face mask for every occasion. Even the giant fibreglass mascots outside coffee shop chains and supermarkets cheerfully sport surgical masks. It made a difficult time a little easier, adding a touch of lightness and humour.
Standard delivery?
Our observations work the other way too, of course. There are many things we can appreciate about life in Kirkbymoorside that can’t be found easily in Taipei.
A pint of warm beer sitting next to a roaring pub fire, for a start. Fish and chips served out of newspaper, even when it’s with those soggy, floppy chips – they’re delicious.
What else do we miss about the place in our minds we call Kirkby? We miss easy access to cold, windswept, desolate moors littered with sheep – not to mention lambs in springtime, skipping their little hind legs out like demented fluffy exclamation marks of undiluted joy.
If we were transported there right now, we’d be grateful for so much. But we’d soon miss so many things in Taiwan.
We’d miss the delicious food, everywhere. We’d miss convenience store attendants who bow as they hand you your coffee and newspaper. We’d miss the 200 retirees who assemble in the park every morning and afternoon, sitting on benches and low walls, thwacking themselves repeatedly, now this ankle, now that shoulder, to a recorded voice counting between 1 and 30, for an hour at a time, to keep fit.
And we’d miss that endlessly convenient common mechanism for delivery in Taiwan, which is used to move almost anything you can think of, from a packet of dried, salted cuttlefish and a cup of bubble milk tea, to a new toilet, or a floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall mirror.
When we bought an office chair we found that, like dogs, it came on a scooter. Why not?
Fish-head cakes, fried turnip-cake, and toilet delivery on a scooter may not be common in Kirkby’, but they are in Taipei, and that’s enough to make us smile and be grateful every day.
Images: Mike Jewell and Taiwan-Tales