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Taiwanese rice cakes go trendy! Shuang Kou Lu gives traditional steamed rice cakes a fresh new look, make rice cakes by hand and safeguard culture

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So trendy, Taiwanese rice cakes"Shuang Kou Lu gives "Grandma-style" steamed rice cakes a gorgeous makeover, make rice cakes by hand to protect culture

At twenty-five, the age when life sets sail, whether studying or working, everyone is up on tiptoe, gazing as far as the eye can see, as if that progressive, beautiful future all lies ahead, waiting to be chased with all one's might.

But a pair of young people chose to turn around instead, building a family business out of traditions that everyone had forgotten and cast aside, keeping watch over a sanheyuan in Daxi, determined to steam a modern sense of happiness out of those old-fashioned "Grandma-style" rice snacks. (How to eat rice cakes with the seasons? Look here)

Huang Teng-wei and Chou Pei-yi built the "Shuang Kou Lu" brand from the surname of Grandma's marital family, carrying on the craft of rice cakes. (Photo / Yang Yu-yun)

A cooking class devoted to "rice cakes" answers foreigners' big question

Huang Teng-wei and Chou Pei-yi, two young people who grew up in Taoyuan, were a couple in the same class in high school, and after marrying they raised two children: one is their precious daughter, and the other is "Shuang Kou Lu Cultural Kitchen."

"Shuang Kou Lu" is a cooking class devoted to "rice cakes," specifically teaching everyone to make traditional rice cake snacks. Interestingly, the rice cakes that the younger generation rejects are being promoted by two young people who are both trendy and stylish. Not only can they make delicious rice cakes, they can also talk a fine line about rice cakes, as the lore, rise and fall, and transformations in the long river of Hokkien and Hakka rice-food culture roll off their tongues in savory chapters of rice cakes and rice pastries.

How did two young people born in the late 1970s and 1980s become so enamored of old things like rice cakes? It started with a backpacking trip in 2014. Huang Teng-wei and Chou Pei-yi wandered through ten Western European countries for three and a half months, seeing all "the cultural treasures left behind by other people's ancestors," and while admiring them, they kept pondering: does Taiwan not have any wonderful old things?

On top of that, to save money the young couple stayed in backpacker hostels, buying their own ingredients and cooking three meals in shared kitchens. It is said that "food" is the easiest tool for making friends; when people from different countries gather together, everyone naturally asks: "What food best represents Taiwan?" Huang Teng-wei instinctively answered xiaolongbao, stinky tofu, and pearl milk tea, but when he was pressed further, "So can you make them?" they suddenly realized, no, these were not the foods they had grown up eating.

At important life moments such as the birthdays of deities, the first birthday celebration, and birthday celebrations for elders, red turtle rice cakes are indispensable companions. (Provided by Shuang Kou Lu)

One can't bear to let it go, the other won't accept defeat, they want to pass on the craft of rice cakes

Bringing a foreign friend's casual question back to Taiwan, the young couple worked hard to find answers. Chou Pei-yi studied the craft everywhere, while Huang Teng-wei recorded street foods from all over Taiwan and vanishing handmade crafts on a blog. While working day jobs, the two moved toward the goal in their hearts, knowing that many things in Taiwan would disappear with the passing of the elders. "Rather than criticize, it's better to do something."

Chou Pei-yi said: "My mother's generation happened to be the era of Taiwan's economic takeoff. They worked in factories, so she never learned 'making rice cakes,' a skill every woman in an agricultural society had to have." Chou Pei-yi could still eat her grandmother's rice cakes, "but will children in the future still get to eat them?" Carrying that reluctant concern, she decided to preserve the rice-cake craft of her maternal grandmother, Lu Liu A-wei.

But even Grandma had not made rice cakes for more than twenty years, and when her granddaughter and grandson-in-law wanted to learn, Grandma was not happy or pleased but angry and confused. "Making rice cakes is hard work, why make my granddaughter suffer so much?" This was her reproach to Huang Teng-wei. "A piece of rice cake sells for only 30 yuan, what is the point of learning this?" This was her bafflement at Chou Pei-yi. The two could only try every trick to please her, act cute and shamelessly pester her, spending two to three years learning the production processes for all kinds of rice cake snacks step by step.

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