Home › General News › Article

Taiwanese rice cakes make a gorgeous turnaround: Shuang Kuo Lu's handmade steamed rice cakes carry on culture

General News 0 views
The very trendy Taiwanese rice cake"Shuang Kuo Lu gives "Grandma-style" steamed rice cakes a gorgeous turnaround, making rice cakes by hand to protect culture

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

But a pair of young people chose to turn around instead, building a family business out of traditions that everyone had forgotten and abandoned, guarding a three-sided courtyard house in Daxi, determined to steam a modern sense of happiness out of the old-fashioned "Grandma-style" rice snacks. (How to eat rice cakes according to the seasons? See here)

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

A cooking class centered on "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. After marrying, they raise two children: one is their precious daughter, and the other is "Shuang Kuo Lu Culture Kitchen."

"Shuang Kuo Lu" is a cooking class centered on "rice cakes," dedicated to teaching everyone how to make traditional rice cakes. Interestingly, rice cakes, which the younger generation has rejected, are being promoted by two trendy and stylish young people. Not only can they make delicious rice cakes, they can also talk a fine talk about rice cakes. The allusions, rise and fall, and transformations in the long river of Hokkien and Hakka rice-food culture roll off their tongues in flavorful chapters of rice cakes and pastries.

How did two young people born in the latter half of the 1970s become so devoted to something as old as 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 assets left behind by other people's ancestors." While admiring them, they also kept reflecting: doesn't Taiwan have wonderful old things too?

On top of that, to save money, the couple stayed in backpacker hostels and bought their own ingredients to cook three meals a day in shared kitchens. It is said that "food" is the easiest tool for making friends. When people from different countries gather together, they naturally ask: "What food best represents Taiwan?" Huang Teng-wei instinctively answered xiaolongbao, stinky tofu, and pearl milk tea, but then came the follow-up question: "So can you make them?" Only then did they suddenly realize: no, they had not grown up eating these foods.

Important moments in life such as the birthdays of deities, the first birthday celebration, and birthday celebrations for elders are all accompanied by red tortoise rice cakes. (Provided by Shuang Kuo Lu)

One cannot bear to let it go, the other refuses to give in: carrying on the craft of rice cakes

Bringing their foreign friends' casual question back to Taiwan, the couple worked hard to find the answer. Chou Pei-yi studied the craft everywhere, while Huang Teng-wei recorded Taiwan's street foods and dying handmade crafts around the island on a blog. Working day jobs while moving toward the goal in their hearts, they knew that many things in Taiwan would disappear with the passing of the elders. "Rather than criticize, it is better to do something."

Chou Pei-yi said: "My mother's generation happened to live through 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?" With 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. When her granddaughter and grandson-in-law wanted to learn, Grandma was not happy and delighted 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. "One rice cake sells for only 30 yuan. What is the point of learning this?" This was her incomprehension toward Chou Pei-yi. The two could only flatter her in every way, act cute and shamelessly pester her, spending two to three years learning the production processes of various rice cakes step by step.

Related Articles