You Huiling / Food and Drink, Opening a Window to the World: 40 Delicious Love Letters to Children

In June 2015, I left my full-time media job and became a freelance worker taking on assignments. Free, yet not entirely free - it just gave me a bit more flexibility with my time. That September, my little son Pidan started elementary school. Every Tuesday he had a full day of classes and needed to eat lunch at school. Was it better to have the school lunch or bring a bento from home? I weighed it back and forth, until one sentence from him - "I want to eat the bento Mommy makes!" - ended my struggle.

I worked at a lifestyle magazine for over ten years. Besides the food beat, I was also responsible for covering agriculture, and on top of that I already loved writing and cooking, so I figured - let's just make bentos properly!

Once I made up my mind, I treated it as a promise to myself. If I had an interview scheduled that day, I moved it to another day. No matter how busy I was or how urgently a manuscript was due, I would set aside the hour before noon on Tuesday to make the bento. Occupational habit made every bento need a theme, related to a solar term, an ingredient, a place of origin, or a family story. Based on the theme I would write an article, then ask my photographer husband to shoot the bento in the simple studio that was our "dining table," and finally rush it to Pidan at the last possible second (because I was often almost too late).

I called it the "bento writing project." I planned to run it for one year, then switch to another writing theme after that year, but still keep making bentos. There was no editor-in-chief dictating the direction, and no one knew whether there would be any readers. At the time I just wanted to write - through the bento essays, to write down my views and beliefs about food and life.

<Food Is the Most Beautiful Education: 40 Delicious Love Letters to a Child>

Text / Yu Hui-ling
Formerly a senior writer for Business Weekly's "alive" lifestyle supplement, and a lifestyle and food reporter for over ten years. She has gone up mountains seeking dream free-range chickens, down to fish ponds looking for exquisite sweetfish, gotten up before dawn to dig white asparagus, and waited in the dark night for dragon fruit to bloom. She loves interviewing chefs to uncover the secrets of cooking, and loves even more making friends with farmers. She believes food is a window onto the world, and that the stories of people and land can never be fully told. She longs to work in the fields, but lacks the strength to shoulder a hoe, so she focuses on writing and wielding a trowel. She is now an unfree freelancer and a thoroughly contented mother of Pidan.

Li Jun-xian / Photography
Writes with images and words, hoping to enrich his own life experience and others'. He has worked as an editor, reporter, and photographer for newspapers, travel magazines, and television. In recent years he has walked the quiet path of "teaching and learning" photography. He is currently a lecturer for the "Modern Photographic Power" course at the General Education Center of National Taiwan University of Arts, and a recorder and preservationist of military dependents' villages. Conveniently, he is Pidan's father, and a photographer who can shoot the food but never gets to taste it.

Pidan / Professional Taste Tester
Currently a happy second grader, and a full-time bento taste tester. When he receives a bento, his first concern is: "What are we eating today? Is there a lot?" He loves leafy greens, okra, green peppers, and sweet peppers, but dislikes the garlic and onion he can see in the dishes (so his mother has no choice but to find ways to disguise them in the food). It is because of him that this book came to be.