Is it just me or is there a prevasive nonchalant attitude with food and life here? The 差不多 effect. (google translate 差不多 for those who don’t know). I ask, because recently; I have been discussing with my Taiwanese wife about opening a food stand. Basically serving “Italian Style Pasta” which is essentially going to become American Italian overcooked macaroni cooked 5 minutes beyond Al Dente with a shitload of sauce on top. I have tried educating her about the history of Italian food and Italian American food but it just seems like, well if you just put some tomatoes with some noodles and stick a foreigner behind that cart it is good enough(which it probably is).
I need her to learn how to toss a pan so I just threw some rice in the saute pan and showed her the technique to practice tossing the noodles with sauce. She says, “why can’t I just use tongs?” I explain tossing the cold food down to the bottom and the hot food up to the top along with also increasing the turn around time. She says, “Oh, I just use tongs,” On to my point.
What is up with the “good enough, close enough” mindset here? It also permeates a lot of “Chinese cuisine” cooked here. I have eaten at some places with claimed 5 star ratings (hotels) and let me tell you not even close to a 2 star. I find this 差不多 mindset in the buildings and interior architecture, wavy walls, bad angles on moulding, half ass paint jobs, monochromatic design (drives me crazy to see tv “design” shows showing the same brown, black, and grey design styles in every home), tons of 差不多 food( even the traditional fare), green space considerations (non existent), road construction, civil engineering, it is just everywhere here. Good enough 差不多 seems to permeate life here. I really wonder why a large portion of this society just thinks that good enough is alright, why don’t more people here take pride in their work? Cooking, building, music, art, design, english learning, research, development, living a full life, etc… Why is it so 差不多? Is it so people can go home and watch 差不多 productions on TV. You would think a country with a culture that is thousands of years old would be more demanding. Sure Taiwan can skate by, it has done a great job building it’s economy over the last 30 plus years, but that was developed and created by a small portion of people in this society. Perhaps they knew their fellow citizens much better than I. One would think that others and this society would like to also create and be great. I guess its just 差不多. Good enough, maybe people are just burned out from going to school 15 hours a day for their entire youth. Don’t know, just interested in why it is so 差不多.
To be honest if I were in your wife’s position I’d think you were being a bit anal too, and I’m British. Who cares about the history of Italian and Italian American food? How boring. She’s quite right. Put a foreigner behind the stall and sell some noodles with tomatoes on top.
As for tossing the pasta rather than turning it with tongs? Sheesh. Get a life.
My wife’s position is ignorance. She has never worked in a food place, and you are a brit which just exemplifies 差不多 on food. As a further point; you never addressed my question about the “good enough” nature about Taiwan. And you obviously don’t know a damn thing about cooking. It is a hell of a lot easier to toss a pasta in a pan than it is to try to coat it with tongs. Tossing easily mixes it, you can’t evenly coat pasta with tongs.
I’ve seen loads of references to the “cha bu duo” attitude in Taiwan and have no doubt that it exists. But, its clearly not limited to Taiwan as anyone who has witnessed the cost-cutting, half-assed residential RE construction in the U.S. Most of those buildings develop mold, settlement cracks and other problems shortly after the developers have sold the units. And I would venture that most people consider a reliable plumber, electrician, HVAC (heating and air conditioning technician) etc. more valuable than gold. Cha bu duo is an individual attribute/characteristic - not a national/ethnic one.
Italian food btw pushes the pasta, the taste of the pasta and feel of the pasta, the sauces help to support the pasta. In American Italian cooking the sauces dominate, the sauce, or sometimes “gravy” is dumped on top of some noodles. I don’t find it a lack of life in tracing culinary history. The Italians would not have had noodles without first discovering the Chinese. Go ahead look that up. Perhaps I am being anal but demanding more of myself and others around me is just the way I am. I also work as an artist painting pictures that I sell. I spend little time on TV or anything else but when I live in Taiwan I do find myself drinking more and putting shit on this forum. Which begs to question do many people hold themselves to high standards, does it matter? Why is there a food forum here? are they being anal? Well maybe just with the chicken butts.
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Sloppiness is a characteristic of humans, most of the time those half assed residential buildings in the US get “found out for mold” is because someone is checking. In my current living place I have dropped ceilings in one room. I know why, mold, I looked. If there is too much mold the landlords cover it in Taiwan. They build drywall wall out from the regular wall or they drop ceilings.
They do a piss poor job. Even when I owned my houses in Taipei people couldn’t drywall, grout properly, or even paint a room proper. At least tape things off if you are going to paint. One asshole painted over my newly installed cabinets. I spent 500000 nt redoing that shit and here comes dipshit don’t give a fuck that doesn’t tape. More than once this has happened.
Culture shock? I pretty much wrote the same thing but from a different able when I first came here. It could be worse, you might have to work a crappy job all day here and then step out into Cha bu duoism.
BTW, are you American, from the land of Mac and Cheese and Peanut and Jelly sandwiches?
If you go to any night market or food stand you will see some are incredibly well organized and anal, others messy. It doesn’t seem to correlate with how tasty the food is though. There are a wide variety of personalities out there. You want to be careful because too much analness would turn this place into Japan. Maybe not a a bad thing in a lot of cases but then imagine dealing with the landlords and the cultural expectations.
EDIT- the sloppy painting thing DOES drive me mad. You see it everywhere, park benches, road kerbs, interiors. Drips and overruns and rushed jobs. Never got used to that one.
Quite simply, the 差不多 comes down to the fact that cash is king. With cash comes face. Since a lot of ‘socializing’ is done outside the house here in restaurants, people don’t value their house like in the west. That (not so) great dinner with all the relatives? Handbags, phones and cars symbolize one’s ‘status’. Thus the consequence of poorly designed houses is a reality. You all know someone with a brand new iphone working at 7-11. The clerk that has a new bag that costs about 3 months of their salary. The person that had a big lexus but their house just doesn’t match.
But, again, 差不多ism just relies on cash and that’s it. Can’t change it. Not even worth complaining about it. I have seen people with great ideas about food/restaurants and it doesn’t fly because the food is new and people prefer the traditional. Change ain’t going to happen on your watch. Can’t educate the uneducated in the food department. I make my own dumplings at home because I am sick of eating veggie/pork delights everywhere I go. I put it fish, chicken, herbs, kimchi-this stuff kicks ass. Give it to a local. They will go eat the spinach dumplings with a side plate of cabbage in a heartbeat.
I’m sorry, but your wife is right. Serve it the way she is talking about. Disgusting I know. But it will pay the bills. You can make it the way you want it at home.
I am actually from the “king” of Mac and Cheese Wisconsin which has probably been popularized by Noodles and Co… Wisconsin used to be the Dairy state, still awesome cheeses. My first job at 16 years old was working in an Italian Cheese Factory.
[quote=“baberenglish”]Quite simply, the 差不多 comes down to the fact that cash is king. With cash comes face. Since a lot of ‘socializing’ is done outside the house here in restaurants, people don’t value their house like in the west. That (not so) great dinner with all the relatives? Handbags, phones and cars symbolize one’s ‘status’. Thus the consequence of poorly designed houses is a reality. You all know someone with a brand new iphone working at 7-11. The clerk that has a new bag that costs about 3 months of their salary. The person that had a big lexus but their house just doesn’t match.
But, again, 差不多ism just relies on cash and that’s it. Can’t change it. Not even worth complaining about it. I have seen people with great ideas about food/restaurants and it doesn’t fly because the food is new and people prefer the traditional. Change ain’t going to happen on your watch. Can’t educate the uneducated in the food department. I make my own dumplings at home because I am sick of eating veggie/pork delights everywhere I go. I put it fish, chicken, herbs, kimchi-this stuff kicks ass. Give it to a local. They will go eat the spinach dumplings with a side plate of cabbage in a heartbeat.
I’m sorry, but your wife is right. Serve it the way she is talking about. Disgusting I know. But it will pay the bills. You can make it the way you want it at home.[/quote]
Yup, I know, I also know from reading a little bit, Taiwanese are sensitive to salt. Taiwanese also want their noodles well cooked or limp because they are used to Chinese noodles which are generally always soft. “that isn’t how my wife likes them” We are just banging some sauces and noodles around trying them out with some produce, market people, just hanging out talking to people. Throwing some recipes out there to get responses we will do this for a few months. Free food lol. Taiwanese like that, if you don’t believe me go down to Costco and check out A Ma loading her relish on her pizza.
The aspect of showing social wealth is very common in inner cities in the US. Clothes, jewelry, cars, cash and flash women, but make no mistake, people here squirrel away their money they aren’t living on credit unless they have a bad majhong habit which really just means they suck at it or subconsciously like to lose.
The Taiwanese are a group culture and excellence is an individual thing usually. To reach a high level of skill, the individual must have energy, drive, and a lot of experience. That is very, very hard to come by in a culture where people just hide their ignorance and incompetence in the group.
I set up my gym against that chabuduo attitude, so i used it to my advantage. And frankly for anyone that is passionate about anything, it isn’t that hard to set up shop in your field because so many people here just don’t give a damn about much of anything, that most fields are wide open.
But expanding that passion beyond yourself is a real bitch. I’m constantly dragging trainers, assistants, and Taiwanese clients away from the chabuduo attitude. And it’s like herding cats. Excellence is so rare here that being better than the norm is already considered good enough and the cycle starts all over again.
Pick your battles or you’ll get burned out. Trust me on that.
[quote=“Formosa Fitness”]
I set up my gym against that chabuduo attitude, so i used it to my advantage. And frankly for anyone that is passionate about anything, it isn’t that hard to set up shop in your field because so many people here just don’t give a damn about much of anything, that most fields are wide open.
But expanding that passion beyond yourself is a real bitch.[/quote]
That is a really cool way of approaching it. It is very true that here passion can rein. It is a land of opportunity.
I think over the next 20-30 years Taiwan’s immigrant population will help push some of the society out of its chabuduo mindset. Some of us might be a part of that but mostly it will come from years of criticism primarily from the media; “like a horrible nasty never satisfied mother who berates her children until they comply.”
OP, make your gourmet noodle dishes, but you’ll have to sell for less than the night market price because “you don’t know how to cook noodles” (from the 'wan POV). Were I you, and hellbent on noodles, I would start a catering company for Western or Global company social events. That market segment would understand your product, but the night market crowd will not.
Actually, I’m a pretty good cook. But at the end of the day it’s just food, not holy sacrament. Carry on boring your wife with ‘education’ on the difference between Italian cooking and Italian American cooking and have a happy marriage!
Oh, and you’re right, I didn’t address your question about the ‘good enough’ nature of Taiwan because I lost interest in what you were saying. But on the tossing the pasta in the pan versus turning it with tongs, the former is easy if you’re a big strong man. Not if you’re an Asian-sized woman. If I were to be cooking food as a job I would not be able to stand there tossing a pan all night.
I know exactly what you mean. My sister in law is Taiwanese and she only just started to cook when she started living with my brother. I would try and show her how to cut things more efficiently or just do things in a better way. She would basically get annoyed and just say it’s good enough.
There seems to be a lack of a desire to put in a bit more effort and learn to do things in a better way. I haven’t been in Taiwan for more than a few months at a time so I’m not expert, but I could see it across other things as well.
Even in the SHangri-La (5 star hotel) in Tainan, if you look closely the carpeting installation/paint job/etc is all “good enough.”
[quote=“djkonstable”]
I think over the next 20-30 years Taiwan’s immigrant population will help push some of the society out of its chabuduo mindset. [/quote]
Dream on …
Taiwan is a 3rd world country with a few high-tech baubles that give it a veneer of modernity. An influx of mail order brides from Vietnam and mainland China is not going to change a single thing.
Catering is an excellent idea if there is really a large clientele base, I am not in Taipei or Hsinchu.
I am not hell bent on pasta but my wife seems to be. Over the last few years I have been cooking asian food primarily south east asian. I had access to some crazy ingredients. In Oklahoma city we had this massive asian grocery store along with another chinese store. In basically, the dead middle of America you could get everything you need to cook chinese, vietnamese, korean or thai food. You could get CC lemon soda too at over 100nt per bottle. There was another store that was full Korean but I never made it there. Even with that we dearly missed fresh seafood. There was a fish monger but prices were horrendous.
I had never fully understood the make up of Chinese/Pacific/JAP/Korean/ basically Asian cuisine. I had tasted and experienced a large amount of dishes in Asia but then suddenly standing in the asian store I started realizing how things were made and how I could make it to my taste. Then I started doing more research into Asian food. From there things started snowballing. My mom who is an American meat and potatoes girl suddenly was asking for Vietnamese PHO, Thai Tomato Spicy Beef with Rice noodles or a green curry. My mother knew french and italian food and loved it but when she visited us in Taiwan; she wasn’t very keen on a lot of the food in Taiwan. I found that if you drop the fish flavor most North Americans will love an Asian dish. So you adjust for palette. It was a lesson, my wife sometimes just wants bland food (her homestyle) she says I cook Restaurant style.
I think that it is fine to adjust to palette. I am actually excited about it. But now, I am cooking according to my wife’s “Home Style” western food.
I am however really considering doing a black pepper chicken sauce of mine with a choice of fried,regualar rice noodles or rice. Because I really want to hammer away this misconception “that he doesn’t know Asian noodles/food.”
The other thing is you don’t charge less you charge more because it is different and served by a foreigner. People become interested because of the foriegn guy presence or people want to show off they know Engrish so you get customers but that may only last for a couple of weeks, eventually the food has to take over. Or I could be back to teaching A is for Ant, Apple, shudder.
On to my point.