Hokkien was an exonym coined by Europeans in SEA. It is also a very inaccurate term, as there is not just a single language in Fujian, and not even just one single language family. To most people living in the Hanji-sphere, referring to a language as Fujian would conjure the language spoken in Fuzhou, much like saying Cantonese invokes the language spoken at Guangzhou. However, Hokkien is nothing like Fuzounese, which is in the Mindong branch.
This leads me back to the Minnan thing. That term (yet again, also an exonym) was coined by linguists much much later in time (1930 by Zhao Yuan-ren 趙元任), when Taiwan was a part of Japan. At no point prior to that did the inhabitants of Fujian ever referred to themselves as such.
I’ve been told by several older Taiwanese people that in the past, Taiwan was the same as anywhere else, where you could just go to any random restaurant and expect good food. For some reason, Taiwanese people have lowered their expectations of food over the years, so restaurants nowadays can get away with selling crap.
We need a Taiwanese Gordon Ramsay to whip them into shape.
That’s what the older Taiwanese say too. What I don’t understand is why this has only affected Taiwan and not, say, Hong Kong or China or any other Asian country. Rising home prices is a universal problem.
I saw a Netflix documentary a year or two ago on food in Thailand, it said there was a similar trend there for the cheaper restaurants/stalls just using worse and worse ingredients, in the big cities.
A lot of traditional food in Taiwan require a lot of preparation or a long time to stew or braise something. When your customers bitch about you raising the price but everything, but especially the rent never stops getting higher, the only course to keep the place open would be cutting corners. It’s a downward spiral.
Or you could just raise the price, but then your food better be in its own league compares to your competitors.
It’s still pretty cheap by Hong Kong income standards. Of course, I’m talking about the cheap everyday food that young people buy for lunch on a weekday. And that stuff tastes consistent and amazing no matter where you buy from.
You can bring in some good examples from outside of Asia also, look at Cyprus, Jamaica both in much worse economic positions than Taiwan with much nicer food.
Economic positions isn’t the point. It’s the basic cost of running a business in relations to how much people are willing to pay for food that’s the main problem. Taiwan’s food was consistently great prior to the 90s as well.
I don’t know. People do make more in Hong Kong, but the wealth gap also seem to be much greater than Taiwan. I don’t know how delicious that is. But if I’m saying 150 NTD, I want to see some veggies.
These are breakfast items (or afternoon tea). Nobody would really eat this for lunch.
A typical cheap box lunch costs about the same, and tastes amazing. Although Hongkongers don’t really eat veggies for lunch, so most box lunches will barely contain any. They usually have a lot of really good meat on top of a bed of rice, and maybe one single stem of Choy Sum as the veggie.
By the way, $35 is very affordable by HK standards. To give you an idea, a Big Mac combo at McDonald’s cost $60. And to give you an idea on salaries, a receptionist at a small company or a hotel front desk clerk makes US$2,400/month.
Does HK Mickey D’s share cost with China’s Mickey D’s? If so, then it isn’t all that surprising. A single big mac costs $103 in Japan, and it’s only $75 in Taiwan (all in NTD).
I get that, but still, the wealth gap in HK is much wider than Taiwan, even prior to the pandemic. So it’s really affordable for the haves and even more unaffordable for the have nots.
I’m saying Hong Kong’s pay on the same level as Japan’s and it’s big mac is considerably cheaper than Japan, which doesn’t really make sense, unless the price is negotiated along with China, which would drastically lower the cost to import from the US.
My example above of the receptionist or hotel clerk would be considered the “have nots” in Hong Kong (typically in their early 20’s).
You’re right. The wealth gap is indeed larger in Hong Kong, but that’s only because the rich people make a lot more. The poor still make a decent amount compared to Taiwan.
