Taiwan is a self-governing island of 24 million people, officially known as the Republic of China. Only about a dozen countries recognize it as a country, as China claims it as its own.A province. International organizations and the Olympic Games willTaiwanIt is called “Chinese Taipei”.

But what makes them Taiwanese, and not Chinese? How will they create a coherent narrative for their identity? How can they reconcile with their Chinese heritage?

For many people, food is one of the things the island is best known for, besides its semiconductor industry. In the past decade or so, restaurateurs, writers and scholars have begun to promote the concept of Taiwanese cuisine, reviving traditional dishes and integrating local, especiallyAboriginal produce and ingredients are incorporated into the cooking.

They are articulating and shaping a differentCulinary Culturedemonstrating a Taiwanese identity that is organic, tangible, and integrated into daily life. This cuisine reflects Taiwan’s desire to be recognized as a country, or at least a culture of its own.

“For many years, Taiwan’s ‘nationality’ has actually been quite ambiguous,” Chen Yuzhen, a food historian at National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei, wrote in a 2020 book. “This also makes the question of ‘what is Taiwanese cuisine’ a particularly interesting one,” she said, adding that the effort to define and shape the cuisine allows Taiwanese to “taste ‘nationality’ and feel ‘nationality.’”

Yi-Yan Li is the owner and executive chef of HoSu in Taipei. HoSu means “good island” in Taiwanese dialect, and he uses his menu to express his love for the land of Taiwan – its products, landscapes and smells.

One of Li Yi-yan’s signature dishes is smoked charcoal-grilled fish, which is inspired by the cooking of the Atayal, one of Taiwan’s many indigenous ethnic groups. Dingbianchu rice noodle soup, a famous street food, is promoted to a main course. Taiwanese mangoes are arranged in the shape of terraced fields, and the herbs that decorate the dessert are also crops grown in the terraces.

“I want to let everyone see the good of Taiwan and the vitality of Taiwan by telling the story of the land,” he said.

Mr. Li believes his food can increase the chances of Taiwanese people resisting mainland China, whose threat to take over Taiwan by force looks more real now than at any time in decades.

“We must make everyone identify with this land before we can form a national identity,” he said. “If something really happens, everyone will be willing to fight for this land.”

Food everywhere is political. Mexican cuisine helped shape a national identity after Mexico gained independence from Spain two centuries ago. In March, China’s top leaderXi Jinping said: “Whether you can eat or not is politics.”

In Taiwan, the concept of Taiwanese cuisine first emerged in the early 20th century to distinguish Taiwanese cuisine from the cuisine of the Japanese colonial rule. During the authoritarian rule of the Kuomintang, Taiwanese cuisine was considered a regional cuisine, like Shanghai cuisine and Sichuan cuisine, but of lower status.

Taiwanese snacks appeared at state banquets after martial law was lifted in 1987, and especially after the election of Taiwanese nationalist Chen Shui-bian as president in 2000. Aboriginal and Han Chinese Hakka cuisines began to rise, reflecting the inclusiveness of the emerging democracy.

Today, if you ask a dozen Taiwanese people what Taiwanese cuisine means to them, you’ll probably get a dozen different answers.

Chen Jingyi, a food writer in Taipei, asked everyone to bring a dish they considered Taiwanese. A woman in her 20s brought mapo tofu, which originated in China’s Sichuan province, because she grew up eating it. An elderly pro-independence politician brought a bowl ofEelThis is a dish from Tainan, the home of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, which promotes Taiwanese nationalism.

To Chen Jingyi, both can be called Taiwanese cuisine. “I think anything that can be transformed and given a new state or life on this land can be called Taiwanese cuisine,” she said.

She pointed out that miso soup is common in Taiwanese cuisine, a vestige of Japanese colonial rule. In Taiwan, she said, cold noodles, rice dumplings and even meatballs can be paired with the soup, which might not be the case in Japan.

“I also consider this new food, after being reinterpreted, to be part of Taiwanese cuisine,” she said.

The thorniest question for Taiwanese cuisine and identity is how to reconcile its Chinese heritage.

“For me, the Chinese regime and our ancestors are two different things,” Chen Jingyi said. “I think no matter how people try to separate them, they will never separate themselves from their ancestors.”

For the most part, Taiwanese seem comfortable with their Chinese ancestry. The streets of Taipei feel no different than any southern Chinese city. Most people speak Mandarin, though Taiwanese dialects are gaining popularity. Many roads and locations are named after Chinese provinces. I stayed at a hotel on Jilin Road and had pork liver soup at a night market named after my hometown of Ningxia.

Many restaurants in Taipei claim to serve Sichuan, Hunan and Shanghai cuisine. But for mainlanders looking for “authentic” regional Chinese cuisine, they’ve come to the wrong place.

The food at the Hunan restaurant was not spicy at all. The Shanghai restaurant at the Shangri-La Hotel in Taipei was excellent, but the most memorable dish there for me was the Taiwanese signature dish, steamed glutinous rice with blue crab.

Taiwan, a place where many indigenous languages ​​are spoken and the first place in Asia to allow same-sex marriage, is an inclusive society. The same is true for Taiwanese cuisine. It’s either fusion or just delicious, said Tsai Chu-erh, another Taipei food writer.

“Taiwanese cuisine is hard to define,” she said. “Because how do you define something that seems to be snowballing?”

One group in the movement is elevating the status of authentic Taiwanese cuisine, which was weakened and debased during more than half a century of political repression against the Taiwanese population under Kuomintang rule. Taiwan’s elites were killed or jailed. Speaking Taiwanese dialect in school was punishable by fines. After the Kuomintang lost the civil war to the Communists in 1949, Taiwan’s high-end restaurants were converted into public canteens to accommodate the 2 million mainlanders who evacuated to the island.

When the fine-dining restaurant Shan Hai Lou opened in Taipei in 2014, the chefs traced back ancient recipes to recreate traditional Taiwanese banquet dishes from a century ago. One of the most exquisite dishes is a vegetable bun filled with interwoven gourd and carrot strips and stuffed with black pork and mushrooms.

HoSu restaurant owner and chef Li Yiyan and others have tried to elevate local cooking and ingredients, making the boldest efforts for Taiwanese cuisine.

In political debates, Taiwanese nationalists often highlight the existence of indigenous groups as evidence that Taiwan has a distinct origin, of which Chinese culture is only a part, food historian Chen Yu-jen writes in her book. Although indigenous groups make up only 2 percent of Taiwan’s population, they are an important part of the Taiwanese national narrative, she writes.

Lee believes Ukrainians excel in fighting Russia because they have a strong sense of their national identity, and he wants to use his cooking to promote Taiwanese identity.

“I think everyone is a small screw,” he said. “If we tighten these screws, the system will work properly. If it works properly, I believe others will be less likely to invade or annex.”