taipei daughter
In May 2024, I spent 2 weeks in Taipei. My yearly visits are always a homecoming from a past life—early mornings looking out over a familiar skyline of terracotta rooftops and water tanks, the humidity a warm blanket around my shoulders—but something about this trip felt different. Perhaps the shorter period had concentrated the color and kept each memory sharper, but it felt like there was new magic to be had at every turn—on our usual tomb-sweeping trip to the majestic valley of my grandparents’ gravesite, we shouted for the 70-year old groundskeeper as we always do, but this time we found him up a tree, rustling in the branches above us, and then out he popped, handing us freshly-picked fruit I’d never seen before!
As this trip was drawing to a close, I knew this world would feel as lost as a dream once my plane took off. I wanted a way to keep the magic close, and past what could be shown in photos and words, I wanted to share this life with friends back in San Francisco.
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The 莊 Chuang side of my family is from a historic area of Taipei called 大稻埕 Twatutia, where we still live to this day. Even though my parents raised my sister and me in San Francisco, they never gave up the house my father grew up in, and we’ve grown up with a bi-continental lifestyle, an unusual choice and luxury for those who start a new life in another country.
Living in this home four generations deep, its original terrazzo and brick alongside my father’s renovations of light and space, shapes how I’m able to see Taipei. My visits are regular and lengthy, and each day is languorous and long, spent eating at ostensibly unremarkable restaurants, gossiping over afternoon tea before the mosquitoes descend upon the veranda, taking the long way home after dinner and then backing up the car to admire a tortoise on the side of the road.
In a city often held in a time capsule by those subsisting on fond memories, I see a modern life that holds its traditions close but moves forward with innovation and new ideas. While Din Tai Feng and Ootoya continued to be weekly haunts, some of my most delightful meals on this trip were of a new flavor—a remix of classic favorites and the imagination.
As I resumed my SF life and felt the new distance, I realized I had a unique perspective to share, and through the lens of food, Taipei Daughter was born.
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Over the years, I’ve presented several volumes of Taipei Daughter. What began as an expression of my own experience with the help of others has grown into collaborations with fellow Taiwanese American creatives, highlighting their singular expressions of connection to the ancestral motherland.
past collaborations
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