We’re back for another episode of “How will David fob off dinner as research?”
This time, our band of intrepid culinary researchers remains small but mighty, albeit less small (and hopefully more mighty) than last time. This outing is also a perfect example of how a failed night out can become an excuse for more fun (I mean, research) down the road.
First though, I should come clean: we weren't particularly near Taipei’s Danshui 淡水 River, and despite the punny title to this post, there will be no Blue Danube-adjacent waltzes to spice up today’s missive. Hopefully the combination of Triad sightings, failed excursions, and pithy observations will still make this installment a toe-tapper.
Now, to set the scene: four ethnographers set out to have dinner at a “blue nostalgia” restaurant (more on that in a moment), intending to follow it with a trip to a bar that has Korean War-themed cocktails (😬). While we only succeeded in one half of the mission, we ended up with more than enough to keep analytical minds churning. As an added bonus, this half-successful excursion means that you, dear reader, will have the unalloyed pleasure of a follow-up installment to this rigorous inquiry into the heart (and kitchen) of Taiwanese blue nostalgia.
What Is Blue Nostalgia?
First things first: “blue nostalgia” is a term I totally made up. But it’s inspired by a somewhat official term.
In the past few years in Mainland China, there has been a “red revival,” characterized by nostalgia for the Mao era (1949-1976).1 This has taken many forms: in Shanghai, a private museum devoted to propaganda posters of the socialist era has grown in popularity, and now receives government support; box office titan Tsui Hark 徐克 has taken model operas as the basis of entire movies; and throughout the country, amateur choirs gather on weekends to sing the great proletariat barn-burners of yesteryear.
(To give you a feel for these red choirs, the video below includes two clips filmed during preliminary fieldwork I conducted in Beijing’s Jingshan Park 景山公园, on July 22nd and 29th, 2018. In the first clip, the choir members sing a paean to Chairman Mao pulled from the 1964 song and dance spectacular The East Is Red 东方红. The second, more upbeat clip, is introduced by revolutionary quotations. This shows only one of the several choirs that meet every weekend in this park to sing red songs.)2
One of the more eye-popping products of this upsurge in red nostalgia is that of “red restaurants.” This designation covers a range of aesthetics, from restaurants decorated entirely with memorabilia of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), to straight-up Cultural Revolution-themed dinner theater. Red restaurants gained popularity in the few years before my last trip to China (which ended on the day after the late Dr. Li Wenliang 李文亮 was reprimanded by Wuhan authorities for “making false comments on the Internet about unconfirmed SARS outbreak”). And because they very clearly manifest the link between nostalgia and nationalism that I’ve talked about before, they were part of my fieldwork plan for my original (pre-pandemic) dissertation.
If “red” is associated with the global socialist movement, “blue” in Taiwan is strongly associated with the Kuomintang 國民黨, China’s first ruling party after the fall of the Qing Empire, famous runners up in the Chinese Civil War, and architects of Taiwan’s 2-28 Incident, White Terror, and decades of martial law. When talking with my colleague Pei-ling about red restaurants, I jokingly asked, “What would a blue nostalgia restaurant look like?” After about seven seconds of Google-induced silence, Pei-ling announced that not only do these restaurants exist, there’s at least one in Taipei.
And thus, four ethnographers walked one Friday evening into The Village Mouth 村子口.
Four Ethnographers, One Triad, and The Village Mouth
One of the things that originally attracted me/us to this restaurant was the fact that the background music in The Village Mouth is supposedly entirely made up of old KMT military songs.
Unfortunately, I can neither confirm nor deny this. Between the blistering summer heat, the open kitchen area, and the doors flung wide to welcome in customers, this restaurant’s primary climate control source turned out to be the Little AC Unit That Couldn’t. To compensate, a significant amount of floor space was given over to roughly a half-dozen industrial-strength fans. While the roar they produce makes The Village Mouth any white noise lover’s dream destination, it effectively drowned out almost all of the background music.
The restaurant’s soundtrack may have been suffering from the heat, but the decor did not disappoint. I say “decor,” but that might give the wrong impression. To me, decor calls to mind the kind of unified aesthetic found in swank restaurants and cafes. Decor runs the risk of suggesting Insta-ready ambience. It’s a word that is at odds with the restaurant’s collection of mismatched tables, paper plates, and self-serve beer fridges.
Rather than decor, what hangs on the walls of The Village Mouth is a sort of personal archive. For every military helmet, gas mask, portrait of Sun Yat-Sen, or national slogan on display, there is one of the owner’s wedding photos, framed ration cards, or traditional-style brush paintings. My compatriot Aaron provided a 21st-century-ese translation of the whole effect when he observed, “It’s not very nostalgia-forward,” a virtuosically pithy comment that neatly sums up the visual effect.
This is not to say that there is no charm here. Far from it. First off, the food was fantastic. The rather brief menu, populated mainly by a few noodle dishes and a couple of soups, is reinforced by an expertly prepared set of off-menu side dishes, as well as mounds of the piggiest bits of luwei 滷味 that Pei-ling declared to be some of the best old-school luwei she’s had in many a year.
The restaurant also seems to appeal to a broad clientele, from ethnographers like yours truly to neighborhood regulars, and even to the Triad-types sitting directly behind us. (Seriously, they were Triad-types. My attention was drawn their way when their conversation turned to the inevitable water cooler topic of Light the Night 華燈初上, the Netflix whodunnit that I covered on this very blog a few weeks back. We ultimately had ample opportunity to take stock of their designer T-shirts and thick metal chains, and to witness their departure in a cavalcade of tinted-window luxury vehicles.)
And yet, even if the customers are just here for the food, even if the restaurant is “not very nostalgia-forward,” I still have to wonder … what about that playlist? After all, is the rippling water in Jaws still threatening without the bassy half-step that won John Williams his first Original Score Academy Award? Does the “Single Ladies” dance still look like a feminist bop when accompanied by Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring?
Similarly, does Village Mouth’s mythical all-military playlist draw the restaurant’s blue nostalgia from the periphery to the center in a way that visual cues alone fail to do?
I shall report back.
We’ll Be Back, Tai Pak
Our abortive visit to Tai Pak, the bar that apparently takes the Korean War as the bracing inspiration for its cocktail menu, started in the form of a quiz: Can you figure out whether or not this is the door? (Answer: Yes. It is.)
This is also where I learned that, in Taipei, it is standard practice to reserve seats at a bar. Furthermore, it turns out that the Korean War cocktail theming is a classy affair, and we were potentially underdressed. (The lack of a front door probably should have prepared me for this eventuality.) Translation: we were turned away.
I shall report back.
Four Ethnomusicologists, Seven Scholars
Instead of enjoying bellicose beverages in the incongruously peaceful surroundings of Tai Pak, we ended up at Seven Scholars, the hotel bar at Taipei's Howard Plaza Hotel. This was a hushed, dimly-lit, wood-paneled, armchair-filled space of the type I associate with old Boston money (think the late, great Oak Room at the Copley Hotel)—the only things missing were taxidermied moose heads and a complimentary serving of Puritan disdain.
But it was a setting that offered its own opportunities to think and exchange ideas. For example, the bar’s wine list offered intriguing ways to facilitate liquid mediation between East and West. The wine list was carefully modelled on the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove 竹林七賢, a group of scholar-poet-musician-drinking buddies of China’s Three States period. (It also turns the bar—perhaps inadvertently—into an obliquely queer-friendly space, seeing as two of the scholars, Ruan Ji 阮籍 and Ji Kang 嵇康 were famous lovers.) Each featured wine on the bar’s wine list was described in terms of the attributes of one of the eponymous Seven Scholars, quite literally bestowing a distinct personality on each of the wines. This struck me as a fascinating strategy for localizing a drinking culture that, almost by definition, derives its social prestige from foreign sources.
But the hotel was also a study in local identity, most obviously through the works by famous Taiwanese artists prominently displayed throughout the lobby. Most salient was a series of large-scale works by Liao Shiou-Ping 廖修平 (b. 1936), one of the granddaddies of the Taiwan arts scene. Still active today, Liao upholds tradition by splitting his time between refining his signature Japanese print-making techniques, and railing against the inadequacy of all subsequent generations of artists.
What’s more, this is not the first time that the Howard Plaza Hotel has invested heavily in works by local artists. By prominently displaying several large-scale works by one of Taiwan’s most famous living artists, and channeling guests through a lobby filled with iconic Taiwanese art before imbibing with the (Han Chinese) Seven Scholars of the Bamboo Grove, this hotel announces that you are entering a Taiwanese establishment, one that is not to be mistaken with its mainland equivalents (no matter what the hotel bar might lead you to believe).
Is it nationalism? Good marketing? Aesthetic preference of a brand manager? Who knows? Whatever the weather, this hotel describes itself as “a landmark of Taiwanese heritage and hospitality in the very heart of Taipei. To stay at the Howard is to experience the best of Taiwanese arts, culture and dining topped off with international 5-star service.” Here, hotel and arts create a symbiotic feedback loop, each conspicuously drawing on the other’s prestige in order to elevate the cultural and social cachet of both.
A Long Post about an Incomplete Mission
This trip didn’t quite make it into mission accomplished territory. But that’s part of the fun of this kind of food-meets-fieldwork outing. There’s always a reason to go back, whether it’s to think on the decor, hear that playlist, or just get another stab at those really delicious noodles …
I shall report back.
For a rich and varied set of discussions on the red revival, see Red Legacies in China: Cultural Afterlives of the Communist Revolution, eds. Jie Li and Enhua Zhang (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2016).
Interestingly, the singing of red songs is one of the major campaigns launched by Bo Xilai 薄熙来, who was purged from the Chinese Communist Party during Xi Jinping’s ascent to power. Once considered disturbing by many in China, these large amateur choirs have become a commonplace in many Chinese cities.