(bombastic music) - Across Taiwan food is used as an offering.

Whether to the ancestral spirits of the island's indigenous peoples or to the gods of those who came later.

I've traveled to the indigenous village of Taramak in Taitung County on Taiwan's jungley, mountainous East coast (gun fires) to meet the men of the Rukai tribe as they prepare to hunt wild boar.

Although gun ownership and hunting are outlawed in Taiwan, tribes like the Rukai are given an exception since hunting is vital to their culture and survival.

Even though there are 16 recognized indigenous tribes in Taiwan, they make up just 3% of the population.

Since tribal traditions do not allow women to go on the hunts, I meet up with the men beforehand.

Hi!

We are a group that works together.

See you tomorrow.

Back in the village, I meet the legendary Aeles Lrawbalrate who runs a restaurant kitchen where she prepares the offerings brought down from the mountain.

Aeles, or Lily as her friends call her, is not only the first woman in her tribe to go to college, she's also a PhD candidate, a grandmother, and a chef dedicated to keeping her cultural heritage alive.

Hi, there!

Hey, how are you?

- Welcome!

Welcome to Dawana!

Dawana is a place that's for everybody to rest.

- Oh, well, it, I already feel very tranquil.

- We still hunt.

We're still hunting and we're still very close intimacy with the forest.

(gun fires) So that's my ideas of nature is what we get from the nature.

When the hunter come back from the harvest of the forest, then they are not only harvest the meat, they also bring some of the, on the way they forage some of the food.

- What is all of this?

I see a hibiscus flower.

- This is a mountain salt.

- Mountain salt?

- Yeah, we, we say 'bos'.

You know, did, you, you can have a try.

- Okay.

Oh, it's salty.

- Sour.

Salty?

- Oh, it's so good, is it seasoning?

- Yeah!

Then usually that's only grown in the mountain, the high tree.

Then they will pick up and also we bring to your food too.

- Ooh, so you're cooking with this today?

- Yeah, that's some of the pork.

This is the wild tomato and you will bump with tana and this become your dipping.

- Oh.

- Yeah!

- Oh, I love this, it has a really great, kind of, like, slippery feeling to the mouth, right?

- And this is a vegetable, fern.

- Oh, this is the wild fern, do you have this all year round?

- Yeah!

- You do?

'Cause in the US we actually grow these ferns as houseplant.

(chuckles) - And this is, is this kind of a basil?

- Spinach.

- A spinach?

- Wild spinach.

- Oh.

- Then you collect the seeds and we, we spray all over.

- Oh, so it just self sows?

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- And everything you eat is sustainable and forged locally?

- Yes.

This is our, we call 'wakan'.

- What kind of meat is that, it looks like slabs of juicy bacon?

- There is a, a barking deer and a wild boar.

- Wild boar?

- Yeah and some of the wild chicken.

In the mountain, they will have a, a hunter cottage.

They will build a stone oven like this, so maybe when he went to the forest mountain, then for a day or one week, all his harvest, hunting meat, then he will process to make a smoke so they can lightly to bring down from the mountain.

- They process the meats when they're killed?

- Yeah.

- Ah.

- Then they can easily carry down for a wild boar, (foreign word), deer, and everything.

Then they will have some, a herb put under, put under the 'wakan' on top, the fragrance of essential oil, the meat will be, sort of, very different.

If you study linguistic, anthropologies, or DNA, you realize Austronesians speaking family is toward Taiwan to all over the Pacific.

Then- - So Taiwan's the mother?

- Yes, because Taiwan have kept mostly the oldest classical languages for all the Austronesians and from the history, the archeological site, you still can find in Taiwan, that's is the most important.

If you go to ha Hawaii, Polynesian region, like Maori, Tahiti, they still have a sign language is Taiwan.

We've been living in Taiwan because of outsider keep pushing us some of the indigenous people because the outsider from Han Chinese, they, they pushing us to the mountain, become the Bunun, become the Paiwan, who toward Pacific.

We belong to Taiwan before anybody and we, we're still here.

Ancestor spirits in heaven.

I sincerely express my gratitude to you.

and pray that you will grant us peace.

Give me the strength and wisdom to guide me when I face difficulties.

This is my sincere prayer to you.

- Alright.

Okay.

- And we'll go with your wild vegetable.

(peaceful music) (sings in foreign language) - You are living tradition.

- Yeah.

- Yeah- - A living tradition but reach out to the whole world.

- It's a short trip from the mountains to the sea where I joined the Amis, an ocean fairing tribe perched on Taiwan's Eastern intertidal zone.

The Amis, the largest of the island's indigenous groups are traditionally matrilineal and the women I meet are called mermaids for reasons I'll soon find out.

I join them on the day's forage to see what the ocean has to offer.

This means clambering over sharp slippery rocks and dodging the choppy waters and wind all while keeping an eye out for the tiny shells we'll soon be cooking for lunch.

I try my best to keep up with the mermaids but they move amazingly quickly and nimbly.

This is a Black Oyster.

Can you eat it?

Yes.

It grows here.

Next to the rocks.

1, 2, 3.

Right?

It█s right here.

Pry it out.

This is the sea cucumber, look at it!

The this, the head is up here and the body is actually growing as I'm holding it, it's probably a defense, trying to, trying to wiggle its way free.

Anybody want fresh sea cucumber?

The ocean is the refrigerator for the Amis tribe.

Whenever they wanted fresh seafood, you know, when she was growing up here 40 years ago, she would just head to the ocean to find the freshest seafood.

(light music) We're taking the tender shoots of this vegetable for stir fry.

It's like picking tea leaves, you wanna pick the most tender shoots.

Let me tell you.

We got this yesterday.

You hold and push it like this.

Yep.

Like this.

Put it in your mouth.

Yep.

Like that.

With, seafood rice.

You have to pair it with this.

Mush it.

Mush it a bit longer.

We're toasting to this successful foraging trip where, you know, it, even though it was rocky out, we're safe, we're protected, and we came back with all this bounty assessments.

When the tide recedes, the women will go out to collect the intertidal snails.

(everybody claps and laughs) (upbeat music) After our impromptu picnic on the beach, and a few more shots of herbal liquor, we head to the nearby kitchen and restaurant where the mermaids are, why am I not surprised, also excellent chefs.

Using mostly a wok and a steamer, they set out a stunningly diverse array of traditional foods taken mostly from the ocean's morning offerings.

This, you take it off.

(upbeat music continues) These are the shells that we forage, they've just been tossed in water and we're going to eat them with these toothpicks, and this is also a seafood forward dish, It's actually fish eggs, foraged seaweed tossed with carrots, boar meat, and onions.

This I love, the sea grapes, wild bitter melon greens.

The wild forged vegetable also made its way into the soup here, and it has a citrusy taste to it.

Finally, everything, every meal is not complete without the rice, and this is a sticky rice here in this beautiful rice container.

If you explore Taiwan's nooks and crannies, you're liable to come across an elaborate feast for the gods every night.

In Tainan, I happened upon some friendly people who saw me admiring their spread and insisted that I join their banquet, which was an elaborate feast they had prepared for a local god's birthday.

So we're right behind this temple to one of the god's birthdays, so these lovely people here prepared this sumptuous piece to pray, it's an altar table for the gods.

Whole fish, whole lobster, delicious soup.

Whether it's Tomb-Sweeping, or it's somebody's birthday, or it's a god's birthday, they'll put out their best food for the gods, so it's a prayer table, and then after the gods have their share, then us mortals will finish the rest.

There's a soy milk shop next door.

Pretty soon we were giddy, maybe because of the fresh soybean milk from the vendor next door and them, because of the beer.

Tainan City, Central District, Snail Alley.

Thank you!

(peaceful music) It's the god's birthday, we've gotta pay our respects to the god.

There's so many temples all around Tainan and they came here from China in the 18th century, so about 300 years ago, and they're three brothers, we're celebrating one of their birthdays, he's 3000 years old today and the three brothers protect this neighborhood.

(peaceful music continues) Another part of the offering is to burn paper money so that the gods or your ancestors have enough to use in their afterlife.

(peaceful music resumes) The best known way in which food takes on a spiritual role is in the cuisine prepared by the island's Buddhist temples.

Here, not only is food an offering but the act of eating is a form of meditation.

I head to Dharma Drum monastery in Taipei for a little zen with my dinner.

- In Temple cuisine, our purpose is to invite people to learn the teaching of the Buddha.

So we have a, a popular Buddhist code, you say, if the food wheel does not move, the stomach wheel cannot turn.

It means the food is, play a key role to spreading the teaching of the dharma because people come to the temple and they eat it and they feel it's good, it's delicious, and they want to stay here to learn something, to understand feeling something.

- Are the majority of people in Taiwan, Buddhist?

- According to the status of the religious population, Buddhism is the, the largest tradition and the, the, the, the religion tradition.

We will have this, as called the tempeh with the sea, seasonal vegetables.

Yeah.

And, this one, this is the, the pan-fried tofu.

Pan fried tofu.

This is the stew of seasonal ingredient using the Chinese herbs and spices.

You should try to meditate when you cook, so it can be, something, like, cooking meditation.

- I was watching them cook and they have such precision, you know, every, the tofu is cut just right, everything is in the same size.

It's, it's, it's very beautiful and I, I, I do see this, sort of, meditative aspect, you know, just the cutting the seaweed or what have you.

(cultural music) - We have a, a famous Buddha teaching, it's about, before we eat food, we should do some reflection to, to, to reflect on our relationship with food.

So it has, it's a code of five contemplation before a meal, they have five rules and the first one is let us reflect on our work and, and the effort of those who bring us this food.

The second, be aware of the, the quality of our deeds as we receive this meal.

The third, the most essen, essential, is the practice of mindfulness, which help us to transcend great greed, anger, and delusion.

And the fourth, we appreciate this food which sustain the good quality, good health of our body of mind.

And the fifth, in order to continue our, our practice for all sentient being, we accept this offering.

- So you've been here for 10 years?

- Yeah.

- How have you evolved?

- I enjoy, enjoy all the process because my motivation for being a monk is to, to share, to share the dharma to the, to the public.

- After the austere serenity of Dharma Drum temple, I experienced Buddhist observance and cooking on an entirely different scale at Fo Guang Shan, Taiwan's largest monastery, located outside of Guang Shan in southern Taiwan.

I'm bowled over by the sheer size of the monastery, which sits on more than 250 acres and boasts a Buddha over a hundred feet tall!

Tourists arrive daily by the busload to eat at one of the many restaurants on the grounds, including the vegetarian buffet at the Buddha Museum, where meals are affordable, fresh, and seasonal.

In fact, food is one of the key portals through which the monastery spreads its dharma and teachings.

And who visits, are they mostly Buddhists, or?

- Not only Buddhists but also tourists, people of different religions, they all come here to the Buddha Museum.

- How many people do you feed here a day?

- When there's no, no events, like 20,000, when there is an event, like, a bigger, like, Chinese New Year's, probably 200,000 people.

The first floor is a tea house, Water Drop Teahouse, where you can eat, and the second floor is for, for drinking tea or, like, tea time, so you can have classes over there.

(soft guitar music) - Well, I noticed that you have such a variety of cuisines, you know?

It's not just Chinese food, you have Japanese, Thai, Italian, American.

- Yeah, yeah.

- What's behind that philosophy?

- We want to bring people, not only Asians, but people of different ethnics over to Taiwan, to the Buddha Museum, to hope they enjoy and know more about vegetarian.

This place, it's for dining.

So, there are 50 tables here for people to eat and over here they have five different types of vegetables and a soup.

- This is the nuggets and this is the vegetarian nuggets, and this is char siu, vegetarian char siu, and- - Vegetarian- - Vegetarian barbecued pork, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And this is the spring roll, and this is made of the sticky rice, and fruits, and tom yum.

And, and this is made of the peanuts, Tofu made of peanuts, it's not made of soy beans.

- You can really get any flavors you want here.

- Yeah.

- These are the small dishes that accompany every meal, so they'll have, like, 30 or so small dishes to choose from that are natural, fresh, daily.

Everything looks so beautiful and delicious and colorful!

(calming music) This is a turnip cake or radish cake, you often find it at dim sum and it's made of grated radish mixed with rice, and it's sweet.

You have to soak the rice for six hours.

So she's not using rice flour, she's making it from raw rice.

(peaceful music continues) This is really, I think, the best part of the meal, you get a bowl of rice or a bowl of noodle, and then you choose whatever small appetizer or dishes you want to accompany it with.

It's a braised vegetarian tomato soup with noodles.

(peaceful music resumes) So she's really, you know, trying to capture the essence of the vegetables, so by stir frying it, it brings more nutrition out of the tomatoes.

Why, why is vegetarianism so important to temple cuisine?

- Because we're promoting environmental protection and it's also protecting the animals, so that's why we promote vegetarian, because vegetarian is protecting the environment, we are also protecting ourselves, to purify our body.

- Just gonna make a Taiwanese dessert, it's a jelly, it's, it's made from fig.

This is what it looks like when it's cooked.

It has a natural coagulant in there, so it's a delicious jelly, you can eat it over shaved ice or just on its own.

Why is food such an important part of this monastery?

- Because our variable master Cheng Yen, our founder, actually said that, "Culinary is a type of art," and since we're a museum, we use culinary to propagate the dharma to let people know more about Buddhism.

- Yeah, I think it's such a great gateway to, you know, becoming interested about the philosophy behind the food and therefore Buddhism in general.

So, thank you.

- Thank you.

- Everywhere I traveled in Taiwan, I found food for thought.

(upbeat outro music)