Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0362/03620.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 28KB | 474 lines

$Unique_ID{COW03620}
$Pretitle{263}
$Title{Taiwan
Chapter 7B.   Food, Clothing, and Housing}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{The Director Foreign Area Studies}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{family
relief
housing
new
year
food
government
taiwan
rice
day}
$Date{1971}
$Log{Table 5.*0362001.tab
}
Country:     Taiwan
Book:        Area Handbook for the Republic of China
Author:      The Director Foreign Area Studies
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1971

Chapter 7B.   Food, Clothing, and Housing

Diet and Nutrition

     On an average day when there is no heavy work to be done, three meals are
served. Tea accompanies each meal and also is taken between meals. For the
more well-to-do, prebreakfast and midafternoon snacks of pastry are added. The
meals are simple and inexpensive. The main dish of each meal is rice. The
poorer families often substitute sweet potatoes for rice; sometimes they shred
and steam the potatoes along with the rice. Fresh, dried, or steamed
vegetables, dried fish, and a little meat or egg also are added. The noontime
meal is the heartiest; the evening meal is an extension of the noon meal with
perhaps more vegetables added.

     A family which is not thrifty in eating and living habits on ordinary
days invites criticism from the neighbors; on festive days when guests are
present, however, frugality is taken for stinginess. A man may earn a bad
reputation if he does not live up to the occasion. During harvesttime, for
instance, five substantial but not elaborate meals a day are usual. A farmer
is expected to feed all the neighbors and relatives who come to help, as he
will be fed on their farms. If he does not feed them well, the farmer may find
himself without help at the next harvesttime.

     Eating is part of nearly all religious, magical, social, or family
anniversary occasions. The kinds of food and the quality and quantity of the
food served depend on the event. A family, without being obliged to invite
guests, may enjoy a pai-pai (a feast at which food is sacrificed to a deity or
household god) once or twice a month. More and better food, such as soup,
pork, or fresh fish, is served, and no one is criticized for lack of
thriftiness.

     At weddings, funerals, and other occasions where large numbers of
important guests are present, as many as 18 courses, with wine, may be served.
The family may slaughter ducks, geese, chickens, and perhaps even one of their
pigs for events as important as a first son's wedding. For the average family,
serving such a meal often means going into debt. Social pressure requires that
each family invited to a pai-pai or other feast invite the host to a dinner
sometime in the future and that the dinner be at least as elaborate as the
host's.

     Fresh fruits and vegetables are plentiful. Fresh fruits grown locally are
pineapples, bananas, oranges, tangerines, papayas, melons, and mangoes. Fruit
is eaten in large quantities between meals and as dessert after regular meals.

     Available and abundant vegetables are bean sprouts, lettuce, tomatoes,
corn, squash, turnips, peanuts, bamboo shoots, cabbage, cucumbers, and sweet
potatoes.

     Candy, cold drinks made from fruit juices, and shaved ice, which vendors
sell in the sidewalk stalls, are great favorites. Large quantities of sugar
are consumed in candy and in the canning and pickling of fruits. Sugar also is
used for many varieties of pastry. People of southern mainland extraction use
rice flour for these pastries; northerners use wheat flour.

     The amount of meat consumed at a meal also varies directly with social
status, the more well-to-do using more meat in more variety. The Taiwanese
stress the fact that nearly everyone on Taiwan can afford at least a little
meat each day. Meat generally includes pork; poultry, such as duck, chicken,
and geese; lamb; and beef in small quantities. Veal is not eaten, and
consumption of dairy foods is small.

     In 1967 the per capita caloric intake was 2,412 daily, according to
statistics of the Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction (JCRR). This figure
compares to that of Japan where per capita intake was 2,290 in the same year
and makes Taiwan's per capita intake the highest in Asia. Broken down into
individual components, the average diet shows that 1,554 calories a day come
from food grains like rice; 154 from starch, mostly sweet potatoes; 106 from
sugar; 119 from beans; 55 from vegetables; 180 from meat; 10 from eggs; 64
from fish; 8 from milk; 132 from fat; and 30 from alcohol. From the
nutritional point of view, as well as variety, these figures show improvement
over the average diet of 10 years ago. At that time caloric consumption was
around 2,050, and the diet was deficient in such minerals and vitamins as
thiamin, vitamin A, niacin, and riboflavin.

     The rise in per capita income since 1957 has made it possible for the
people to enjoy a more varied diet and more to eat at each meal. Courses in
home economics teach women to choose foods on the basis of their nutritive
value and to prepare them in such a way as to preserve their vitamin and
mineral content.

     The aborigines' diet is limited, and the kind of food they eat depends on
the season of the year to a large extent. Their two meals a day consist of
sweet potatoes, taro, chestnuts, millet, and rice. These are supplemented
sometimes by boiled wild grasses, fish in the summer, and wild boar and monkey
in the winter. Those who raise pigs and chicken for bartering purposes
occasionally eat the meat. Sometimes the aborigines eat wild rat, but they do
not eat snake meat, although it is available.

     The one catty (1.3 pounds) of rice consumed by a moderately active male
adult provides over 75 percent of his daily requirement of 2,600 calories.
Until 1950 the average soldier, who uses about 3,500 calories a day, received
about 82 percent of his energy from rice and 7.5 percent from vegetables. Rice
alone provided 64.5 percent of his protein need.

     By 1950 there were an increasing number of complaints that soldiers felt
hunger and fatigue after drill. Under the sponsorship of the National Defense
Medical Center a study was conducted to investigate this problem. The soldiers
were found to be suffering from a lack of protein. Raw and processed soybeans
added to the diet increased the usable protein to levels considered entirely
adequate.

Clothing

     The basic work costume is shorts and T-shirt or khaki wash pants and
shirts for the men, Western-style blouses and brightly patterned skirts for
the women. Workclothes and underwear, made of factory-manufactured materials,
are clean and not ragged. In some rural areas the older people still may wear
the traditional jacket and trousers.

     For dress occasions the men wear Western-style suits; most men now own
one and sometimes two or three "dress" (nonwork) suits. The older women wear
the ch'i pao, the Chinese tunic dress with the high, close-fitting collar and
slim skirt slit partway up the side. They seem to prefer dark colors and
conservative patterns, but the younger women prefer bright colors and
patterns. Western-style dresses are also popular. In cool weather both men and
women wear sweaters of all kinds and windbreaker jackets. Many rural people
still go barefoot or wear wooden clogs, except on dress-up occasions. The
peaked straw hat associated for centuries with rural China still is worn
throughout Taiwan. Women wear bright-colored scarves over the straw hat to
protect their faces from the hot sun. Fishermen and farmers often wear
coconut-fiber raincoats and hats to protect them from the rain.

     Unless a member of a family knows how to sew, clothing is bought
ready-made or is made to order by a local tailor or seamstress, whose prices
are usually inexpensive. The cloth is made in the textile mills of Taiwan.

Housing

     Dwellings vary from new brick units down to substandard shacks built to
accommodate the rapid growth of population after 1949. A typical new urban