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- Panel 4-1 An Entrepreneurial Perspective in the Study of Culinary Nostalgia and Cultural Sustainability at Dadaocheng, Taipei City in Taiwan /Tu-Chung Liu
Panel 4-1 An Entrepreneurial Perspective in the Study of Culinary Nostalgia and Cultural Sustainability at Dadaocheng, Taipei City in Taiwan /Tu-Chung Liu
Tu-Chung Liu
Assistant professor, Department & Graduate School of Architeture & Interior Design, Chaoyang University of Technology (NYUST), Taiwan
This paper aims to explore how food and cuisine become both the object of nostalgia and the resources for the regeneration of places and cultural entrepreneurship. Foodways as intangible cultural heritage have been emphasized and promoted in different academic disciplines and in local governance for decades. However, the link between food heritage entrepreneurs, local development, and cultural sustainability is discussed less often. Furthermore, seeing nostalgia as a form of affective and motivational practice, rather than a futile sense of longing lacking in historical authenticity, the potential of nostalgia concerning food heritage could be oriented to be strategically present-centered in order to motivate our future-oriented thinking. Accordingly, this article, on the one hand, explores the role of agency-driven promotion of food heritage by making ‘cultural salons’ in the form of restaurants, teahouses or cafés in Dadaocheng, one of the oldest districts of Taipei city in Taiwan, respectively in the 1930s and 2010s. On the other hand, the study posits food heritage as a powerful enabler through which identities are strategically articulated and negotiated. By examining contemporary entrepreneurs’ storytelling and related entrepreneurial strategies, this paper proposes that food heritage, particularly for ‘Taiwanese cuisine’ and tea, can play an important role in the interconnection between the glorious past and the future of nostalgia in Dadaocheng. More concretely, by rediscovering both the spirits of the 1920s and 1930s through culinary spaces and related cultural activities, and the symbolic and political values of food in the Japanese colonial era, food and cuisine can become one of the important ways to redefine Taiwanese subjectivity and modernization in Taiwan.
Keywords: culinary nostalgia, cultural entrepreneurship, Dadaocheng, local regeneration, Taiwan subjectivity
Assistant professor, Department & Graduate School of Architeture & Interior Design, Chaoyang University of Technology (NYUST), Taiwan
This paper aims to explore how food and cuisine become both the object of nostalgia and the resources for the regeneration of places and cultural entrepreneurship. Foodways as intangible cultural heritage have been emphasized and promoted in different academic disciplines and in local governance for decades. However, the link between food heritage entrepreneurs, local development, and cultural sustainability is discussed less often. Furthermore, seeing nostalgia as a form of affective and motivational practice, rather than a futile sense of longing lacking in historical authenticity, the potential of nostalgia concerning food heritage could be oriented to be strategically present-centered in order to motivate our future-oriented thinking. Accordingly, this article, on the one hand, explores the role of agency-driven promotion of food heritage by making ‘cultural salons’ in the form of restaurants, teahouses or cafés in Dadaocheng, one of the oldest districts of Taipei city in Taiwan, respectively in the 1930s and 2010s. On the other hand, the study posits food heritage as a powerful enabler through which identities are strategically articulated and negotiated. By examining contemporary entrepreneurs’ storytelling and related entrepreneurial strategies, this paper proposes that food heritage, particularly for ‘Taiwanese cuisine’ and tea, can play an important role in the interconnection between the glorious past and the future of nostalgia in Dadaocheng. More concretely, by rediscovering both the spirits of the 1920s and 1930s through culinary spaces and related cultural activities, and the symbolic and political values of food in the Japanese colonial era, food and cuisine can become one of the important ways to redefine Taiwanese subjectivity and modernization in Taiwan.
Keywords: culinary nostalgia, cultural entrepreneurship, Dadaocheng, local regeneration, Taiwan subjectivity