Abstract

Food has recently become the major tourist attraction in Taiwan, but this cannot actually reflect its culinary personality. The study thus applies the synesthesia-derived gustemological sense to explain why rice wine best contributes to Taiwan Taste, and based on this, to try to provide an alternative scope to re-introspect what really represents Taiwan food culture, which is generally recognized as local snacks or night market food, however. By adopting a conceptualized gustemological landscape that is focused on rice wine, it is found, through its productive, ritual and culinary spaces, rice wine plays critical roles on people’s everyday life, life etiquettes and personal expressions of emotion, and cooking. This approach also helps see through the distinctive Taiwan food culture that features little Chinese philosophy of dietary balance, but an imbalanced realm between moderate and radical enjoyments of food.