Taiwanese Military Dependents' Village Cuisine

30-second overview: The great migration of 1949 brought roughly 1.2 million soldiers and civilians to Taiwan, and the tastes of their hometowns took root in military dependents' villages enclosed by bamboo fences. Shandong scallion pancakes, Sichuan doubanjiang, Jiangsu-Zhejiang xiaolongbao, and Hunan pickled vegetables collided and blended within the same communities, creating new flavors in Taiwan's food culture that cannot be claimed by any single province.

The great migration of 1949 changed not only Taiwan's political landscape, but also infused its food culture with hometown flavors from provinces across China. More than a million soldiers and civilians rebuilt their lives in Taiwan's military dependents' villages. Within these small worlds enclosed by bamboo fences, Shandong flatbreads, Sichuan chilies, Jiangsu-Zhejiang sweetness, and Hunan pickled vegetables rubbed against, merged with, and evolved alongside one another in limited spaces, forming a culture of military dependents' village cuisine that cannot be labeled as belonging to any single province.¹

The Great Migration of Taste in 1949

In 1949, as the Nationalist government relocated to Taiwan, an estimated 1.2 million soldiers and civilians came from mainland China to Taiwan, though demographers have offered differing estimates of this figure. These people came from every corner of China, bringing different accents, customs, and, most difficult to relinquish, the taste memories of their hometowns.

In that turbulent era, the flavors of home became a form of emotional consolation. People from Shandong missed scallions dipped in sauce; people from Sichuan longed for spicy twice-cooked pork; people from Jiangnan missed the lightness of plain boiled chicken. These taste memories were recombined on unfamiliar soil, forming a distinctive food culture in military dependents' villages.

The Mainlanders who had just arrived faced language barriers and economic hardship. In the simple kitchens of the villages, they used limited ingredients to recreate the tastes of home. Because supplies were scarce, original ingredients were replaced with inexpensive substitutes, and cooking methods were adjusted to local conditions. In the process, many new culinary variations were unintentionally created.

On Both Sides of the Bamboo Fence: Overlapping Ethnic Perspectives

The story of military dependents' village cuisine cannot be told only from the perspective of Mainlanders. Relations between benshengren, or earlier-settled Taiwanese, and waishengren, post-1949 Mainlanders, were full of tension after 1949: the wounds of the February 28 Incident had not healed, and language barriers, unequal distribution, and conflicts in everyday habits all created distance. Food, however, was often the first thing to cross these boundaries.²

Mothers from the villages brought dumplings to visit Taiwanese neighbors; local farming families shared pineapples with village residents. Everyday hunger and generosity quietly softened the distance between the two sides of the fence. Taiwanese women brought knowledge of local ingredients, such as where to find the most tender sweet potato leaves or which fish to buy in which season, while Mainlander mothers introduced noodle-making techniques and seasoning secrets from different provinces. This kitchen diplomacy is the root of the two-way circulation that characterizes military dependents' village cuisine.

The "Taiwanization" of this cuisine was, to a large extent, the product of this reciprocal exchange. Taiwanese basil appeared in the dough of scallion pancakes; braised pork incorporated Taiwan's distinctive thick soy sauce paste. Under the influence of Taiwanese ingredients, provincial cuisines developed forms that could not be replicated in their places of origin.

Kitchen Ingenuity Inside the Bamboo Fence

Living space in the villages was cramped. Families of several people squeezed into houses of only a dozen ping, and the kitchen often had just one stove. Under these constraints, village mothers developed distinctive cooking methods.

"One pot from start to finish" was a basic principle of these kitchens. Because there was only one stove, all the dishes had to be completed in the same pot, or cooked in sequence using residual heat. This constraint fostered creativity, and many classic village dishes were born under such conditions. Making full use of everything was another core attitude: bones became soup, vegetable leaves were stir-fried, and leftover rice became fried rice. This thrift gave rise to many dishes that now appear quite ingenious.

"Neighborhood mutual aid" was another feature of village kitchens. A Shandong sister-in-law next door shared how to make scallion pancakes; a Sichuan auntie across the way taught the secrets of twice-cooked pork. In these small communities enclosed by bamboo fences, culinary techniques from different provinces naturally circulated and blended.

The Military Dependents' Village Origin of Braised Beef Noodle Soup: Kaohsiung's Gangshan and Mingde Doubanjiang

Any discussion of military dependents' village cuisine must mention beef noodle soup. Although beef noodle soup is now regarded as a national dish of Taiwan, its origins can indeed be traced to village culture, more specifically to Air Force military dependents' villages in Gangshan, Kaohsiung, in the 1950s.³

The story begins with Air Force noncommissioned officer Liu Mingde. He came to Taiwan with the military in 1948, retired in 1950, and settled in a military dependents' village in Gangshan. To make a living, he recalled the doubanjiang-making skills he had learned on the march, used his remaining savings to buy ingredients, and began producing hometown-style spicy doubanjiang and sweet wheat paste. "Mingde Doubanjiang" became a signature seasoning inside and outside the Gangshan villages, and unexpectedly supplied the crucial flavor base for Sichuan-style braised beef noodle soup.⁴

Soldiers from Sichuan and Hunan combined Gangshan's Mingde doubanjiang with Taiwanese beef and noodle-making techniques, gradually adjusting them into a new dish that differed from its Sichuan place of origin but carried strong memories of Sichuan flavor. The earliest verifiable Taiwanese Sichuan-style beef noodle shop was "Park Pork Knuckle Noodles / Beef Noodles," which opened in Gangshan, Kaohsiung, in 1962. This date comes more than a decade after the creation of the key ingredient, Mingde doubanjiang, matching the evolutionary logic of "seasoning first, noodle dish later."³

The broth of village beef noodle soup is rich because meat was precious. Village mothers simmered beef bones for a long time, giving the broth gelatin and aroma. This concentrated soup base not only increased satiety, but also made a simple noodle dish flavorful and satisfying. From a family dish in Gangshan to beef noodle shops later found throughout Taiwan, the development of this dish testifies to the influence of military dependents' village culture. It also shows that "Taiwanese Sichuan flavor" is in fact a hybrid product made in Taiwan.

The Fusion of Provincial Cuisines

The special environment of the villages enabled unprecedented culinary fusion. Families from different provinces lived side by side, and their food cultures naturally evolved through daily interaction.

The boldness of Shandong cuisine encountered the refinement of Jiangsu-Zhejiang cooking, producing new variations. Shandong scallion pancakes borrowed delicate techniques from Jiangnan, while Jiangnan xiaolongbao absorbed Shandong's sense of portion and substance. The numbing heat of Sichuan cuisine and the aromatic heat of Hunan cuisine also generated new combinations in the villages. Because authentic Sichuan seasonings were not available in Taiwan at the time, cooks used local Taiwanese chilies and spices to create substitutes, inadvertently forming a distinctive Taiwanese Sichuan flavor.

The lightness of Cantonese cuisine and the heavier flavors of northern cooking also found a point of balance in the villages. Many village dishes display characteristics of north-south fusion, preserving flavors from the places of origin while adapting to Taiwan's climate and ingredients.

Village Demolition, Preservation, and Cultural Parks

In 1996, the Act for Rebuilding Old Quarters for Military Dependents was passed. Village lands were gradually converted into rezoned districts or public housing sites, and the physical structures of old military dependents' villages disappeared at an accelerated pace.⁵ Some villages, however, survived because of calls for cultural preservation.

Sisinan Village in Taipei's Xinyi District is Taiwan's best-known case of military dependents' village preservation. In 2003, the original building complex was transformed into a village culture museum and became a site for food brands such as Good Cho's, allowing village cuisine to be re-presented in a new context. Taoyuan, which has the largest number of such villages in Taiwan, has a military dependents' village culture museum and an annual village culture festival, forming a cultural tourism node centered on food.⁶ Near the Qing-dynasty old city walls in Zuoying, Kaohsiung, several officially listed villages have also been preserved.

These remaining village spaces have given the transmission of village cuisine physical landmarks, allowing later generations to see, beyond taste, the concrete form of this migrant history.

A Two-Way Perspective: Taiwanese Views and Second-Generation Village Identity

Military dependents' village cuisine has long been narrated primarily as "Mainlander mothers passing down the tastes of home," but that is only half the story. From the perspective of benshengren, the villages were "unfamiliar new neighbors" that appeared after the end of Japanese rule and the war. Taiwanese rural communities that had originally spoken Taiwanese, farmed the land, and worshipped the Earth God suddenly found themselves living alongside military families who spoke Mandarin and cooked dishes scented with unfamiliar spices. Initial relations were not idyllically harmonious. Land expropriation, language barriers, and gaps in political status all produced structural tensions between the inside and outside of the villages. Taiwanese acceptance of village cuisine emerged only gradually, through several decades of shared life and cultural permeation.

The changing identity of the second generation in the villages is another underestimated dimension. Most of the "first generation" who migrated to Taiwan in 1949 held a provisional mentality shaped by the expectation of "retaking the mainland," and the nostalgia embedded in village cuisine was extremely strong. But the second generation, born after the 1960s, grew up speaking Mandarin, eating Taiwanized village food, and studying alongside bensheng classmates. For them, the binary division between "Mainlander" and "Taiwanese" gradually loosened. After the 1990s, the third generation increasingly identified themselves as "Taiwanese." For them, village cuisine was no longer primarily a vehicle of homesickness. These dishes were the flavors of childhood memory. This shift in identity occurred in parallel with Taiwan's broader process of localization.

A full understanding of military dependents' village cuisine requires seeing three narrative layers at once: the homesickness of military families who migrated to Taiwan, the process by which Taiwanese society accepted them, and the loosening of second-generation identity, rather than relying on a single paradigm of "Mainlander flavor."

The Transmission of Modern Military Dependents' Village Cuisine

In today's Taiwan, the physical villages have largely disappeared, but the influence of their cuisine remains visible. Many Taiwanese home-style dishes bear traces of village cooking. These dishes have already been absorbed into Taiwan's food culture and become an inseparable part of it.

A new generation of chefs has begun to reinterpret village cuisine, preserving its traditional foundation while using modern techniques and ingredients. Several Taiwanese food writers have also built textual archives for village cuisine through their writing. Jiao Tong's The Taste of Taiwan (Eryu, 2009) is a representative early work, preserving taste memory beyond the form of recipes.⁷

References

Further Reading

• Military Dependents' Village Culture Preservation Center, Ministry of National Defense — Integrated national platform for information on military dependents' village preservation
• Ministry of Culture National Memory Database — Military Dependents' Village Feature — Oral histories and artifact collections related to military dependents' villages

Image Source

• Scallion pancake: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA