Taiwan Banquet: The Martial Field That Opens Tables Amidst Torrential Rain, and a Human-Ghost-Spirit Trinity Fading Away

30-Second Overview: Banquets are not a modern invention. The Taiwan County Gazetteer from the late Kangxi reign of the Qing Dynasty recorded that Taiwanese people "feast lavishly for family celebrations and seasonal festivals" ¹. In Neimen, Kaohsiung, a mudstone badland where even crops struggle to grow, there were approximately 150 groups of head chefs at its peak, making it the densest cluster in Taiwan ². But today, this craft is bifurcating: banquet dishes have entered five-star hotels, Michelin stars, and even returned overseas in red ³; yet the ritual knowledge involving the whole village mobilizing, the head chef acting as a folk consultant, and spanning the human, ghost, and spirit realms, is quietly lost in the absence of successors ⁴. What is truly disappearing is not the flavor, but the tacit understanding behind the flavor.

The evening torrential rain came fast and fierce, and the accumulated water quickly flooded up to the calves.

This was a 120-table banquet taken on by Wang Yi-yong, a senior head chef from Tainan, with the seating about to begin. The skeleton of the canvas tent was bent by the rain, stoves were extinguished one by one, pots and pans floated on the water surface, and even the trout ready to be put into the pot swam out of the basin, with over ten escaping at once ⁵. For anyone else, this event would likely have been called off.

Wang Yi-yong arrived to inspect the site and did not call it off. He asked the staff to cut the tent fabric to drain the water, moved all kitchenware under the eaves, rolled up his sleeves, and waded in to catch fish first. That night, only one trout was missing, and the ingredients from the reserve table made up for it. Every guest had something to eat ⁵.

For three hundred years, banquets have generally operated this way: as long as the host does not call it off, the tables must open. This discipline of mission accomplishment has supported all important moments for Taiwanese people, from birth to death, from worshipping gods to respecting ghosts. And now, it is moving in two directions simultaneously—one upward, one downward.

Restaurants are the Literary Field; Banquets are the Martial Field

In the industry, there is a common metaphor: Chefs cooking in fixed storefronts with air conditioning and complete kitchen workflows are the "Literary Field" (Wen Chang); carrying equipment to the roadside, temple squares, or activity centers to set up tents and open tables on the spot is the "Martial Field" (Wu Chang) ⁵.

The difference between the Literary Field and the Martial Field is not the level of culinary skill, but uncertainty. The location, stoves, and manpower in a restaurant are the same every day; the location, time, and personnel for a banquet are all fixed. The same head chef might host a deity's birthday in a Tainan temple square this week and hold a funeral in a mountain ancestral shrine next week. The tent must be rebuilt, the fire reconnected, and the kitchen assistants (water feet) must be redeployed. From a management perspective, this is the most difficult catering model: for a complete banquet, the head chef is simultaneously the executive chef, event director, and logistics coordinator—managing canvas tents, tables and chairs, tableware, ingredient suppliers, and the manpower base, all coordinated by one person ⁵.

Therefore, culinary skill is merely the basic foundation of this profession; crisis management is the core competitiveness.

✦ "I fear guests waiting bitterly the most; once they get home, they rush to the phone." — Xue Menghui, Neimen Head Chef, on the night of the 88 Flood ⁶

On the night of the 88 Flood, Xue Menghui was cooking for a peace banquet for a deity's birthday in Fengshan. The wind was strong and the rain heavy; the canvas tent was blown down, and an iron frame hit the chef's head. Only then did the host decide to evacuate ⁶. As he sent the kitchen assistants back to Qiuwei and Shanlin one by one, he wanted to return to Neimen, but found all bridges were broken. He was trapped in a 7-ELEVEN all night, watching the turbulent flow of the Nanzi Xian River rolling like a sea ⁶. What kept him unable to rest all night were the guests waiting bitterly for the tables to open—he rushed to make calls as soon as he got home. And the next day, he still had a banquet for Guanyin Bodhisattva's birthday to host ⁶.

Regardless of strong winds and heavy rain, broken bridges, and collapsed roads, as long as the host does not cancel, the head chef must find a way to serve the dishes. Mission accomplishment is the true threshold of this industry for three hundred years, long before culinary skill.

Where Even Thorny Bamboo Can Survive, a Kingdom of Head Chefs Grew

The mudstone badland of the Gutingkeng Formation in the Kaohsiung area, commonly known as the "Moon World." Neimen is located on the edge of this landscape where even crops struggle to grow. Photo: StevenK234, 2019. CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

To understand how this martial field discipline was forged, one must first look at a land that is difficult to cultivate.

The place with the densest concentration of Taiwanese head chefs is Neimen, Kaohsiung. Neimen is located on the mudstone badland of the Gutingkeng Formation—the landscape commonly known as the "Moon World," with gray-white slopes that are barren, spanning Neimen, Tianliao, and Yanchao. Taiwan Kwang Hua magazine describes this geology as follows: "The cementation and permeability of mudstone are low; it softens into mud when wet and cracks and peels when dry. Coupled with the high salinity of marine sedimentary soil, plant growth is difficult" ⁷. On these barren slopes where even crops struggle to grow, only drought-resistant thorny bamboo can survive; mangoes and bananas can only be grown in areas with thicker cretaceous soil, and because they grow slowly, they are sweeter ⁷.

The land does not nourish people, so people must find another way out. Why did Neimen become the hometown of head chefs? There are two coexisting theories, each with its source.

One theory comes from an interview by The Reporter: In the early days, people in Neimen made bamboo baskets for a living, supplying banana farmers in Qishan for export packaging; after paper boxes took over the market in the 1960s, the bamboo weaving industry declined. Coinciding with the rise of banquets, a large number of craftsmen switched to cooking ⁸. The other theory comes from local officials and cultural workers: Neimen has many temples and troupes; the Songjiang Array is a local signature. During every festival, a large number of participating members must be fed. This repeated demand for "providing meals" gave rise to professional head chefs ⁹. Whether it was bamboo weaving switching to cooking or temple festivals requiring feeding, both lines point to the same thing—this land forced people to develop a profession that relied on craftsmanship for a living.

At its peak, Neimen had a population of about 14,000, yet there were about 150 groups of head chefs. Almost every 5 households had 1 household relying on banquets for a living, capable of cooking more than 20,000 tables simultaneously ². This is the densest cluster of head chefs in Taiwan. (This figure comes from the research compilation of Zhang Yuxin's 2007 master's thesis and Tang Yuning's 2016 I-Shou University master's thesis, not a recent census ².)

The inheritance of this craft relies on the master-apprentice system. Once kitchen assistants accumulate enough experience, they can graduate; second chefs and third chefs establish their own households. In the early days, apprenticeship was passed down through "Soup Pork Knuckle" style—masters taking apprentices, apprentices taking apprentices—spreading the banquet technology to all corners of Taiwan generation by generation ⁸. The key step that turned Neimen from a group of craftsmen into an industry occurred in 1976: Xue Qingji and several partners (including Deng Zhengping, as well as meat vendors and vegetable vendors) formed a "Four-in-One" company, integrating ingredient supply, cooking, and table/chair rental. Banquets became a business with a complete supply chain, handling everything from ingredients, cooking to tables and chairs in one go ⁸.

Today, Xue Menghui estimates that Neimen now has only about 30 to 40 head chefs, about one-quarter of its peak ⁸. The kingdom is still there, but the people are scattering.

In the Ledgers of Three Hundred Years Ago, "Hire a Head Chef for the Banquet" Was Already Recorded

Many people think banquets are something that emerged in post-war Taiwan. Not so. Its roots can be traced back to the Qing Dynasty.

The Taiwan County Gazetteer (Chen Wenda, completed in 1720) from the late Kangxi reign of the Qing Dynasty already recorded that Taiwanese people "feast lavishly for family celebrations and seasonal festivals"; by the Changhua County Gazetteer (Zhou Xi, 1835) in the Daoguang era, it wrote even more about the grandeur of banquets where "dishes exhaust the mountains and seas" ¹. In 1902, an article titled "Miscellaneous Notes on Banquets and Dishes" in the early Japanese colonial period formally included the term "banquet" in literature and explained it clearly: "Preparing tables, organizing wine and food, and setting up banquets is called 'banquet'" ¹⁰. This article comes from Records of Taiwanese Customs—a monthly journal published by the Taiwan Customs Research Society (note that this is a different institution from the "Temporary Taiwan Old Customs Investigation Commission" of the same period, often confused) ¹⁰.

So, when did the business of "banquets" actually start?

Zeng Pincang, Deputy Researcher at the Institute of Taiwan History, Academia Sinica, points out based on Qing Dynasty ledgers and diaries that Taiwanese people in the Qing Dynasty already commissioned professional chefs to host banquets for weddings, funerals, and sacrifices ¹¹. The evidence lies in the ledgers: for example, the ledgers of the Wufeng Lin family in the late Qing Dynasty clearly record entries such as "Hire 'Head Chef' for banquet, how much did one table cost" ¹¹. Zeng Pincang infers that this habit of commissioning professional chefs for banquets can be traced back to the Kangxi period ¹¹. Looking further back to the source, the origin of banquets lies in Min-Yue (Fujian and Guangdong)—the banquet culture traditionally called "organizing wine" or "cooking off-site" in Fujian and Guangzhou spread to Taiwan with Qing Dynasty immigrants ¹².

However, from the Qing Dynasty to before the 50th year of the Republic of China (1960s), banquets were very different from today. In cities, restaurants provided catering; in rural areas, people mostly relied on villagers with slightly better cooking skills to work part-time. The dishes were limited, and ingredients were often prepared by the host themselves. Wealthier families had dedicated "kitchen women" to help manage ¹³. True professionalization probably began only in the 1960s—the 50th year of the Republic of China. When villagers discovered that "the profit from part-time banquet work was better than farming," this craft gradually became professional, peaking in the 1970s and 80s ¹³.

💡 Did You Know: The Hokkien pronunciation of "banquet" is pān-toh, and "head chef" is read as tsóng-phòo-sai. The character "Shi" (Master) is a title of respect for professional craftsmen in Taiwanese folklore ¹⁴—just like "Earth-Water Master" (mason) or "Wood Master" (carpenter), it is evidence that this craft is respected as an "art."

資料來源：*Records of Taiwanese Customs*, Zeng Pincang's research, The Reporter, Ministry of Economic Affairs, TaiwanPlus

The Sequence of Twelve Dishes Hides a Whole Set of Invisible Knowledge

If the martial field discipline is the bone of the banquet, then what follows is its soul.

A standard banquet usually has 12 to 14 dishes, with a sequence of introduction, development, turn, and conclusion: cold plates are served first to开胃 (appetize) while waiting for guests to take their seats; then soup warms the stomach; then the climax of the main dishes—the most luxurious seafood or meat, such as lobster, red crab, and Buddha Jumps Over the Wall, appear here, divided into "civilian version" and "noble version" based on each table's budget; after the climax, a palate-cleansing soup is served, followed by re-appetizing with heavy-flavored bamboo shoot braised pork or pork ribs; the final dish is chicken soup to conclude, with desserts and fruits as the end ¹⁵. (This sequence of serving dishes is the consensus accumulated by head chefs and food media over years.)

It is worth mentioning that lobster is actually not a "traditional" banquet dish. It only became the protagonist after the Ten Major Construction Projects and economic takeoff in the 1960s; in early banquets, stir-fried rice noodles, white-cut chicken, celery squid soup, and meatball soup were more common on the table—for many people, banquets were one of the few occasions to eat meat back then ¹⁶. Even the most majestic Buddha Jumps Over the Wall was originally called "Fu Shou Quan" (Longevity and Fortune Complete), originating from a family banquet of a Fuzhou official during the Guangxu reign of the Qing Dynasty ¹⁷.

But the truly unique aspect of banquets lies behind the dishes: these dishes are placed into a cosmology of shared meals. Research from the National Taiwan Museum of History divides the shared meals of banquets into three types, which is the theoretical framework for understanding the "soul" of banquets [^15]:

The first is Human-God Shared Meals. Banquets for seasonal festivals are when humans and gods enjoy offerings together; Taiwanese call this "receiving blessings from gods by eating" ¹⁵. The second is Human-Ghost Shared Meals. Gatherings for ancestral associations, sacrificial trusts, and Zhongyuan (Ghost Festival) banquets are when humans and ancestors, and "good brothers" (ghosts), eat together, thereby remembering ancestors and establishing harmony with existences in another world ¹⁵. The third is the Host-Guest Shared Meals we are most familiar with—banquets for life rituals celebrating various stages of life, and club gatherings consolidating interpersonal relationships ¹⁵. A single banquet may span the human, ghost, and spirit realms simultaneously.

This is why the head chef is simultaneously the host's folk consultant. When interviewed by The Reporter, practitioners described this role: "How to prepare for a full-month ceremony? How to arrange offerings? Which foods cannot be served on specific occasions? Ask them, they know best" ⁵.

📝 Curator's Note

It is easy to think of banquets as "a larger-scale meal," but this framework misses its most critical element. What banquets truly sell is a correspondence between timing and meaning—which table matches which life moment, which dishes are auspicious, inauspicious, or taboo for which occasion. This correspondence is not written in any recipe; it exists in the head chef's mind and in the muscle memory of one practice after another. When we later see "banquet dishes entering five-star hotels," remember: hotels can buy recipes, but they cannot buy this correspondence. What is lost is the latter.

What does this correspondence look like specifically? The compilation by folk researcher Zhang Yunshu reveals its intricacy [^18]: Full-month tables use whole chickens, taking the寓意 (meaning) of "completeness," symbolizing perfection (although the true core of the full-month ceremony is actually oil rice, chicken wine, and red eggs); funeral banquet dish counts must be odd numbers, 7 or 9 dishes, with a "triangular meat" (sann-kak-bah) with a missing corner on the table, using the shape's imperfection to symbolize the loss in the bereaved family's heart, while avoiding ingredients like lotus seeds, bitter melon, and pineapple due to specific homophones or meanings; wedding banquets must have chicken (starting a family), fish (surplus), braised pork (promotion), and pig stomach (wishing the bride "big belly"), and red crab rice cakes must specially select female crabs with many eggs, seeking the auspicious meaning of "bearing noble sons early" ¹⁸.

⚠️ Controversial Viewpoint: Some banquet taboos circulating in folk actually lack folk basis. For example, "funeral banquets must have刈包 (Hulao/Tiger Bites Pig)"—Hulao is actually a custom for the Year-End Eve (Lunar December 16), symbolizing biting away the year's bad luck, having nothing to do with funeral banquets; another saying is "moving into a new house avoids round balls because 'ball' homophones with 'finished'," this claim has weak sources and directly contradicts the custom of using tangyuan (glutinous rice balls) in moving banquets to symbolize completeness ¹⁹. When writing about banquets, even taboos must be verified—because if written incorrectly, it damages the credibility of this knowledge.

The other side of the soul lies after the banquet ends. After the banquet, the head chef mixes the leftovers of each dish into a "Vegetable Tail Soup" (also called Mixed Vegetable Soup) and distributes it to neighbors who came to help to take home ²⁰. This is not disposing of leftovers; it is a sign of cherishing blessings and gratitude—Taiwan Panorama describes it as a symbol of reciprocity ²⁰. A banquet is the affair of the whole village from start to finish; the host never does it alone. And the vegetable tail soup itself is also on the verge of extinction ²⁰.

The "Black Forest Hotel" on Auspicious Lunar Days

Older generation masters often use presidential terms to remember the industry's ups and downs.

From 1988 to 2000, the 12 years Li Denghui served as president are considered the golden age of banquets. This was not only the era of traditional "Eight Celebrations and One Funeral"—engagement, marriage, full-month, returning to娘家 (natal home), opening business, birthday, moving in, passing away—; it was also an era where even if a child got a PhD or won money from pigeon racing, a banquet table was held ²¹. On auspicious lunar days, the temple square and roadside were full of "Black Forest Hotels." The origin of this name is very Taiwanese: early canvas tents were often provided by beverage companies, with Black Forest soda advertisements printed on them. Over time, "Black Forest Hotel" became a synonym for banquets ²¹.

A banquet directly held on the street in Tainan in 2014. Blocking the road, setting up tables, and opening seats is the most everyday appearance of the "Black Forest Hotel". Photo: Ce Jingzhe, 2014. CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

How prosperous that period was, Xue Menghui remembers most clearly from his father Xue Qingji's work diary.

✦ "The whole yearbook is written full, hosting 25,000 tables in a year." — Xue Menghui recalls his father Xue Qingji's work diary ²¹

In Xue Qingji's era, even in slow months, the average was still 1,000 tables ²¹. In contrast, in Xue Menghui's pre-pandemic period, hosting 500 tables in a big month was already something to smile about, with only a few thousand tables for the whole year ²¹—between generations, the scale has shrunk several times over.

The turning point was roughly around 2003 (the third year of Chen Shui-bian's presidency). Taiwan's industry moved west in large numbers, and SME clients decreased one by one. An old client didn't hire a banquet for two consecutive years; upon inquiry, it was found that the company had gone bankrupt ²¹. The tail end of the golden age began with unanswered phone calls.

Forty Years Old is Considered Young: A Breaking Intergenerational Gap

The industry shrinking can be an economic issue, waiting for the next cycle. But what banquets face is something harder to turn back—the intergenerational gap in succession.

Li Junxiang, a head chef from New Taipei, speaks plainly: "For catering chefs, 40 years old is considered young; mainly, those who take over have family connections. Among 10 chefs aged 30, you can't find 2. Kitchen assistants are generally aging" ²². Another head chef, Jiang Yi-yong, offers a more specific observation: Of culinary school graduates, only about 2% end up in catering ²³. The reason is understandable—"For lunch service, you must depart at 3:30 AM, long working hours, hot stoves" ²³. If young people have choices, they prefer working in air-conditioned restaurants.

Talent is流失 (流失), and the craft breaks along with it. Older generation masters did everything from slaughtering pigs and chickens to making pudding and baking cakes themselves; now with outsourced frozen foods, apprentices cannot learn the complete picture in the kitchen, and those most labor-intensive "hand-path dishes" disappear one by one ²⁴.

The legendary "Chicken-Pig-Stomach-Turtle" in the movie The Grandmaster is the best example—stuffing a softshell turtle into a native chicken's stomach, then stuffing the whole chicken into a pig's stomach, slow-cooking for 3 hours. The process is so cumbersome that almost no one is willing to do it ²⁵. "Chestnut Chicken," popular 40 years ago, young chefs no longer know how to make it; others like Bone-Changing Eel, Bag Chicken, and Five-Silk Branch are also on the verge of extinction ²⁴. (However, it should be noted: although braised pork and red crab rice cakes are labor-intensive, they are still very common and are not in the list of disappearing dishes.) The one who left the most records for these dishes is Huang Wanling, the Godmother of Taiwanese cuisine—she was the food director for the movie The Grandmaster and spent over ten years going to the countryside to visit and preserve those disappearing Taiwanese dishes ²⁵.

📝 Curator's Note

Note an unspoken choice here. The market actually gave the banquet industry an easy path: using frozen meal kits and semi-finished products, one can still serve 12 dishes, and guests probably won't notice. Taking this path, the industry could live longer. But the cost is that those hand-path dishes requiring oral and manual transmission between master and apprentice will quietly die on this path—not because no one likes to eat them, but because no one needs to learn them. Crafts are rarely eliminated by new things; more often, they are bypassed bit by bit by "good enough is fine."

The Longest Winter

If the intergenerational gap is a chronic disease, then the 2020 pandemic was an acute illness.

The Reporter interviewed nearly 10 head chefs in the north and south at that time. The consensus was: the number of catering tables shrank by at least 90% from the Lunar New Year (this is the consensus from interviews, not official statistics) ²⁶. Xue Menghui alone had over 500 tables canceled in the 2nd and 3rd lunar months; the second generation of a banquet family, usually using a large spatula for stir-frying big pot dishes, had to switch to holding a small soup spoon, packing bento boxes one by one to survive ²⁶.

Official numbers also couldn't hold up. Ministry of Economic Affairs statistics show that in April 2020, the revenue of the "Catering and Group Meal Contracting Industry" decreased by 32.3% year-on-year, with monthly revenue of about NT$2.5 billion ²⁷. However, this number must be read carefully: it was mainly dragged down by air catering (airline meals), and a large number of open-air banquets have no business registration and are not in the statistical scope—so for open-air banquets, this number actually underestimates the impact they suffered ²⁷.

Outside the pandemic, northern banquets face a more structural dilemma—space. Li Junxiang describes that northern banquets must first block roads, apply for road rights, and are often reported by neighbors: "Even when we are frying things, neighbors next door curse and report us to the Environmental Protection Bureau for air pollution. The more agitated ones even throw things from upstairs to drive us away" ²⁸. Activity centers and elementary school auditoriums in Taipei City are almost never lent for hosting banquets ²⁸. In the寸土寸金 (inch of land, inch of gold) urban area, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find a place to legally set up tables for open-air banquets.

Are all these pressures bad things? Cultural worker Yan Zhenyu has a different view. He believes the pandemic is both a blow and a stimulus, forcing head chefs to raise hygiene standards and seriously think about transformation ²⁹. But the deepest fear in the hearts of interviewed head chefs is something else: "We worry not just about this year, but more about everyone not hiring (banquets) becoming a habit" ²⁹. The Reporter's conclusion is calm: banquets are tightly linked to the economy, and it is hard to warm up in the short term ²⁹.

Dishes Are Still There, Soul Is Dispersing

But if the story stops here, it would be terribly wrong.

Because looking back from 2025, banquets are not dying unidirectionally. It is actually bifurcating—as "dishes" and "brand," it is going up; as "whole-village mobilization ritual," it is sinking down.

This upward branch is impressive. The Michelin Guide Tainan included banquet dishes in its formal discourse; three restaurants serving banquet dishes—A-Xia Restaurant, Xin Xin Restaurant, and Dong Shang Taiwanese Cuisine—were selected for Bib Gourmand ³⁰. Palais de Chine Hotel in Taipei launched "Taiwanese Banquet," directed by Chef Lin Mingcan, costing NT$22,800 per table plus a 10% service fee, claiming to be the first five-star hotel in Taiwan to formally pay tribute to banquet culture ³¹. The next generation is also taking over: TaiwanPlus reported in August 2025 with the title "Bando Is Back," showing the new generation reviving banquets through "child-generation marketing × parent-generation craft"—such as Tofu Head Chef Huang Maoyuan and daughter Huang Jiayu, Master A Long and son A Xiang ³². The English report writes: "Once fading from Taiwan's cultural fabric, this legendary banquet tradition is making a dynamic comeback…" ³²

Even overseas is flowing back. Good To Eat, a restaurant in Emeryville, California, whose Taiwanese chef Tony Tung (she and partner Angie Lin are a wife-wife team) treats banquets as a love letter to Taiwan, with the menu named jan ba bae (banquet) ³³. On January 4, 2025, she invited Neimen Head Chef Master A-Càn to Taipei to host a traditional banquet for over 400 people, attracting California diners to fly back to Taiwan specifically to experience it ³³.

Looking at these two branches together, the shape of bifurcation is clear. What is reviving is "dishes" and "brand"—they can enter five-star hotels, Michelin tables, and California restaurants; what is disappearing is that ritual knowledge. Five-star hotel banquet halls can replicate a pot of Buddha Jumps Over the Wall, but cannot replicate the tacit understanding of "whole village mobilizing, head chef acting as folk consultant, vegetable tails distributed to neighbors." Scarcity has turned banquet dishes into a cultural pilgrimage; California diners are willing to fly half the globe back to Taiwan to eat a banquet—but the object that pilgrims worship is losing its habitat: the bad land that raised head chefs, those temple festivals one after another, that village that calls all neighbors to help.

Air-conditioned restaurants can grow dishes, but cannot grow souls.

That Yearbook Written Full

Back to Xue Qingji's yearbook diary written full of words.

This is Xue Menghui's most cherished object, and also the most authentic archaeological site of this industry ²¹. The dense orders on the diary—celebration banquets for winning pigeon racing, gratitude seats for getting PhDs, peace banquets for Mazu's birthday at the temple square—record a whole set of things that Taiwanese people once jointly recognized: which moments are worth gathering everyone together putting down their work, what to eat at that moment, who hosts it, and how to say goodbye properly.

Dishes have already proven they can enter five-star hotels, fly to California, and be certified by Michelin. What about the tacit understanding written in that yearbook—which table matches which moment, which dishes are auspicious or inauspicious for which occasion, which neighbors who helped should receive vegetable tails after the banquet—how many people still remember, how many can still take it over?

Further Reading:

• Taiwanese Hand-Path Dishes
• Hulao
• Taiwanese Seafood Culture
• Night Market Culture
• Chen Yu-Hsun

Image Sources

This article uses 3 public domain / CC licensed images, all cached in public/article-images/food/ to avoid hotlinking to the source server:

• Banquet after Zhongyuan Ghost Festival at the Temple Square (hero) — Photo: Xuan Shi Sheng, 2017-09-19, CC0 1.0
• Mudstone Badland of Gutingkeng Formation in Kaohsiung (Moon World) — Photo: StevenK234, 2019-04-01, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Street Banquet in Tainan — Photo: Ce Jingzhe, 2014-12-07, CC BY-SA 2.0

References