Taiwan Pastry Culture

30-Second Overview: Lukang Yuzhenzhai opened in 1877 during the Guangxu reign of the Qing dynasty at the intersection of Minzu Road and Zhongshan Road, co-founded by Huang Jin and Zheng Chui, and still selling Phoenix Eye Cake and mung bean cake to its fifth generation¹. The malt cake from Kunpai Pastry Shop in Shen'gang was refined by apprentice Wei Qinghai and renamed the Sun Cake². Chen Zengxiong, the third generation of Fengquan in Fengyuan, developed the egg yolk pastry in the 1980s, originally in an olive shape with pineapple crust³. The thousand-layer craft of oil-wrapped pastry supported the 2020s rise of Santong Han Pastry's 400,000-daily-sold lava pastry, Kuo Yuan Ye's "Ban Dian Shi Guang" collaboration with designer Aaron Nieh, and Jiu Zhen Nan's 2026 crossover "Han Pastry Gelato"⁴. At the foot of Bagua Mountain, SunnyHills in 2009 cultivated 270 hectares of native pineapple contract farming at NT$5 per catty⁵. Chen Yaoxun, a Lukang native, won the 2017 Mondial du Pain World Bread Championship, then returned to create the Red Soil Egg Yolk Pastry that sold out in 30 seconds on the Tixcraft ticketing system⁶. Over 150 years, the faces changed countless times, but the layers of the filling remained largely the same.

That Qing-Dynasty Attic Floor from 1877

On the second floor of No. 168 Minzu Road in Lukang, there is an attic floor from the Guangxu era of the Qing dynasty. On the floor sits a wooden table, and on the table rests a piece of mung bean cake. The recipe for this cake was refined over 148 years by five generations of Yuzhenzhai.

You know, this Yuzhenzhai building is no ordinary old house. It was formerly the site of "Quanheli," the largest shipping agency in Qing-era Lukang, and you can still see the original skylight and wooden attic structure⁷. In 1877 (the third year of Guangxu), Huang Jin, a wealthy Lukang merchant with a love for poetry, often served tea and pastries to literati gatherings. Zheng Chui crossed the strait to Taiwan bringing pastry-making skills, and together with Huang Jin founded the "Yuzhenzhai" pastry shop¹. Later the two parted ways, and Zheng Chui opened "Zheng Yuzhen Pastry Shop" next door, so the Zhongshan Road area of Lukang has had two century-old "Yu"-branded pastry shops coexisting to this day.

Phoenix Eye Cake is pressed from rice cake powder into fine lines that slowly dissolve in the mouth — a tea-time snack used by the eight merchant guilds of Lukang during the Qing dynasty. Lukang's geography determined its sweetness. In the late 18th century, Lukang — ranked "First Fu-chou, Second Lukang, Third Meng-chia" — was a key transshipment hub for sugar imports from Quanzhou, Xiamen, and Fuzhou, making sugar cheaper than elsewhere and naturally fostering a thriving pastry culture⁷. Yuzhenzhai is just one of the shops on this Han pastry street that has survived to the present.

By the time the third generation took over, the shop's gift boxes had entered the wedding market. Lukang people observed the six rites and twelve ceremonies, and wedding pastry gift boxes were a concrete symbol of two families forming an alliance. When a large cake was delivered to the bride's family, the whole alley knew that so-and-so's daughter was getting married.

The fifth generation still works in that century-old attic. The recipe hasn't changed, the ratio of sugar to maltose hasn't changed, and the shop still offers wooden molds for pig, chicken, and fish for visitors to DIY¹.

That Malt Cake on Shen'gang Street

A bit further south, in Shen'gang, Taichung. During the Japanese colonial era, there was a pastry street here, most famous for the "Kunpai Pastry Shop" run by the Lin Zhenfang family, specializing in malt cakes². Maltose was boiled until thick and caramelized, wrapped in a flaky crust, and served as a traditional snack at weddings, festivals, and temple fairs.

Kunpai had an apprentice named Wei Qinghai, known to everyone as "Master A-Ming." After learning the traditional malt cake technique at Kunpai, he started thinking about how to improve it — making the oil crust crispier, adjusting the maltose filling to be less cloying, and shaping it rounder and smaller so one person could finish a single piece in one sitting.

After his refinements, he named the cake the "Sun Cake."

The name "Sun Cake" spread from the 1950s onward, when a street beside Taichung Station was lined with Sun Cake shops, and travelers bought them as souvenir gifts to take north and south. The phrase "Taichung specialty" became permanently bound to the Sun Cake².

Master A-Ming never trademarked it. Later, the Sun Cake became a generic item that every pastry shop in Taichung could make. Some say this was Master A-Ming's loss, but others argue that precisely because he didn't lock down the recipe, the Sun Cake could become Taichung's true collective memory.

The Squaring of the Pineapple Big Cake

Jumping north. During the Japanese colonial era, between Taipei and Taichung, there was a "Yifutang Confectionery" owned by Chen Zhoucai. At the time, Taiwan's pineapple farming industry was booming, with pineapples exported to mainland Japan. Chen Zhoucai cooked pineapple flesh into a jam and packed it into the traditional round "pineapple big cake," which became the favorite dessert of Japanese gentry⁸.

This pineapple big cake is the prototype of the pineapple cake.

The person who truly transformed the pineapple cake into the square little pastry we know today was another pastry artisan, Yan Shumu. He did two things: he shrank the round big cake into a square shape (palm-sized, easy to share) and replaced the traditional big cake crust with a cookie-style crust centered on butter⁸. The filling still retained pineapple-melon jam. This pineapple-plus-winter-melon combination is critical, because pure pineapple jam is too tart; the winter melon's clean sweetness harmonizes with the pineapple's acidity to create the "sweet-sour balance" that defines today's pineapple cake⁹.

From round big cake to square little pastry was a redefinition of "the weight of a gift." The old wedding big cakes were about the grandeur of "one cake enough for a whole family"; the square pineapple cake was about the individualization of "one bite for one person." Later generations would discover that this squaring logic foreshadowed the entire shift of Taiwan's pastry industry toward the souvenir gift market.

Early Experiments in Olive Shape

Time jumps to the 1980s. Chen Zengxiong, the third generation of Fengquan in Fengyuan, was taking over the shop from his father — a pastry business that had been operating since the Japanese colonial era¹⁰.

Fengyuan Fengquan's story spans both sides of the Taiwan Strait and Japan. In the Japanese colonial era, the first generation Chen Yun sold pastry on Sanjiao Street in Fengyuan; in 1943, the second generation Chen Jinquan opened "Fengquan Confectionery Main Store" in Tokyo; in 1975, Chen Zengxiong returned to Fengyuan to establish "Taiwan Fengquan Main Store," blending Japanese wagashi techniques with Taiwanese Han pastry traditions¹⁰.

His first experiment was the "small moon cake" — shrinking the traditional big moon cake to a size one person could finish in one sitting, using white lima beans imported from Japan for the filling. But what truly changed Taiwan's Mid-Autumn gift box landscape was another pastry: the egg yolk pastry.

The August 1986 issue of Baking Food Information Magazine recorded that the inventor of the egg yolk pastry was Chen Zengxiong¹¹. National treasure pastry master Lü Hongyu recalled that the egg yolk pastry, originating around the 1960s, was originally olive-shaped rather than round, and would be cut in half to reveal the salted egg yolk inside, with a pineapple crust rather than an oil pastry crust¹². It only gradually evolved into the round + oil pastry crust version we know today.

The three key process parameters Chen Zengxiong adjusted were: salted egg yolks must first be soaked in strong liquor to remove fishiness, then baked at moderate temperature; red bean paste must be slow-cooked to develop a smoky flavor; and the flour-to-oil ratio in the oil pastry crust must be precisely calibrated¹². These three formula parameters have been used to this day.

The fourth generation, Chen Kunhong, went to Japan to study and brought the refinement of Japanese wagashi back to Fengyuan. In 2013, Fengquan was renamed "Chen Yun Fengquan," adding the first generation Chen Yun's name to the signboard — a rare reverse move for a century-old family business, where typically the first generation's name gradually fades, but this family picked it back up¹⁰.

The Craft Mutation of Oil-Wrapped Pastry

To understand why Taiwan's pastries in the 2020s could cross boundaries to create lava pastries, collaborate with designers on adorable mung bean cakes, and even produce "Han pastry gelato," you must first deconstruct the most core craft feature of Han pastry: oil-wrapped pastry.

Han pastry's flaky crust relies not on baking powder or chemical additives, but on physical layering. The chef first kneads a tough "oil skin" from all-purpose flour, water, and fat, then mixes a crumbly "oil pastry" from low-gluten flour and fat. Then the oil skin wraps the oil pastry, folded and rolled repeatedly — each layer of oil skin separated by a thin layer of oil pastry. During high-temperature baking, the water in the oil skin evaporates into steam, pushing the layers apart, and hundreds or thousands of delicate layers emerge¹³.

This structure has extraordinary load-bearing capacity. It can hold moist mung bean paste, glistening braised pork, the layers of salted egg yolk and red bean paste, and even the most troublesome "liquid lava" in modern desserts. The problem with traditional Western lava pastries is that liquid fillings seep through the crust and cause sogginess, but Taiwanese pastry chefs used the thousand-layer property to create a natural barrier — locking in the moisture and fat of the filling while keeping the outer shell crisp.

Santong Han Pastry is a representative case along this craft route. This 40-year-old Han pastry shop saw single-store daily revenue drop to just NT$2,000 during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. Marketing director Zhou Shiya (known in the industry as "Boss Lady Feifei") led the team through a complete digital transformation: developing new products with longer shelf life, building a brand website on SHOPLINE, and establishing presence on e-commerce platforms¹⁴. Their lava pastry set a record of selling 1 box every 17 seconds on average, with 400,000 pieces sold in a single day, driving Santong Han Pastry to over NT$100 million in revenue within three years¹⁴.

Kuo Yuan Ye represents another path. Fifth-generation Kuo Chien-wei entered the family business in 2009 and was designated successor in 2016¹⁵. After nearly three years studying in Japan, where he visited century-old wagashi shops, he shifted the strategy from "dominating three-quarters of the wedding cake market" to festivals and souvenir gifts, beginning to shrink and refine giant mung bean cakes. His collaboration with designer Aaron Nieh on the "Ban Dian Shi Guang" mung bean cake broke through the limitations of single-side pressing and single flavor; another series shaped mung bean cakes into iconic local landmarks like the Taiwan Blue Magpie and Longshan Temple¹⁶. "We are not just a Han pastry shop" is something he has said in multiple interviews¹⁵.

Jiu Zhen Nan took a third path: cultural education. Founded in 1890 in Kaohsiung, this century-old pastry shop established the "Han Pastry Culture Museum" in Daliao in 2016. The 4,421-square-meter, three-story building houses the corporate headquarters, a brand story hall, a pastry kitchen, and a baking culture experience space⁴. Chairman Li Xiongqing promoted food education, inviting students from remote school districts in Kaohsiung to visit and experience the museum, covering 26 schools across 8 districts with nearly 600 students.

In April 2026, Jiu Zhen Nan launched an even bolder crossover — introducing Taiwan's first "Han Pastry Gelato," translating classic Han pastry flavors like pineapple cake and mung bean pastry into Italian-style gelato. Four regular flavors (Feng He Ri Li, Peng Jian Jing Dian, Liang Chen Mei Jing, Jing Yu Hua Xiang) plus two seasonal limited editions, first launched at Taichung Hanshin Intercontinental Shopping Plaza, with plans to enter Taipei Far Eastern Garden City (SOGO Dome) in Q2¹⁷. A simultaneous expansion plan for 20 stores across Taiwan was also launched¹⁸.

The oil-wrapped pastry craft has continued from the Qing dynasty to 2026 — it can support a 5-centimeter lava pastry, a designer-collaboration mung bean cake, and a gelato. The most stubborn traditional techniques are often the most elegant solutions to contemporary problems.

The Tea Offering Ceremony at Bagua Mountain

Crossing to Nantou. In 2009, former Quanding Technology founder Xu Mingren, wanting to help his family transition into the agricultural business industry, joined his brother Xu Shengming, Lan Shazhong, and Lan Hongren to invest NT$80 million in capital and found "SunnyHills"⁵.

Their consultant Xie Zhenshun named it "SunnyHills" — referring to the gentle warmth radiating from the earth at the foot of Bagua Mountain at dusk, and the warm but reserved hospitality of the mountain people. Xie Zhenshun went against the majority opinion and suggested using the pineapples locally abundant at Bagua Mountain for pineapple cakes, but using a different variety — "native pineapple" (commonly called "Tumu-zai," varieties 2 and 3 of the Kaiying cultivar). Native pineapple has acidity and fruit aroma; they insisted on using only maltose to adjust sweetness, while letting the acidity vary naturally with the seasons without adjustment⁵.

This choice made SunnyHills an outlier in Taiwan's pastry world. At the time, the mainstream pineapple cake market used high-sugar, fine-fibered Tainong 17 (Diamond) pineapple (an eating variety). Native pineapple was considered too tart and too fibrous for fillings. SunnyHills' bet was: return to the acidity that pineapple is supposed to have.

The tea offering ceremony at the entrance of the Nantou sanheyuan (traditional courtyard house) is the brand's most distinctive scene. Every guest who walks into the courtyard receives a cup of hot tea plus a pineapple cake sample before they've even checked out. This ceremony has continued from 2009 to the present and is a rare "try before you buy" operation in Taiwan's pastry shops.

The more substantive impact is on agriculture. SunnyHills drove up the price of native pineapple from less than NT$5 per catty at the start to a contract farming price of NT$10 per catty, with contract farming area reaching 270 hectares and 210 local employees hired⁵. This figure is not small in Taiwan's agricultural business landscape, equivalent to pulling a seemingly disappearing native variety back into the mainstream market.

The 30-Second Sellout Mid-Autumn Battle

Time arrives at 2017. A Lukang native named Chen Yaoxun won the 6th Mondial du Pain World Bread Championship⁶. The World Bread Competition is a European-style bread technical contest hosted by France, and it is rare for an Asian contestant to win.

In 2019, Chen Yaoxun returned to Taiwan and founded his personal baking brand, "Chen Yaoxun・Bread Port YOSHI BAKERY"¹⁹. The first thing he do was blend the European bread techniques of a world bread champion with the salted egg yolk pastry crust of traditional Taiwanese Han pastry, developing a Mid-Autumn gift box called the "Red Soil Salted Egg Yolk Pastry"²⁰.

Red soil-cured salted egg yolk + reduced-sugar bean paste + Danish championship butter.

This combination put Chen Yaoxun in the "Hermès of the egg yolk pastry world" position in its first year on the market — selling out in under 30 seconds²⁰. Netizens started saying it was harder to get than a concert ticket. The 2025 Mid-Autumn pre-order was moved directly to the Tixcraft ticketing system (the same system that sells Mayday and Jay Chou concert tickets), opening at 12:30 PM on July 29, limited to 8 boxes per person, priced at NT$900, with no home delivery — pickup in store only¹⁹.

This is a brand-new generation's Mid-Autumn battle format. Traditional old pastry shops compete on recipes, gift box design, and distribution channels; the new generation adds three more battlefields: ticketing systems, world bread championships, and social media hype.

In the same generation as Chen Yaoxun are Dajia's A-Cong-Shi taro pastry (designated state banquet snack), Lukang Yuzhenzhai's Phoenix Eye Cake, Fengyuan Chen Yun Fengquan's small moon cake, SunnyHills' pineapple cake, and Jiu Zhen Nan's Han Pastry Gelato²¹. These century-old shops, emerging artisans, cultural education routes, and crossover ice cream — four types of pastries representing four generational postures — all converse at the same Mid-Autumn dining table every year.

The Layers of the Filling Remained Largely the Same

From the second floor of a Lukang shipping agency to the 30-second sellout on Tixcraft, Taiwan's pastries have changed countless faces over 150 years. But the layers of the filling remained largely the same: salted egg yolks still need to be soaked in strong liquor to remove fishiness, maltose still needs to be slow-boiled, native pineapples still need to ripen in the field until they naturally turn tart, and the thousand-layer structure of oil-wrapped pastry still needs to be folded and rolled out by the chef on the workbench.

The world bread champion and the century-old Han pastry shop now stand on the same Mid-Autumn dining table. Neither replaces the other. A single gift box might contain Yuzhenzhai's Phoenix Eye Cake, A-Cong-Shi's taro pastry, SunnyHills' pineapple cake, Chen Yaoxun's Red Soil Egg Yolk Pastry, with Jiu Zhen Nan's Han Pastry Gelato melting beside it — five pastries representing five eras, all treated as objects of the shared festival of "Mid-Autumn."

Next time you hold an egg yolk pastry, take a bite and think: where did the salted egg yolk come from, how many layers does the oil pastry crust have, how long was the red bean paste slow-cooked — this craft passed from a Qing-dynasty Lukang attic to the 2026 Tixcraft sellout anxiety, through how many generations of chefs' workbenches.

A single pastry holds far more time than you might think.

Further Reading

• Sun Cake — A deep history of the single item that Taichung Shen'gang's Master A-Ming Wei Qinghai refined from Kunpai Pastry Shop's malt cake
• Pineapple Cake — The eighty-year evolutionary path from Yifutang's pineapple big cake during the Japanese colonial era to the squaring revolution
• Taiwan Bread and Baking — From Wu Pao-chun to Chen Yaoxun, the story of Taiwan's bread chefs stepping onto the world stage
• Taiwan Rice Food Culture — Rice and pastry are two main threads on the same dining table; understanding rice is key to understanding pastry's place
• Taiwan Weddings, Funerals, and Life Rituals — The specific role of wedding pastry gift boxes in the six rites and twelve ceremonies
• Taiwan Tea Culture — Han pastry and tea have been paired for a century; Yuzhenzhai's Phoenix Eye Cake was originally meant to be eaten with tea

References