Years ago, in 1979, when I first came to Taiwan and lived in The International Youth Hostile, I had my first taste of Mei-Fang Taro ices. As a twelve-foot-high pink neon Shao-Mei-Bing-Chi-Ling sign blinked into the night on the roof of the dog market on the corner across the wide Yong-Kang Street boulevard lit, left to right, flashing thrice, freezing and starting over, ice cream was on my mind in Taipei before I studied Mandarin here, or even women.
Awaking on my first day in town, I dressed early, mid-July, in realization of the sweltering summer half-baked, and went out to see what there was to see for an adventurous Brooklyn boy in the 'Mother of All Chinatowns' called Taipei. I had breakfast on my mind, and set out to look for a restaurant with sunny-side up eggs, bacon, and home fries with coffee. A few blocks towards Roosevelt Road I found such a spot with a sign in the window, in English, advertising European breakfast. I almost went in until I saw the price on the sign; it was more expensive than the special at the Del Rio Diner! "No can do," I told myself in Chinglish. There was a dumpling place nearby; a hole in the wall that reminded me of a typical Cantonese dim-sum joint on the Lower Eastside where tourists went for a taste of the orient; I later learned it was the now famous Din Tai Fung. I knew there would be no fried eggs in there and hadn't developed a taste for rice gruel, fried cruller, or soy bean milk, so I crossed the street to head back and met my first Taiwanese bakery scallion bun. I even bought a half loaf of what I thought was challah along with a yellow can of margarine; it turned out to be fruit bread and Crisco oil mimicking butter.
To drink, I opted for a little glass bottle with a cow decal displayed in a steamer. There was a sign for 500 cc papaya milk there, too; I filed that away for later consumption. Then there was a white top-open freezer cabinet. I wondered if there was ice cream inside. I would be back after the first EFL classes I would teach at the Language Learning and Training Center on Shi-Chow Road. After thirty-five years in a classroom, you will still remember the first day of your first class, as I did.
I went back later that day after classes, taking my second shower and change of clothes at the student center, disillusioned when told it wouldn't be a good idea for a late afternoon swim in the Tamshui River. At that time, it was a polluted swamp of smelly oily mud and stray water buffalo. I set out to find that ice cream place and get my first taste advertised in the obnoxious Shao-Mei sign; my mind screamed Bryers, or at least Good Humor, if not Mr. Softee or Carvel.
I pointed to the freezer box. The owner, proud that a foreigner had taken interest, opened and pointed at a half dozen foot- square Styrofoam containers, each filled with dozens of curious half-inch cubes of ice cream, cool steam drifting off each, almost coagulating into a cumulus nimbus cloud below the swinging incandescent bulb overhead. He pointed to each flavor identifiable by color: orange passion fruit, dark brown chocolate, white milk, red bean, green mung bean, light brown peanut butter, and purple taro.
Taro? What was taro? I had no idea that it was a starchy root not unlike potato or yam. I had never seen one at the greengrocer back home. "Let me try one," I asked in Mandarin wherefore the man produced a toothpick, reached down deep, and stabbed a cube for me.
It wasn't ice cream. It wasn't sorbet or sherbet. It wasn't even ice milk as we know it in the West. It was a cube of taro; cold, creamy to the bite, with a tad of milk flavor mingling. It melted in my mouth to form a lozenge of cool taro, but this internal surprise didn't give way and melt into saliva; it stayed slightly firm, even when licked thoroughly. "I want those!" I said almost rudely, shrugging off the next flavor the man had fetched while I was having spasms of orgasm with taro. "Thank you," I said when he lifted a second cube of flavor, "I want those," I said still not knowing how to say it in Mandarin or that it was even called Taro in English; language doesn't matter when the feeling is strong. Does a baby have to ask for mother's milk by name?
I bought a small Styrofoam box filled with a dozen cubes of peanut butter and taro and rushed back to my dorm room to eat them before they melted.
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| The inventor of Mei-Fang taro ice milk |
Flash ahead thirty-eight years; after four and a half years of retirement in my adopted home, Taiwan, settled in the land of my wife's birth near Taichung, out with her family and our twenty-four year old daughter visiting during spring break in the States. On the way back to Taichung from a Sunday day trip to the Earthquake Museum and nearby Guang-Fu Village, made into artisan boutiques and cute coffee shops, brother-in-law had a surprise last stop before dropping us off.
"Remember that taro ice cream you have been looking for the past four years?" asked my wife with a smile that indicated a surprise on its way. "Well, here it is!"
What did she say? I thought I heard right, but it couldn't be true. It would be like seeing a flock of dodo birds sitting in trees dropping digested seeds on saber-toothed tigers; they were all extinct, every flavor of them. What could this mean? Surely, if there were living fossils there would be a crowd of on-lookers lined-up eager to see for themselves, but this building, near no other buildings, basement exposed below street level, like a single tooth on the lip of the road, was desolate.
The first thing I noticed when I lagged in trance-like from the car parked on the empty highway-access four-lane behind my jaunty family was, over the counter, a row of photos; the owner with famous Taiwanese, even some blue-ribbon awards won in international taste competitions. Below the counter, freezers, but no Styrofoam containers; instead, each ice-milk cube, now rectangular, was packed in individual wrappers, modernized and hygienic. There were even popsicles to be had though, I was warned, they tasted a tad different from the original 1974 recipe, harder, to conform to the needs of licking through the streets in ninety-degree heat.
It is Mei-Fang taro ice milk for me, but you may like the other flavors they now have. I understand there are places around town that sell their treats, and there are some copy-cats that are still trying to capitalize on the throw-back Taiwanese dessert delicacy, but with all the bourgeois trappings of Häagen-Dazs and other fancy-shmancy Italian gelato, or even the sugary-sweet Shao-Mai ice cream that is still made in Taiwan, Mei-Fang is hard to find, but, boys and girls of Taiwan summer, it is well worth the trip to this isolated headquarters on the southern edge of Taichung or, if you wish, call them up and find out the source of cold-mouthed happiness nearest you. I dare you to make it through to autumn in Taiwan without it.
