Recipes for life
Earlier this year, Cheng Jen-pei put the results of this project on show at Taipei’s Jut Art Museum. Each piece tells a life’s story.
One piece, Mirage Mountain, pairs Hakka salted pork, red vinasse, and fermented tofu with Vietnamese spring rolls, lemongrass, and shrimp salt to tell a tale of joy. Through the care and comfort provided by her husband, a Vietnamese spouse has found belonging, a home, and someone she can depend on in Taiwan, as well as a mother-in-law who loves her like her own daughter and has considerately begun learning Vietnamese cooking. Such is her new life that when she and her husband visit her family in Vietnam, she often finds herself missing her mother-in-law’s cooking.
Another piece, Aromatic Courtyard, tells the tearful story of a woman who came to Taiwan from Shandong, China.
Fragments of cement, tile and brick are used in the work to symbolize the interviewee’s childhood home, poor but full of love. The artist also uses spiked flower holders to symbolize an oppressive external environment that leaves one feeling constantly on edge and unsettled. A bowl of corn jasmine tea creates a light aroma that infuses the air with fragrant memories, while corn kernels strung together on wires stand proud, representing perseverance in love, holding on through the hardest times until the light shines through again.
Fresh Sprout uses woven garlic chives as a backdrop, resting against colored cloth that represents the traditional motanka dolls sent over by the interviewee’s sister in Poland, which symbolize blessings. Mixing pork in with rice, Cheng highlights the care and consideration of the Polish interviewee’s Taiwanese husband; after she initially didn’t dare eat meat after arriving in Taiwan, with loving encouragement he helped her to integrate into Taiwanese life. The only element close to food from home is the dumpling skin, colored with beetroot and spinach juices and stacked with white cheese, pickled cucumber, and a honey “crystal ball,” a showcase of the rich intermingling of East with West, of Taiwanese tastes with Eastern European styling.
The element of these “recipe evolutions” that takes the most time and effort is coming up with the designs, figuring out how to use visible foods to depict invisible states of mind. Fragrant Poetry, for example, involved a complex process of carefully preparing meat jelly in such a way as to represent the snowy scenes of Ukranian life. “I wanted to condense homesickness into a single point,” says Cheng.
Homesickness is not a matter of physical distance—even living in a neighboring country, one can still miss home. In the beautiful image that is Sweet Frost, Cheng used precious souvenirs gifted to the Japanese interviewee by her parents to symbolize her being “the pearl in their palm” (a Chinese expression roughly equivalent to “the apple of their eye”), and her always carrying with her thoughts of her parents.
In moments of emotional fragility, edamame can help her chew over thoughts of home, while a leaf of shiso can turn sorrow into tears.
Working with the Hong-Gah Museum, Cheng Jen-pei leads older ladies from Taipei Municipal Shipai Elementary School’s Senior Academy in the Beitou Local Flavors Collecting Project, to help spark the women’s creative potential. (photo by Lin Min-hsuan)