Netflix What She Put on the Table

And the legacy of Fu Pei Mei

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Another fantastic series on Netflix! This time the recommendation came from my beloved Laoshi. I had asked her to recommend a few TV shows so I could try and listen in Chinese—but of course I also wanted subtitles! And she immediately recommended What She Put on the Table, based on the story of a well-known celebrity chef in Taiwan from the 1970s.

Fu Pei Mei is known in English as “the Julia Childs of Taiwan,” but according to a new book on her life by Michelle T. King, Julia Childs is known in Taiwan as “the American Fu Pei Mei!” The point being, Fu Pei Mei was that famous—A household name, she taught many women (and yes they were mainly women in those days) how to cook—even engaging in some soft power diplomacy on behalf of Taiwan, more on that below.

First, what I loved about the show.

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Born on the mainland in the north, Pei Mei came to Taiwan as a young person. Her father, wanting her to become cosmopolitan, enrolled her in Japanese schools starting in preschool! Because she was educated entirely in Japanese, she was fluent. He probably didn’t expect they would be moving to Taiwan, but even after the War, when fifty years of Japanese occupation ended, the Japanese influence still could not be overstated on the island, so her language skills came in handy for work, when she became a Japanese typist.

I recently mentioned the National Book Award winner in Translation Taiwan Travelogue: A Novel by Shuang-zi Yang--Translation by Lin King. I loved the novel and was impressed by its depiction of the deep cultural impact of Japan in Taiwan—And the Netflix series What She Put on the Table also had that Japanese influence on full display. From the family home in Taipei to the food they loved to eat, so much of Japan was appreciated by the family. That is one of the many reasons I also love Taiwan … I only spent time in the south —in Kaohsiung— but the entire time I felt like I was back in Japan. Older people all spoke fluent Japanese and it felt like a tropical version of Kawasaki— like being in Japan in so many ways.

And isn’t Taiwanese food and tea incredible? It is a place I am hoping to spend more time in someday….

Pei Mei, though, did not focus in the riches of Taiwanese cuisine, instead what she became known for was her cooking lessons on TV highlighting what she called the four regions of Chinese food: northern (Beijing), southern (Guandong), eastern (shanghai), and western (spicy Sichuan and Hunan).

Because her father wanted her to become a career woman and because the mother was separated from the family during the chaos of the civil war, Pei Mei never learned to cook and upon her marriage, she felt ashamed at how bad her cooking was. So, she cashes in her dowry and hires chefs from well-known restaurants in Taipei to give her private cooking lessons… It was an incredibly expensive enterprise that burned though all her money… but as King points out in her book Chop, Fry, Watch and Learn: Fu Pei Mei and the Making of Modern Chinese Food (highly recommend!) in some sense she was investing in her own future since she ended up making a lot of money.

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This show is so cinematic and beautifully done, which led me to buy King’s book because I wanted to learn more.

King, who is an academic and the child of Chinese immigrants herself, is really great on the political context that was the backdrop for Fu Pei Mei’s cooking show. Spanning from when America flipped between supporting one regime (ROC) over the other (PRC), to Nixon’s historic visit to China and Taiwan losing its position in the UN, Fu Pei Mei was enlisted by Taiwanese politicians to promote Taiwan through her culinary skills… for isn’t the way to a person’s heart through their stomaches?

It is also an essential way to maintain cultural knowledge from generation to generation which is why King’s own mother is so intent to cook traditional Chinese food for her family—and why King for her part also hopes her children love Chinese food. It is their identity—and this is something about which she writes so beautifully.

From Taiwan bubble tea to Clarissa Wei’s Made in Taiwan: Recipes and Stories from the Island Nation (A Cookbook) King’s book is so illuminating and fun to read. Even my beloved Fushia Dunlop gets a mention…. for people who love food memoirs and stories about food history, I highly recommend the book and TV show too!

I also tracked down an out of print copy of Volume One of her famous cookbook on ebay…. and wonder if I might manage any of the recipes…