台灣味: Taiwanese Vibe
plus, our annual holiday sale and a new jam box
This is Yun Hai Taiwan Stories, a newsletter about Taiwanese food and culture by Lisa Cheng Smith 鄭衍莉, founder of Yun Hai. If you aren’t yet a subscriber, sign up here.
Our annual holiday sale kicks off today! To celebrate, we’ve dressed everything up in Taiwan Wei 台灣味—the essence of Taiwanese culture. In this year’s gift guide, we’ve created a fun little photo essay that pairs Yun Hai products with a collection of daily life objects. I also have the pleasure of sharing the Taiwanese Fruit Jam Gift Box, our newest launch. The packaging features one of the most common textures of everyday Taiwan—newspaper.
Newsletter subscribers, we’re notifying you first: the entire site is 15% off with code TAIWANWEI15. Sale ends Monday, December 2nd.
Early morning quiet on a cobbled street, interrupted only by the murmur of customers at the rice noodle shop on the corner. Old music playing out of tinny speakers, as shop owners stock their inventory and prepare to open their doors. Narrow alleys, lined with thriving plants and water gardens, with their resident goldfish flashing orange in the dappled sunlight. For me, this is a memory of Taiwan Wei 台灣味.
Taiwan wei 台灣味 translates to “the flavor of Taiwan,” but it means more than the taste of the food. It encompasses the cultural inflections, social mannerisms, and experiential sum of Taiwanese culture—a Taiwanese vibe. It’s the ineffable essence—the shuo bu chu lai 說不出來—of Taiwanese life, from night market snacks to the well tended alleyways in Taiwan’s urban interiors. In a culture that’s simultaneously historic and emergent, but persistently under-acknowledged, the term asserts a distinct Taiwanese identity and shared memory.
Gu zao wei 古早味 is a different but related term, meaning “old-fashioned flavor.” It’s commonly used to invoke the Taiwan of yore, like decorative tile floors, artistic wrought ironwork, or traditional rice-based sweets. The exact time period that gu zao wei refers to isn’t clearly defined, but it connotes a pre-industrial Taiwan. In recent years, usage has blown up and can feel a bit cartoon-ish in its buzzwordiness. But the popularization might be useful. This term has created an understanding of the value of the old, and represents a desire to protect it.
Both phrases are connected to the term feng wei 風味, or “local flavor.” This word refers to the particularities of the local cuisine or place. Its components are poetic: 風 feng (wind) + 味 wei (flavor). It’s the flavor of the wind, which catches all the atmosphere of a place and blows it through the grasses, the trees, and across our skin—capturing how culture permeates everyday life.
Good Things from Taiwan
Our holiday gift guide celebrates Taiwan Wei through the lens of small, ordinary happinesses. It’s part product showcase, part photo essay—we’ve paired classic Taiwanese goods with pieces from my personal collection to telegraph Taiwanese vibe. We’ve already shared some of it on IG; look for more in the coming days.
Most of the props were a generous gift from Mikey Chen—designer, creative director, and tea wine maker—shared from his personal collection in Taichung when I met him there in 2022. I only had a small duffle that day, but I laid everything out on the floor of the minsu (homestay) I was lodging in and carefully tetrised them together to pack them home.
Archival Newsprint Taiwanese Jam Gift Box
Jam may be a Western tradition, but our jam is Taiwanese to the core—Irwin mango, red guava, passionfruit pumpkin, and mulberry—wrapped in an archival Taiwanese newsprint pattern.
Each is made with peak-season fruit from Taiwanese farmers. The fruit is macerated and cooked down with sugar and lemon juice only. The result is juicy but not-too-sweet, with a delicate texture and the mouthfeel of fresh fruit. Use them anywhere you'd use a regular jam (hello, PBJ). We've mixed them with matcha, added them to smoothies, and spooned them over buttery scones, to great effect.
This season’s jam gift box celebrates a quintessential element of Taiwanese daily life: the newspaper.
Newspapers capture locality—they document daily life, from political affairs to classified ads. As archival material, they preserve the texture and rhythm of a specific time and place. They’re also practical. In Taiwan, it’s common practice to wrap precious objects in newspaper, especially glass jars. Even now, when we receive shipments from Taiwan—sometimes entire pallets—there are invariably bits and pieces of newspaper involved. It was only natural, then, that we present our jams alongside archival material from old Taiwanese newspapers, collected and designed by O.OO.
Taiwan Wei Gift Box
This year’s Ga Ji Dai gift set showcases gu zao wei 古早味, or old-style Taiwanese flavor.
Taiwanese heritage is reflected in each item through traditional artisanship—in soy paste and black vinegar—and local terroir—in passionfruit pumpkin jam, dried green mango, and dried plum powder. We’ve included an Ai Yu Jelly Kit made with endemic Taiwanese figs and a mini ceramic stool—a miniaturized version of the iconic plastic furniture dotting Taiwan’s urban landscape. Everything comes wrapped in a sturdy, collectible box inspired by the vibrant Ga Ji Dai totes that brighten Taiwan's traditional markets.
Our Annual Holiday Sale
It’s that time of year!
Save 15% sitewide using code TAIWANWEI15. Newsletter subscribers get first access.
Or visit our shop in person this weekend—we're closed Thursday and Friday but open Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday. The sale will apply storewide.
Kindly note that the new jam gift box arrives next week and is not yet available in store.
Before I Go
It’s been a good month for Taiwan in sports and culture:
Taiwan’s baseball team took the Premier12 title in a historic baseball win over Japan—congratulations!
Yang Shuang-zi and NYC-based translator Lin King won a National Book Award for Taiwan Travelogue.
King accepted the award with Shuang-zi, who delivered remarks in Mandarin, which King then translated for the audience. “Some people ask me why I write about things from a hundred years ago,” King translated. “I always tell them, writing about the past is a means of moving toward the future. (source)
Our cooking show and Tatung-sized bamboo steamers drop next week. Stay tuned!
說不出來,
Lisa Cheng Smith 鄭衍莉
Written with research and editorial support by Amalissa Uytingco, Jasmine Huang, and Lillian Lin. If you enjoyed this newsletter, please share it with friends and subscribe if you haven’t already. I email once a month, sometimes more, sometimes less. For more Taiwanese food, head to yunhai.shop, follow us on instagram and twitter, or view the newsletter archives.