What could be better, first thing in the morning, than an egg pancake (蛋餅) from one of your favourite local breakfast shops? One of the perpetual dilemmas of living in Tainan is where to eat breakfast. It is a good dilemma to have. Here in the South District, we have an abundance of options: congee (粥), bao buns (包子), pot-stickers (國鐵), soft wraps (潤餅), egg pancakes (蛋餅)… Or else, if we remember in time, we put a loaf of sourdough on to rise overnight, and when we get up, we stick it in our new box oven so that by breakfast time, the house is filled with the smell of baking bread.
Anyway, the point is that I’ve spent much of the last 48 hours putting this project website together — and you can’t do that on an empty stomach. So today’s egg pancake (soft, with crispy bits, and more tasty than something so simple has any right to be) has played a crucial role in supporting our work. We’ve got a bit more to do before the website is finished, including polishing the text in Chinese to make sure everything reads okay. But by the end of the weekend, we should be ready.
Our residency starts on the 13th of December, and runs to the 23rd of December. One thing we’re planning during the residency is to invite friends and strangers over to the Nanning Literature house for afternoon tea on the 17th December.
We’ll bake cakes and scones (we’ll probably need to pop back across the other side of town to our home, so we can use the oven), and spend the afternoon inviting visitors to share their stories about food.
If you want to come along, you can find out more on our afternoon tea page! It’s all entirely free of charge, and we’d love to see you.
*Image of interior by Pierre Bonnard: Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons."
