Notes on the corners
of the world
The yellow-and-blue 50嵐 sign is familiar across Taiwan, but it disappears at the border: overseas, the same chain pours drinks under the name KOI Thé. Other Taiwanese bubble-tea brands carried their names, recipes, and store routines across oceans.
At Nu Sentral, the familiar Din Tai Fung sign appears with one small change: DIN by Din Tai Fung, and a notice that no pork is used. Inside, the xiaolongbao still arrive in neat baskets with eighteen folds, but the smell rising from the steamer is different.
At a small Taiwanese eatery, a seasoning bottle has to be tilted and held before its black contents begin to move. The sauce lands on breakfast cakes, boiled greens, meat, and even sliced tomatoes with the slow weight of syrup, more like a coating than a seasoning.
In Penang, nasi kandar arrives as a plate of rice buried under several gravies, while its name refers not to an ingredient but to a shoulder pole. The pole has disappeared from the shops, but something of its weight remains on the plate.
At a night-market griddle, oysters, egg, greens, and a cloudy starch batter arrive as one soft, uneven plate. It looks like a snack assembled in minutes, but each part belongs to a different landscape of Taiwan.
Beneath the Petronas Twin Towers, a semi-outdoor hall stays busy with rice, curry, fried chicken and sweet tea long after the offices and shops around it have gone quiet. At Nasi Kandar Pelita, the skyline suggests one Kuala Lumpur while the plate and the people around it belong to another rhythm.
At the end of a night market, empty bubble-tea cups gather beside the bins, their remaining pearls hidden under melting ice. A single drink makes them easy to overlook; multiplied across Taiwan, the beads become a different kind of object.
Walking along Fuxing South Road without looking for a drink, I pass another small shop at nearly every turn—different colors on the signs, nearly identical spaces beneath them. At the next red light, clear cups appear in a surprising number of hands, lifted between buses, crossings, and errands.
On a walk through Taipei, the next drink shop often appears before the last one has left the frame—along office roads, beside MRT exits, and on residential corners. Students carry cups past delivery riders collecting more, while each storefront seems to feed the same daily traffic.
