If some­one said to me in Eng­lish, “I’m going to eat Cold”, I would wait for them to fin­ish their sen­tence. Here in Tai­wan, when some­one tells me they’re going to eat some Cold (冰), in Chi­nese of course, I’d have my wal­let in hand and shoes on my feet before they could fin­ish their sentence.

As with any trop­i­cal island cli­mate, the coun­try of Tai­wan is plagued with bru­tally hot and humid sum­mer months. To adapt, the peo­ple of Tai­wan have built large air con­di­tioned malls where they spend most day­light hours, sell hand­ker­chiefs and sun-brellas like they never went out of style, and of course, con­sume plenty of refresh­ing snacks and beverages.

In the States, when the tem­per­a­ture rises, we go out­side for a bar­be­cue, roast some corn on the cob, or maybe go chase down the ice cream truck. In Tai­wan, no one in their right mind wishes to light any­thing on fire, let alone run after a truck, even if the thing being chased does hap­pen to be cold and comes on a cone.

And why would they want ice cream, when they have some­thing bet­ter? The Tai­wanese have dozens of shops and stalls devoted to sell­ing “bing”(冰), or sim­ply trans­lated, “cold”. “Bing” is a com­plete dish more than any one ingre­di­ent, much like lasagna and S’mores are a total com­bi­na­tion of com­po­nents rather than just pasta or just marsh­mal­low. “Bing”, is sim­ply a big bowl of deli­cious, sub­tly sweet and cool­ing ingre­di­ents com­bined in an icy, watered down sugar syrup. Choices of ingre­di­ents range from ven­dor to ven­dor, and often you may see the likes of boiled peanuts, tofu hua, grass jelly, minia­ture tapi­oca balls, red beans and green beans, and almost with­out fail the local Tai­wanese spe­cialty– ai yu. (Ai yu is a clear light yel­low rather fla­vor­less jelly, not very dif­fer­ent from the con­sis­tency of Jell-O, made from the seeds from a mem­ber of the fig fam­ily native to Tai­wan. Today, ai yu jelly is also sold in a can– but what isn’t?)

What you would think is a com­pletely ran­dom smat­ter­ing of ingre­di­ents actu­ally becomes a refresh­ing dish, more snack than dessert, that can be enjoyed at any time of day

Mercy to the activ­i­ties of my fam­ily this week­end, I had no com­plaints when I was given both a hand­ker­chief and sun-brella, then chauf­fered down­town to East Taipei to spend the rest of the after­noon in a huge air con­di­tioned mall. Although lunch was just had, we headed straight for Lit­tle South Gate in the food court, where my Uncle rem­i­nisced of the days he used to get a bing from another branch of their stores every day it was hot out.

Every day that it was hot out? He must have had a lot of “bing”. Lucky guy.

Lit­tle South Gate, 小南门

(var­i­ous loca­tions through­out Taipei)

Xinyi Eslite, B2
No. 11, Song Gao Road, B2
MRT: Taipei City Hall

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