Daxi Dried Bean Curd

The curriculum requirement is to help enhance the students’ ability to apply what they have learned in the applicable situations whenever they want to. Therefore, we not only gathered information from the Net but also did the field investigation to experience and learn in the real life. We also achieved the personal development as a whole, this is,“study for life, and apply it to life.”“International Education” is one of our school's standard courses. Whenever we try to communicate in English to share Taiwanese culture and food with our international partners, we feel frustrated that we cannot express some terms very precisely, especially when talking about the proper nouns relevant to the topics. Through the research, we have learned more terms and ways to express our knowledge about the delicious dried bean curd. We believe we have enhanced our ability to promote our local specialty. More and more foreigners will be able to know about our delicious Daxi Dried Bean Curd and its diversified products.

||-interview with James



||-interview with the chairwoman

After selecting the topic, we started to arrange interviews in Daxi. We also prepared a list of questions for the interview and also came up with a questionnaire for our dried bean curd survey. Audrey’s parents are well acquainted with the store owner of Da Fang Dried Bean Curd, so we decided to interview Mrs. Lu to get information about Daxi Dried Bean Curd. At the same time, our teachers helped us contact the owner of Huang Ri-Xiang and the Chief of Tien-Shin Village. We explained that we took part in the Cyberfair contest, and we wanted to understand the history, background, culture, and tradition of Daxi Dried Bean Curd. With our teachers’ help, they were willing to be interviewed, especially Huang Shu-Jun, store owner of Huang Ri-Xing. She even introduced Jian Xiu-Wen, chairwoman of the Daxi Cultural Association, to us. Ms. Huang told us many things about Daxi Dried Bean Curd in detail and provided us with some helpful information. Ms. Huang also treated us to some “hard dried bean curd.” Mrs. Lu, store owner of Da Fang retail sales, gave us the best-seller dried bean curd to share with other students. Chairwoman Jian explained to us the Daxi culture and industries in addition to dried bean curd. She also provided us with many documents, useful for our cultural research. The chief of Tien-Shin Village, You Qiu-Rong, and her husband warmly welcomed us and supported our project. Ms. You said that she could help us gather information as long as we told her in advance.

We interviewed our American English teacher Cody, international volunteer James, and other foreigners who teach English in Taiwan. When they were in their home country, they had never heard of or tasted Daxi Dried Bean Curd. They knew about and tried it through Taiwanese friends or colleagues. During the interview, they agreed dried bean curd tasted delicious and also supported our plan of promoting the products online. As for interviewing passersby, we first made our identity clearly to them and then told them about our interview purpose. We showed our sincere thanks to everyone who helped us accomplish this project.

||-Map of Daxi Old Street



||-posters about Daxi

We found that in the eyes of locals, they didn’t focus on their cultural development merely on dried bean curd. For them, dried bean curd is just a distinguished local family-run business, and it cannot represent the whole Daxi. The locals emphasized other economic enterprises and cultural events, such as the wooden art culture and temple fairs. Ms. Jian, chairwoman of the Daxi Cultural Association, also mentioned that the existence of a community isn’t simply a single aspect of the community, but also represents multiple aspects of its growth and development. But for non-local people like us, Daxi Dried Bean Curd is a local specialty. When we mention Daxi, we think dried bean curd represents Daxi. It shows that we have a different perspective from the local people. There are still a lot of things waiting for us to discover and understand in the entire Daxi District.

||-The Wood Art tour



||-Tofu DIY

We have learned about the manufacturing process, history and development of dried bean curd in addition to the community history and multiculturalism of Daxi. By interviewing local people, we have realized that the dried bean curd industry is only a small part of Daxi. There are many more enterprises and cultural activities for us to explore. Chairwoman Jian also remarked that Daxi’s visibility was not as high as Taipei because foreign tourists preferred Taipei to Taoyuan when visiting Taiwan. In Daxi, there is also wooden art industry, various produces (like leeks and green bamboo shoots), toy tops, and unique architectures that can be promoted to foreign tourists, thus increasing their desire to visit Taoyuan. Huang Shu-Jun also mentioned that she had received foreign students from National Taiwan Normal University Language Center to do tofu DIY. The students communicated with Daxi Wooden Art Museum to express their desire to better understand the local culture. Therefore, they were recommended to explore the Daxi culture and to experience the tofu DIY. It demonstrates the foreigners’ interest and acceptance of bean curd (‘bean curd’ or ‘tofu’ these two can be used interchangeably). If we can combine sightseeing with a similar educational interaction, maybe more foreigners will be glad to visit Daxi, and the international visibility may rise.

At the same time, we have also learned how to make a research project in a better way, like collecting and sorting information, making reports, building a website, and generating a narrative.

All the content of ‘Daxi Dried Bean Curd’ project was completed by team members. We also collected data online, integrated them and did the writing. Any citations from other websites, publications, or references of photos or images, are in accordance with the regulations of intellectual property rights. For all the photos shot in the interviews or inside the dried bean curd shops, or the information cited from newspapers or websites, we have the approval of the shop owners for them to appear on our Webpage. We have strictly followed the laws of intellectual property rights throughout our project.