Qu’ils mangent du gâteau !

  For the non-French speaking crowd, that would be the famous quote “Let them eat cake.”  A lame excuse for a threat if you ask me, but one used (supposedly, although my high school French teacher seems to think it’s all a nasty rumor) by Marie Antoinette during the first French Revolution (out of six) upon finding out that the peasants had run out of bread.
 
What does this have to do with anything, you might ask?  In addition to being inspired by an article I saw in today’s paper that claims that Napoleon died of an enema (and I thought it was stomach cancer all this time…okay fine, that’s what specialists thought, I don’t think I ever considered how Napoleon died before this evening), it actually has more to do with tonight’s dinner—eating cake seemed like a much less daunting of a task when I found myself at one of Taibei’s all-you-can-eat dessert bars.
 
My friend Nick woke up this morning to a corneal abrasion caused by removing his contact the previous night.  After a trip to the hospital, and a day walking around downtown Taibei with a huge patch covering half of his face (the eye doctor got a little happy with the tape), we both agreed that a relaxing evening was in order.  So cards and cake for dinner it was.  Nick seems to think that all-you-can-eat places are all the rage these days in Taiwan—he thinks it has something to do with recent (more or less) prosperity.  He likened it to America’s obsession with the concept back in the 90s, but I only seem to remember being haunted by memories of Country Buffet in Illinois.  I suppose it is better than that with which I’m haunted nowadays, the voice of the lady who reads out the Taibei MRT stops in Hakka (a local Taiwanese language) repeatedly saying “koki allo zhan” (Technology Building Station) is penetrating all of my dreams.  Creepy!  But I digress.  I guess my point is that I don’t have particularly fond memories of all-you-can-eat buffets.  Were they really popular?  And if so, why do you think that was (okay that’s the food sociologist in me speaking)?
 
Anyway, back at this cake joint, I worked my way through a piece of black forest cake (which has the exact same name in Chinese BTW), a croissant, chocolate mousse, garlic bread (don’t ask me why this was included in the cake menu), and tea cake.  And by tea cake, I mean quite literally tea cake.  Specifically, it was a green tea cake, with red beans (adzuki if you will) in the frosting and everything.  It’s a combination that I think originated in Japan, but is also quite prevalent in Taiwan.  McDonalds even has a green tea and red bean McFlurry if you can believe it (it’s really good BTW).
 
But my new favorite dessert is actually cua bing (pronounced something like tswa bing).  Imagine a big ice cone with toppings and you’re heading in the right direction.  For example, my last one was shaved ice drizzled in syrup covering red beans, tapioca balls, mango chunks, and taro root (as opposed to either green tea or yam) flavored rice flour dumplings (think gnocchi).  So good!  There are plenty of other options as well (most of them jellied…or agar-ed rather), though I understand that condensed milk is also a common addition.
 
I was originally planning on using this example of a Taiwanese dessert to help explain today’s fun facts (regarding obesity figures), but I can’t help feeling that the all-you-can-eat dessert place didn’t help my argument.  Essentially, my theory was that Taiwanese are generally less caloric and healthier—I mean the dessert is essentially ice, beans and rice.  Fruit is another common dessert.  But maybe that’s why sociology is such a frustrating discipline, because there are so many causes, and social trends are so hard to nail down.
 
And now on to the sizzling sino-thoughts for Saturday:
 
1/3-  The amount of the Taiwanese population that is considered overweight or obese.
2/3-  The amount of the US population that is considered overweight or obese.
1-  The average number of hours I spend walking per day here in Taiwan (despite the heat).
15-  The average number of minutes I spent walking per day in the US.
 
Cause and effect?