Fenqihu Railway Lunch Box 奋起湖便当

Where it comes from

The Alishan National Scenic Area administration explains the tradition by the railway. After the line opened in 1912, Fenqihu station was its largest intermediate maintenance stop; timber trains and workers' trains halted there for a long time close to midday, and crews and passengers rested and ate. Chinese Wikipedia adds that the welfare committee of the Forestry Bureau's Yushan office had its staff meals made by Fenqihu shops because boxes spoiled over long transport, and that local vendors sold boxes to passengers while trains waited to pass one another.

Taiwan Panorama (台湾光华杂志), published by Taiwan's foreign ministry, tells the Lin family's part. Lin Jinkun (林金坤), second generation of the business, says the train boxes once brought from Chiayi (嘉义) by the Yushan office arrived cold and plain; his father knew the office staff and ran the Dengshan Canteen (登山食堂) beside Fenqihu station, and in 1955 the family began selling lunch boxes. In the 1960s, Fenqihu's peak, the railway ran ten trains a day, and trains crossing at Fenqihu stopped long enough for passengers to get off and buy. The Alishan Highway, opened in 1982, cut the canteen's sales to fewer than ten boxes a day. Revival came in June 2002, when the Uni-President group (统一企业) approached Fenqihu to make a lunch box together; Lin supplied the menu and method, and the box went on sale in Uni-President's 7-Eleven shops.

How it is eaten

Taiwan Panorama counts more than ten railway lunch-box makers in Fenqihu, and the Lin family still serves its boxes in traditional aluminium tins. The stone-paved old street, about 500 metres long, lies below the station. Fenqihu has no lake: it sits in a hollow ringed by mountains on the east, west and north, shaped like a farmer's grain dustpan. That shape and the Hokkien word for a basin gave it the old name Benji Huzi (畚箕湖仔), later replaced by the similar-sounding Mandarin name Fenqihu.