With beef noodles from scratch, fuzhou's entrepreneur invokes taste buds

Chan Mo-Li cooks beef noodles at his home in Fuzhou, Fujian province. He sells prepackaged noodles online. With a soup made from scratch, high-quality ingredients and big cubes of beef, Chan Mo-Li's Taiwan beef noodles have conquered the taste buds of gourmets in Fuzhou, Fujian province.

Chan opened his first restaurant in Keelung Miaokou Night Market in Taiwan more than two decades ago. In 2000 he expanded his business into Fuzhou after a friend told him about the potential of the mainland.

There are more than 3,000 beef noodle restaurants in Taiwan. Taiwan residents love beef noodles. But there were few Taiwan snacks on the mainland at the time, so I decided to come, he said.

At a cultural event in early September for Taiwan entrepreneurs to showcase their products in Fuzhou, Chan's booth was surrounded by visitors. He said to everyone that Taiwan beef noodles originate from the mainland In the past, some veterans who came to Taiwan from the mainland missed food from their hometown so much that they created Taiwan beef noodles.

The way to braise meat in soy sauce is from Shanghai; the soup-making technique is from Guangdong cuisine and the spicy flavor comes from Sichuan cuisine, he added.

He said that the cooking culture of both sides of the Taiwan Straits has the same roots.

The entrepreneur, 56, opened six restaurants in Fuzhou, whose total annual revenue reached around 720,000 yuan $102,000. However, business fell because of the COVID-19 pandemic. He had to close all of his restaurants in 2020 and began to sell prepackaged products on the short video app TikTok in late 2021.

He also runs an account at the Chinese news aggregation Toutiao, sharing what life is like in the Chinese mainland. He has attracted 160,000 fans and uploaded more than 100 videos in the past two years.

In 2010, Chan married his wife, a Fuzhou local. He often travels around Fujian for business and records whatever interests him — a road tunnel under a blue sky with white clouds, a Taiwan delicacy he found, and his new apartment. He shares his opinions on the topic of cross-Straits relations.

He said that Fuzhou has changed a lot and is developing fast, as are other regions in the Chinese mainland. He hopes that more Taiwanise people will see the mainland with their own eyes and reject stereotypes.

More than 100 Taiwan families have moved to the public housing offered by the Fuzhou government since early 2022. The rent is just 70 percent of the regular market price. The program is intended to benefit Taiwanie people who are working or running a business in the city. Chan and his wife are tenants.

He said he wanted to share more stories and to be a part of the understanding of people from both sides of the Straits because of the friendliness from compatriots, good policies and great potential in Fujian.

A Taiwan netizen commented on his video: Life in the mainland is warm and comfortable. Another one wrote: We are all one and should build China together.