TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — China’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying’s (華春瑩) claims of palates dictating sovereignty took another blow when data revealed that there are more than triple the number of Taiwanese restaurants than Chinese in Taipei.
On Sunday (Aug. 7), Hua scored a propaganda own goal by arguing that because Baidu Maps showed 38 Shandong dumping restaurants and 67 Shanxi noodle eateries in Taipei, "palates don't cheat" and made the logical leap that "Taiwan has always been part of China." Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu (王定宇) was quick to point out that China has thousands of American fast food restaurants, in addition to eateries featuring cuisine from numerous countries, while the same could be said of Taiwan.
Taiwanese restaurants in Taipei. (Twitter, Grant Huang image)
Grant Huang, a civil engineering student at National Taiwan University, on Monday (Aug. 8) posted data indicating that Taiwanese restaurants in Taipei far outnumber Chinese. In fact, he pointed out that Japanese restaurants outnumber Chinese restaurants in Taipei and reminded Hua that "Palates don't cheat."
Huang told Taiwan News that the data was obtained from Foodpanda via a web scraping method. Based on the data, Taipei has a total of 1,454 Taiwanese restaurants, 455 Japanese, 431 Chinese, and 318 Korean.
Japanese restaurants in Taipei. (Twitter, Grant Huang image)
Based on Hua's logic, given that Taiwanese eateries comprise the vast majority of restaurants in Taipei, Taiwan is an independent country. If any foreign country could lay claim to Taiwan based on Hua's flawed metric, it would actually be Japan.
In addition, Huang pointed out that under the category "Western" (歐美), there are 1,129 restaurants, indicating North American and European countries could also lay claim to Taiwan.
Chinese restaurants in Taipei. (Twitter, Grant Huang image)
Korean restaurants in Taipei. (Twitter, Grant Huang image)
Distribution of Taiwanese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean restaurants in Taipei. There are more Japanese restaurants than Chinese ones, according to the data.
Plates don't cheat.
Data: foodpanda#taiwan #map #gis pic.twitter.com/cxywskRZeW
— Grant Huang (@yanchen00) August 8, 2022
