What it is
Bamboo tube rice (竹筒飯) is glutinous rice cooked inside a section of fresh bamboo and sealed with a leaf, so it picks up a light fragrance from both. Once the tube is split, the rice comes out as a firm cylinder. It is a fixture of Indigenous restaurants and village visits, often served with grilled wild boar, millet wine and stir-fried mountain greens.
Where it came from
Bamboo has long served Taiwan's Indigenous peoples as a ready-made vessel. A third-century Chinese account of an island usually identified as Taiwan, the Linhai Shuitu Zhi (臨海水土志), describes its people drinking millet wine from bamboo tubes. The Bunun cultural historian Tian Zhe-yi (田哲益) writes that before Han influence, soup was held in bamboo tubes, while rice and meat went in baskets woven from rattan or bamboo.
The Atayal call their traditional method "bamboo boiling" (竹煮), and it is essentially how bamboo tube rice is still made. The Tsou have the dish too. Hunters from both peoples are said to have left heavy iron pots behind on trips of several days, carrying only a bag of glutinous rice.
Indigenous set meals have since grown popular with visitors, including Han Taiwanese diners, and bamboo tube rice is a standard part of them.
How it is made
The usual tube is makino bamboo (桂竹), a native species, sawn into sections. Glutinous rice soaked for eight hours or more is packed in with water, and the open end is sealed with a shell ginger leaf (月桃葉). The tube is then steamed or boiled. Roasting it over charcoal gives a toasted flavour, but kitchens feeding tour groups often use large steamers. The traditional filling is rice alone. Modern versions may add millet, mushrooms, peanuts or meat.
How to eat it
It is eaten hot, usually as part of an Indigenous set meal with grilled meat and wild vegetables. The tube is split open and the rice pulled out, often with a thin bamboo membrane clinging to it. On some village visits guests fill their own tubes, then wash the empty tube and take it home as a keepsake.
Around Taiwan
- North
- At an Atayal hunters' school camp in the hills beyond Wulai, New Taipei, visitors make it themselves and eat it with roast wild boar.
- Central
- An Indigenous restaurant at a cultural park in Puli, Nantou, steams it with peanuts, mushrooms and black beans.
- South
- Alishan in Chiayi County, home of the Tsou, is strongly associated with it. A popular saying holds that a visit to Alishan is not complete without it.
- Indigenous
- The Atayal and the Tsou are most closely linked with it. An Atayal version served in Wufeng Township, Hsinchu County, uses about seven parts millet to three parts glutinous rice, with a little meat.
