Taiwan family puts new spin on traditional dish

Fish ball maker doing big business in Quanzhou

When she was a child, Wu Yunchen often ate fish balls at her home in Yunlin county in Taiwan.

Not because fish balls were her favorite dish, but because her parents ran a family business making them.

"Two generations of my family have made fish balls, first in Taiwan and now in Quanzhou in Fujian province, going from a small family business to digitized factory production," Wu said. "We are driven by ingenuity."

The family moved from Taiwan to Quanzhou in 1998, when Wu was 14. At that point, they had been producing the delicacies for over a decade.

"Fish balls date back to the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), and have been popular in Taiwan ever since. We wanted to bring the dish back to the mainland, so that more people would get to know it here," she said.

They started a company, Fu Bang Foodstuff, in Quanzhou and settled in the city. "There are different types, such as mushroom balls, cuttlefish balls and tofu balls," Wu said. "Most of our products are sold on the domestic market, including in Guangdong province and Northeast China."

Now, this childhood dish has become Wu's daily concern.

Because the business environment has changed since her parents' time, Wu has had to become more proactive and creative to be successful.

"The mainland population is far larger, with many more customers," she said. "Policies here, in terms of financial support and subsidized electricity for industrial use, are also beneficial."

Wu is referring to initiatives by the local government last year to support businesses when factories were forced to shut down due to the COVID-19 epidemic.

The efforts of the first generation made Fu Bang a leading catering business in Quanzhou. Now that Wu has taken over, she is taking the company into new markets by embracing the digital world.