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A Travel Report

“For me, cooking is sometimes a report on my own travels.”

Thom September 5, 2026 3 min read The world and travel

This piece belongs to a series of 100 posts written in memory of Thom's grandmother, published on her Facebook.


Invite your friends round, and cook the dishes of the countries you have visited. That is what Zhan Hongzhi, chairman of the board of PChome Online (an e-commerce site in Taiwan), does. His own words are also the title of the episode: “For me, cooking is sometimes a report on my own travels.”

In the podcast you will also see a great deal that is fine in how Taiwan’s cultivated set live: the “food” gatherings among people of the same circle, the national gift for connecting one “ring” of friends to the next… along with some moving stories about the women who shaped his own “palate”.

The most amusing part was probably searching for pictures of his wife: the two of them look so alike that if you simply swapped their clothes, each would be taken for the other sex.

The one sad thing is that his wife died suddenly while the two of them were travelling in Italy.


Ah — and do try listening to Drink with Mario, 馬力歐陪你喝一杯. A podcast of interviews with remarkable people in Taiwan.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/4DI07prTjrTW09W2j13VLI

A Spotify screenshot of the episode: a portrait of Zhan Hongzhi with long hair and glasses in a pale blue shirt, and below it the episode title in Chinese and the name of the show, 馬力歐陪你喝一杯
The podcast episode on Spotify, published 14 June 2017.

Remember this — revisit it in a few days.

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