3 Kinds of Vegetarianism in Taiwan

These two characters stand for vegetarian diet. As mentioned in my how to find vegan restaurant article, the letter to the left - sù is the character for vegan; its original meaning is plain or fundamental. The letter to the right is pronounced /shí/. As a noun, it means diet.

The two combine becomes sù shí - a plain diet, or vegetarian diet.

There are many kinds of vegetarian diets.

1)The Buddhism vegetarian

According to Wikipedia

Buddhism forbids people having garlic, scallion, Chinese scallion, leek, and onion. For they are believed to have aphrodisiac effects in Oriental Medicine. Therefore, it's against Buddhism practice to use them.

Because there are five spices in total, it is called the wǔ xīn shí, literally, means five spices vegetarianism. It can include or exclude egg and milk.

In Taiwan, this is what sù shí generally means.

2)Vegetarian (with eggs and/ or milk)

This three words from left to right means egg, milk, and vegetarian. The words for egg and milk can swap places, either way, they all mean the dish is with egg and milk. Sometimes, the word for egg or milk can be paired with sù alone, which means the dish is cook with either the egg or the milk.

The Chinese characters can be read top to bottom or left to right.

This is another way to write vegetarian with milk and egg. Written in the order of milk, egg, and vegetarian.

3)Vegan or Raw Vegan

Vegan is called chún sù. This is the vegan diet that includes spices.

Since Taiwanese are used to having dishes served with warmth, it would be hard to find raw vegan dishes except for salad.

After all the Mandarin, I hope it will help in your visit to Taiwan.

If you are interested in learning more Mandarin, the Taiwanese version, please head over to my Blogger, where I will be sharing more Mandarin and my native language- Taiwanese.

Thanks for my friend-Matús in helping me out with pinyin.