Updated October 31, 2026 at 6:00 AM EDT
Dan bing, a rolled crepe commonly filled with anything from tuna to sweetcorn, is a popular breakfast dish in Taiwan. It's simple enough to make — starting with an egg mixture that gets wrapped in a thin crepe — but the dish itself has a complex history.
Chen Yu-Jen, food historian at the National Taiwan Normal University, says wheat-based dishes like dan bing weren't that common in Taiwan until after 1949, when the Chinese Nationalists lost the Chinese Civil War to the Communists, and fled to Taiwan.
Almost 2 million made the treacherous sea journey from the Chinese mainland to Taiwan, bringing with them food traditions very different from Taiwan's.
"They were skilled at making wheat-based foods," Chen says. "It's these kinds of postwar immigrants that actually helped to popularize dishes like Dan Bing."
But historically, Taiwan did not produce a lot of wheat, in part due to its climate. So, how did wheat-based dan bing become synonymous with Taiwanese breakfast culture?
Chen Yi-Hung, curator at the National Museum of Taiwan History in the southern city of Tainan, says it was the Cold War that changed everything.
With the communists now running mainland China, and the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, Washington suddenly saw Taiwan as a bulwark against the spread of communism. American troops arrived, and aid flooded in — including bags of wheat and flour.
"At the beginning, Taiwan first received U.S. aid flour, and later wheat, which kickstarted the domestic flour-milling industry," the curator says.
The effort was so large, some of the bags were turned into clothing. In the museum, an exhibition displays underwear and shirts, made for children out of leftover bags of wheat that were once distributed across Taiwan.
"Taiwan's position became more important. To maintain the so-called anti-communist system, Taiwan's politics, economy and military all needed to be stabilized," Chen Yi-Hung said, standing in front of the exhibition. "So, aid was needed."
Together with the U.S., Taiwan set up the Taiwan Wheat Product Promotion Council, an organization that promoted and taught Taiwanese how to make wheat-based foods.
The popularity of new wheat-based cuisine allowed Taiwan to begin selling rice, once used to feed its population, on international markets. Meanwhile, the U.S. was able to alleviate domestic wheat overproduction issues through its exports to Taiwan.
A small island stuck between competing U.S. and Chinese interests, Taiwan has long been shaped by its history of immigration and great power politics — and that's all reflected in one of the people's most beloved dishes: dan bing.
Nowadays, the wheat-based crepe has become a staple of Taiwanese breakfast cuisine.
"It has lots of different flavors, I think its taste is pretty distinctive," said National Taiwan Normal University's Chen. "It's a dish I miss when I'm abroad."
Dhanika Pineda adapted this story for the web.
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