Hole-grain treat: the ‘mouse bagel’ of Hualien

By Dan Bloom

HUALIEN, Taiwan — For 60-something Grandpa Ba-Su, riding around this seaside town on his advertising tricycle touting his original “mouse bagels” at the local Mud Cafe he runs in the downtown area, is just part of his busy, colorful day here. Sometimes he sports a pair of Groucho Marx glasses and accompanying eyebrows and moustache, as well as a Steve Martin nose, as he bikes around town, posing for tourist photos and doing TV interviews with reporters from across the island.

At 61, Grandpa Ba-Su shows no signs of slowing down, and he has a crew of young college students to help him run the coffee shop and man the mouse bagel stand. He’s one of a kind, and he’s the real Taiwan.

He calls out to one and all as he passes by on his Mouse Bagel shuttle, as he calls it: “Buy two, get one free; come and get, all the mouse bagels you can eat, don’t be shy, don’t be sly, come and say hi!”

This is a man who is not in a hurry and he takes every day as a blessing from the gods, living a contented life in the slow lane, far
from the hustle and bustle of Taiwan’s larger citires of Taipei and Kaohsiung. Having invented what he calls the “mouse bagel,” he
just might be the first person in the non-English-speaking world to put mouse and bagel into the same sales pitch — and the tasty small-size bagel he has come up is the real thing, too. It’s as much a bagel as any real bagel in New York or San Diego, and when asked how he came up with the concept and the term, Grandpa Ba-Su tells this reporter: “When I was a child growing up in Taiwan, 50 years ago or so, I remember eating bite-size snacks at some of the local food stores in my hometown, and now as an adult, I
wanted to recreate some of that magic. I know that bagels are popular all over Taiwan now, especially at coffee shops, where the
Jewish-American bread has become as Taiwanese as our own fried bread sticks for breakfast time. So I thought of a good way to describe these mini-bagels, and I had a friend draw a picture of some mice cavorting with some bagels and voila, the term ‘mouse bagel’ was born.

“In Chinese, I also call them mouse bagels, that would be something like lao su ba ger in Mandarin. I even wrote the wrods in
Chinese characters on the side of my advertising rig. It’s fun and tourists seem to love it. With cream cheese and other toppings,
these little mouse bagels rock the boat! Everyone loves them. I think I invented a new kind of bagel, and I’m glad I did.”

Grandpa Ba-Su grew up in Hualien, a picturesque seaside town surrounded by mountains and the sea on Taiwan’s east coast. Once city folk come here for a weekend vacation, many of them don’t want to go back to the urban jungles and daily grind. Hualien has sea
and surf, a variety of local colleges and universities and several world-class hospitals and museums.

But it’s grandpa’s mouse bagels that migth put Hualien on the international map now, according to local newspaper and blog reports.
He makes the mini-bagels each day with loving care, using healthy ingredients to create a kind of new health food for Taiwan’s diet-concious citizens. The American traveller in Taiwan does not see many overweight or obese people in Taiwan, and the fat people
are extremely rare here. Most of the overweight people one does see as one travels around Taiwan are North American and European tourists, who often tip the scales in comic and obese ways. It’s not always a pretty picture, and most Taiwanese people do not understand why some foreigners who visit their island shores are so fat.

Grandpa Ba-Su at 61 is fit and trim, and he has many miles to go before he sleeps. His mouse bagels are now a hit in Hualien, and he’s
thinking of branching out to Taipei and Tokyo later on. But for now, if you want to nosh on some delicious mouse bagels with cream cheese and other spreads, make a beeline to the east coast of this tasty, terrific and tantalizing island nation and buy a few of the delicacies from young Grandpa Ba-Su.

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Bloom is Taiwan bureau chief for San Diego Jewish World.  He may be contacted at danny.bloom@sdjewishworld.com