David, you know I love myself some zhajiangmian. No butter, all flavor. There's a reason why this was 80 bucks. Cantonese food is the most ubiquitous style of Chinese food globally, with probably the most dishes to its name. While it's known for never getting too extreme in either direction of flavor, it is still many people's favorite genre. We'll delve into the different subgroups of Southern Chinese that influence the cuisine, such as Tui San, Hakka, Chuzhou, Guangzhou, and even just the diaspora in general. They each contribute their own flavors to create the ever so iconic and gigantic 200 item menus that you find at Cantonese restaurants. This video is gonna hit home with us because our father is Cantonese and our earliest memories of being a young foodie come from our trips to Chinatown and Hong Kong. You are definitely gonna wanna get some Kanto food after this, so hit that like button and let's go. All right, David, we're here at a very, very popular Cantonese restaurant called August Gatherings. Now, it is traditional, but they're kinda doing some modern twists on things. For sure.  So this is black truffle roast duck. Clearly, you know, a little bit modernized, but the chefs are young guys, hungry guys from actually high-end hotels in Guangzhou. David, another classic dish is a Dupai guy. And this is like kind of like your house special chicken. It always looks like this. Well, Dupai means special. So this is a special house chicken. They have a regular boxy guy without as much gherm chung, Andrew, on it. But I know you, you just had to go for this one. The heaps of scallion are calling my name. Generally for myself, if I get the chance to get the house special versus just like a regular boxy guy, I'm gonna go with the special. These are salt baked clams, Andrew. And man, it's really interesting because they put some of the garlic and the Dupai on it. And like we said, every Cantonese kitchen does have peppers on it, but they use them very sparingly. So the peppers aren't there, but they hardly ever use maybe like 10% of the dish or 5% of what they would in the Sichuan dish. So good.  And David, I know this soup is very traditional because dad actually makes this soup at home. Usually the squids that you use in the bao yu guy talk, it's more of like a dried squid, like a cuttlefish. Bro, this is a big shout out to dad because this is my favorite soup that he makes. Here we have the lap yuk, which is kind of like a dried Chinese bacon that's very, very popular in the South. And then you have the cauliflower, which is called toys on cauliflower. All right, you guys, this is the black truffle roast duck and the name in Cantonese was very complicated that they told me. But I think it's interesting to see such a cheap dish, you can get it at Wafeng for like $5, but you know, there's no limit to the elevation. It definitely adds like, almost like a darker roux type of vibe to it. It's very difficult to describe, but I definitely recommend you try other types of roast duck than the one you just used to. All right, you guys, this is exo fried rice. Exo is probably one of the most defining Cantonese sauces. I believe there are like 10 different things in it and it can be very, very expensive, depending on what grade out of like 10 of exo sauce you go with. This is exo fried rice. That tub was like $32. So it's about like double price from a regular restaurant.  Here we got these scallops with the vermicelli, like we said in Guangdong or Southern China in general, anywhere along the coastal areas, you can get these. I mean, I think this is pan Chinese at this point. Like we said, gingers, scallions, soy, guangchong, garlic, let's go. The seafood dishes here have been the highlight. I mean, is this much more expensive than it is in, you know, Guangzhou street, Tai Paidong? Yes, but is it also more refined? Yes. You know, here at August gatherings, they really go above and beyond. Now, you don't usually see this many dishes with this much scallions on top, but you know, more people should, not only for the aesthetic reason, but the amount of flavor that it provides. I mean, look at that. You could put that on top of anything and it would just be good. Guys, here we have the garlic scallion shrimp over vermicelli when it comes to cooked shrimp. I like to eat everything. Where is Cecilia Chang and Edison at right now? Are you on TVB? Oh my God. The way the garlic and scallion oils is going through the shrimp and onto the vermicelli and flavoring it. This might just be peak Cantonese eating right here. Peak Cantonese living right here. Overall guys, August gatherings is pretty pricey, but you do pay for the quality and I've got to say under the Hong Kong style or Guangzhou style, Tai Paidong seafood dishes, I think we're the best. This is a very authentic experience because we are across the world from Hong Kong right now. Now you can't talk about Cantonese food without mentioning Toisan or Taishan and the sage up Han Chinese people that they come from. It also includes Kaiping, Xinhui, Anping and He Shan. Now Toisan in particular is a famous region not necessarily because of the place itself but what the people from their diaspora accomplished. They are the earliest Chinese in America working on railroads and building Chinatowns and traditionally speaking, they made up 30% of Hong Kong's earlier Chinese population during British colonial rule. Now a lot of Cantonese cuisine we know in America is influenced by Hong Kong, but who influenced HK food? The truth is a lot of different groups of people. Hence why Canton food is so good. All right, you guys, we are at a classic Hong Kong Minzhuqin which means pretty much they serve noodles and kanji. So let's check it out. Another aspect of Cantonese food in America is gonna be your Chinatown Cantonese food. This type of food has kind of been around for decades now, maybe 50, 60, up to 70 years but outside I'm here at some of the classic spots, Wallhop and Hop Quay in Chinatown. These spots typify this type of food. They're gonna have a range of a little bit more authentic dishes but also they're gonna be serving your lemon chicken, almond chicken, all those types of things. What you are looking at is one of the most classic Hong Kong lunch slash, you know, quick dinner dishes in the entire world. This is called Aulam Haul Fun and what we have is that we have a beef brisket as you can see, very fatty, very tender and we have the wide Haul Fun rice noodles. If we were living in Hong Kong right now this would easily be one of the things that you most consume throughout a week. Now, is this as good as some of the famous spots I've been in, you know, Shenzhen, Hong Kong? No, but is it the closest I've had in America? It's up there. Looking at this dish, this is gailan with the yau choy and the hou yau, hou yau is oyster sauce and these are just different types of greens. Of course, over here we've got the aulam one. It's called heng lo mean, lo mean and it's actually got the chou mean underneath. Chou mean is actually the thicker one ton noodle instead of the thin one. I actually much prefer this one. I think some people don't think it really makes a big difference but to me, it's gigantic. We are looking at some like samsarbo Wong Kok street foods right now. Maybe some part of TST team's hot shirt but listen guys, this is just incredibly HK. Yo, this really reminds me of one of those heng lo cafes, kaolun side but that is very popular and well respected in the Cantonese cuisine. Andrew, you are looking at a joke but not just any regular kanji. We are looking at the best kanji in New York city possibly. Yeah, I saw that they put drizzled like a little bit of like, I don't want to say chicken oil but seasoning up on the top. And of course, Andrew, we've got the lo mein. These are just stewed animal innards. This is something that is incredibly HK. I think mixing this in with some of the other dishes makes a lot of sense but they look very tender. All right, man. We are going in here on the lo mein. Starting off my meal with some chok. This is literally on Hong Kong level. Yeah. The same level, not every dish here is the same as Hong Kong. The sa-kin gai chok, it is. David, you know I love myself some ta jang mein but this is the ta jang mein. I think growing up half Northern and half Southern, I did not have the Southern derivative of ta jang mein until I was like way older. Yeah, actually this is not the most popular version of ta jang mein around China for sure. But this, hey, every region has its version. David, when it comes to the noodle pasta relationship, I think this is one of those dishes that really feels like a spaghetti. Yeah, that one's like the Cantonese spaghetti right there. Andrew, this is incredibly Hong Kong right here. These are dried and fried fish skins. You know, this is a very modern style, guys. This is what they're eating in Guangdong, in Hong Kong, in 2022. All right, Dave, I have the out top.  This is a mixed like dill plate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So a lot of people just eat this straight up. I'm gonna dip it in my satin guy joke, so. Whoa! That's a lot of innards for one bite. But it's not bad here. Still not my favorite. Andrew, you are looking at a claypot rice, a bow tie fond with lapme on top. So that's lap-yop, lapchang, all types of lops. By the way, Dominicans also eat their version of the crispy rice too. A lot of different cultures do, surprisingly. All right, hey, we're here with chef and owner Chris from East Wind Snacks. Cantonese food comes from the original sub-section and that's Toisan. So it all comes from the Toisan, which is the area, the countryside area of Guangdong. And then they took all those chefs from Guangdong and moved them to Hong Kong. And then the movement came to America, to New York and San Francisco. But it all came down from the home countryside food of Toisan. This is like pretty traditional lunch food right here. Oh, somebody who's like 85 years old would go for this, but obviously at the cha-chang tangs, that's probably for really like 50 or 40 and under. And honestly, I would say Boat's iPhone is one of the dishes that really also kind of symbolize Southern cuisine, particularly possibly from like the Toisan Guangdong region. And this is really that dish, man, Boat's iPhone. All right you guys, we have to take a quick break from Noodle Village because, Andrew, right next to Noodle Village is Hopkey. And Hopkey, Andrew, actually has a lot of things on the menu from 60, 70, 80 years ago when like Chinese immigrants first came to America. Yes, I would classify this food as particularly very Cantonese American. I think a lot of those restaurants that have been around for decades, they were probably started by Cantonese people. I would call this in my opinion, Retro Panda Express. All right, these are the dishes I have. I have pineapple duck, something I've never had before. And then I have your egg-foo young with shrimp and mushroom with the brown gravy. So I'm gonna pour on the pineapple sauce with the gravy, David, partake. Not that there is no original root of this, but it's just not in this form. Yes, egg-foo young, this is a dish that has probably been around in America for at least 60 years. Chinese food has taken so many different forms and every has taken on so many different cultures and mixed it in at different times in history in different places. So almost everybody has their own definition or image of Chinese food in their mind. This is Chinese food, that is Chinese food. And in fact, you can make an argument and use our both very Cantonese dishes, too. All right, you guys, we are looking at some deep-cut Guangzhou dishes right now. Like we said, the Cantonese cuisine is made up mostly of regular Cantonese, haka qiu jiao. This is a caipou. This is excellent. It shows the clay pot cooking here. We've got the zha tau fu. And this is a very special one with shrimp in the middle. Some people imitate this on a more Western level with like shrimp toast, but this is the original, the fried tofu. You guys, this is the true school Canton version. Maybe the haka qiu jiao way would have more peppers, chilies, preserved flavors on it to kick it up a notch. But listen, guys, in terms of true school Canton, even the amount of soy sauce I put on there was a little much, it's designed to allow the natural flavors to shine. You guys, meat off the bone undisputably tastes better. However, for different people, it takes more or less effort and it may or may not be worth it. So you tell me, eating stuff from the clay pot is like eating things fresh out of a seasoned wok.  This steamed, dungeonous crab over sticky rice is so symbolic of your Cantonese seafood restaurants where for lunch, you can get a $6 bowl of wonton mean, or you can get like a $7 Samping font, three treasure meat over rice. And then on the same menu, you can buy an $80 steamed crab, literally 10 X the price. What other restaurants are gonna have that? This is crazy. And I think it just goes to show you the range that Cantonese food has. Look, the steamed crab, you can see they broke it off in the middle. You can smell the little crab juices inside. Let's pull up to this long my fun. Listen, I don't know what's going on with our younger generation, but if you have not even tried this, you are really missing out young kids. When someone asked me, how does crab brain taste? It definitely has like this kind of rich, I would say a little bit livery umami flavor, but it's way easier to eat than liver. I don't know. It's definitely something that you gotta try a couple of times. I know when I was a kid, it did not look appealing to me, but as I grew older guys, my taste buds advanced. No butter, all flavor. There's a reason why this was 80 bucks. As much as Cantonese food has changed over the years and added dishes and added elements from this and that, you know, sometimes it's cool to just bring it back to the core, stuff like this. This is very, very Cantonese. All right, everybody. So for our Chiljiao section of this Cantonese episode, we had to go all the way down to Southern California in the San Gabriel Valley, aka the 626, where the Chiljiao diaspora is super, super strong. Now the 626, particularly West 626, is well known for a lot of its Chinese Vietnamese and Chinese Cambodian food, which is primarily based in, you know, the Chiljiao diaspora. But this spot behind me is purely from Chow Zou. And if you're of Chiljiao background, you already know the phrase, ka kyi nang, aka zi ji run, meaning that, you know, we are all of the same people. All right, so coming here at Chow Wei Ju, you'll notice that the Chiljiao tea is very, very famous in Chow Zou. And I think this might be the Chiljiao style of a teapot right here. Even just judging by the menu, you can actually see how similar it is to the Chiljiao diaspora in the Southeast Asian areas, you know, such as like the Chinese Vietnamese. But for example, you have like your oyster pancake here. Obviously that's very, that's seen in all different places. And that actually might even come from its proximity with Fujian. If you know Cantonese food, you know Chiljiao flavors have influenced it immensely. So first off, this is the most southern big beef rib I've ever seen, because usually when you're eating beef ribs, you're thinking of something of, you know, from Dongbei or Mongolia or even at least Western China like Xinjiang. But here, guys, this is a big beef rib from the south. Alzhou is also very famous for a beef hot pot. So it does not surprise me that they have a big beef rib. Mm, they got beef in Chow Zhou. Here I got this fish cake platter right here. Now Chow Zhou food is actually really, really popular in Shenzhen. But in America, you only know Chow Zhou food through the diaspora, such as your Chinese Vietnamese spots or Chinese Cambodian spots. But, mm. Another thing that Chiljiao people are famous for are the Daipai Dongs in Hong Kong that are actually going away with time. You know, they're closing a lot of them down. But that is considered some of the most flavorful food in Hong Kong to this day. Here we have the sauces, of course the Sacha, but AKA the Sate. You have your garlic chili, and then you have your chili sauce. Now these chilies are gonna provide a kick that a lot of other Cantonese foods not, to be honest. So that's why I think I gotta give Chiljiao people credit for adding so much flavor to the Cantonese cuisine. Oyster omelet with the chili on it. Mm, oh. This is a great way to try all the chilies right here. A thousand years ago, Hakka Cantonese people and Chiljiao people were all considered separate groups. But nowadays they're kind of all united under the larger umbrella of Southern Chinese. I'm so glad because honestly, Chiljiao food is one of my favorite. This is so good. Let me show you. Let me show you what I do. See, look, you got the little tripe, the beef, a little bit of this chili oil. Delicious. Oh, Yu-Ga-Gi-Nang-Hoo. All right, real quick, taking it out of the restaurant. We had to try some Hakka dishes. Now this is from Kanji Village, and Hakka food is another kind of cuisine that's been incorporated under the general Cantonese cuisine umbrella. Hakka people, they don't have a region of their own. If you guys know the story, they've moved around a lot. So a lot of the food is very fragrant. There's a lot of preserved veggies, but it's actually really, really tasty. Hakka dishes are generally considered to be kind of salty, not too spicy, very umami. This didn't look like much, but with its soy sauce and a little bit of these preserved garnishes, this was packing a lot of flavor. Mm. Now we have two other dishes here. They're not necessarily Hakka, but here I have an egg drop soup, and then also we have this Sampan Juk. This one though, in particular, has a little bit of the kind of pork, like livers and stuff, which I could see some people not really liking, especially if you're not into that, but this is actually really, really tasty. Oftentimes when you say Cantonese food, a lot of people actually are just imagining dim sum. Yes, it is one of the most popular things to eat on a Sunday or Saturday morning. We're outside of Tim Ho Wan. They won a Michelin Star. When they did, they were considered the most affordable Michelin Star restaurant ever. So let's go have dim sum the way it's supposed to be had. All right, you guys. Tim Ho Wan is a chain originally from Hong Kong. Interestingly enough, Andrew got bought out by Jollabies for, you know, multinational expansion. I mean, dim sum actually has a really, really long history. It really is just referring to small Chinese dishes eaten for brunch.  David, when I look at all the dim sum on the table and how much work went into making every single dish, I think it really just goes to show you how seriously Cantonese people take food and how much it's just a part of their life.  So Andrew, about 150 years ago in the Guangdong province, the concept of dim sum ended up exploding after they closed down all the opium dens. Andrew, you have probably the most popular dim sum dish with you, which is a chashu bao, although you do have a little bit more modernized candied snow top version. And then I actually probably have one of the best low-key dishes, which is actually a shrimp ball on top of a piece of eggplant. Yo man, I love the eggplant and pork mixture or fish mixture, whatever it is, that is a fire dish. So that's a chashu bao, and I think this is a ha khao candy, shrimp and eggplant guys. It's a home run combination that you would not think of. Aren't you guys, I am getting these sweet soy sauce placed on top of the pie quit. The one on the table, Andrew, interestingly enough, is not the house-made soy sauce. It's a salty one, but you can special request the team's CEO, the sweet soy sauce. David, I have probably the most classic dim sum dish right here, this is the siu mai.  Oh, that's good. Yeah? Wow. Siu mai is a favorite. You know, actually, guys, I don't even know if you think that the quality at Tim Ho-Wang went down over the years. I think their siu mai is one of the best. All right, so I tried to take care of two dishes in one. This is a pie quit feng zhao. Feng zhao is the chicken foot. I didn't want to order a whole plate of it. And the pie quit is right here.  This one happens to be over rice with the sweet soy sauce. All right, you guys, I'm going in on the ha khao pie quit. And of course, I got to kick it off with west side till I die. Are you really eating dim sum if you're not eating ha khao? Or as they would spell it in the West, har gow. Yo, I'm not going to lie, Andrew. It looks like Tim Ho-Wang, you know, they are a chain from Hong Kong, obviously bought out now by the Philippines. I would say they got the ha khao and siu mai down. David, this is probably my least favorite, but most popular dim sum dish. These are the meatballs with Worcestershire sauce. So Worcestershire sauce is kind of like, it's the bulldog sauce. It's going to be a little bit sour, has a little bit of vinegar, but like barbecue flavoring inside. It's a Japanese sauce.  It's like tangy beef balls. Andrew, you've got the shinjuku right here, which is actually a bean curd tofu fried wrap with pork and other things in it. A lot of wood ears, bamboo shoots. Mama dad loved to make that at home. And I'll say this, guys, this is probably one of the most underrated dishes in terms of popularity. Not that it's my favorite, but just for the older crowd that's Cantonese, Andrew, they might wake up every morning and have this one of these plain chow means with no protein. Guys, each dim sum dish literally is a work of art on its own. And I think Cantonese chefs and food in general is so underappreciated. Put some respect on our main. Andrew, this is the churng fun section.  Ooh, this is the scallion churng fun. Very classic, has a little bit of the sweet soy sauce, not just regular soy sauce, sweet.  Kind of like calling somebody a burger. People do that. It's so crazy because essentially what you're eating is sweet soy sauce, rice and onions, but it's just in a whole different form and form factors do play into texture and taste. This tastes totally different than just rice and sweet soy sauce. All right, onto some rice dishes. David, this is the world-famous Laomai guy and it's really like the Chinese zongzi except it's usually a little bit wetter and it doesn't have that egg yolk inside. And this should be a ting bakukai, but I think they removed the mushroom from it, so it's just steamed chicken over ginger with the sweet soy sauce. Guys, the Laomai guy, it's gotta be wet, it's gotta be sticky, it's gotta be salty. Oh, man. Andrew, you have a chashu churng and I have a ha churng. These are two very types of popular churng or churng fun. Hey guys, you can put anything in churng, chashu churng, probably one of the most underrated churng funs out there. As you guys know, chuk or chou or kanji, I mean, this is a popular dish all around Asia. The thing that makes this serveable at dim sum is because of the tiny serving size. That's what makes it like a tapas. Essentially, a lot of people compare dim sum to Spanish tapas. Andrew, this blanched lettuce, I gotta call this bapa favorite. Oh, man. Because that dad couldn't go ham on a plate of lettuce. Man, you know, this is just really boiled lettuce with soy sauce on top.  Everybody knows how to stay balanced. All right, you guys, this is a Saitang. So this is a little bit more of a Saitang-tang dish. You know what it is, Andrew? They turned this into like a obanyaki puck with Saitang, which is a little bit more of a Saitang-tang like cafe dish, which we will get to later. Andrew, you actually stuffed this with a custard. You know what I really love about dim sum, David, is that it is, it does have a long tradition, but actually you can just keep adding dishes. You can keep making up dishes, man. This is kind of like a ever-morphing and evolving style of food because, you know, people were not eating all these dishes 150 years ago either. So I really think that dim sum is going to be and will stay probably the most popular aspect of Cantonese cuisine. Cantonese flavors are known to be light, fresh with lots of usage of soy sauce, oyster sauce, scallions, and ginger. Everything from steamed to fried fish, fresh and dried seafood, healthy soups to barbecued meats, the dumplings have thin skin, lots of steamed bouncy rice noodles, and the flavors are somewhat similar to Japanese food flavors. Hence why I think a lot of my Kanto friends love Japanese food. Many of the dishes are delicately designed with multiple cooking techniques used on one dish. What Cantonese food is not is super spicy, very sweet, very sour, heavy, and hearty. This is not food of nomadic warriors, but more so farmers, fishermen, scholars, and merchants. All right, Andrew, these Hong Kong Saitang-tang started really in the 1940s, 50s, 60s. They blew up in the year 2000 in the Asian financial crisis. Man, we are looking at Tongsam Fun with Spam right here. This is a Gongxi Samenji, a club sandwich. This is galay, yudan, it's been fried. And I forgot the name of this, but this is imitation shark fin soup using fen se instead of the actual shark fin because not only is that illegal, but it's way more expensive. And honestly, the difference between shark fin and fen se, you can't really tell. That's why a lot of the Western ingredients in Chantan Tangs are actually out of the can, or they seem like kind of cheap ingredients because it is born out of making it cheap and affordable for the common person in Hong Kong. So yes, some of the ingredients are kind of cheap, but it's always done with its own type of little flair that really makes it a little bit more flavorful. Oh, Andrew, cafe decoral, fairwood, maxims. There are so many mom and pop, you know, Chantan Tangs in Hong Kong too. Tongsam Fun, Tongsam Fun is the macaroni. Andrew, this is actually one of the biggest dishes that we disagree on as brothers. I like it, you do not like it. I really see nothing really special about it, guys.  It seems like just something that your parents would whip up when you're sick at home, but I have to say that this is one of the cornerstone dishes of Hong Kong cafes. Probably the most unique. Couple of things you'll notice about all Hong Kong cafes. It's very fast paced. The food comes out quickly. The waiters and waitresses might be a little bit cranky, but that's just part of the culture here. All right, you guys, we are looking at a Gongsi Samenji. This is a club sandwich. So what you're gonna notice about the club sandwich as we hang out at the Jockey Club, of course, is that there's gonna be thin slices of ham or bacon, but there's also gonna be American cheese. Now, as you can see, all the components of the sandwich are not extremely expensive, but it's done very, very carefully to be very tasty as well. David, when it comes to Hong Kong snacks, there's nothing more better than the curry fish ball. You can get this on the street or you can get this at a cha-cha-teng. But trust me, the fish balls, they gotta be fried first, then dumped in the curry. This is imitation shark fin soup, aka gundai-chi. Like we said, you know, people use fanzi instead of the actual shark fin. Hey, David, when you wanna talk about making something that's very expensive, affordable, this is making shark fin soup very affordable. And legal, I mean, honestly, guys, I would say an actual bowl of shark fin soup would probably be like $50 for this much. This is like $4. Guys, this is baked pork chop over rice. This is another cornerstone of Hong Kong cafes. And it is based, I believe, off the British, like, casserole. Yeah, and let's be honest, guys, like we said, this is not some, like, Italian restaurant tomato sauce. I mean, this might've came out of a mix. I don't know. Yeah, and you know what I noticed is any attempts to, like, elevate that dish are not necessarily met with, like, good reactions. Andrew, this is a gopok kaifan. This is a baked Portuguese rice. Hong Kong is next to Macau. Macau was colonized by the Portuguese. Hong Kong was taken over for 100 years by the British. They gave it back in 97. My only issue is sometimes I think, like, I don't know, you know, I don't wanna judge anybody. Everybody's born into a different family, different life situations, different environments, different pathways in life. But, like, sometimes ABCs are like, this is their only way to, like, stay close to the culture, is eat something that is like them. You know, I think this is a great, like, point to chill out and place to hang out with your friends after playing basketball. But this is not, there's no real, like, depth to this cuisine. I think as somebody who's dad is from Hong Kong, it was cool to see growing up that there was a way to mix, like, Eastern and Western in a way that, like, was pretty commercially consumable. Andrew, I think that all around Asia there are these Western cuisines, whether it's the Korean food that uses a ton of cheese influenced by the army, American soldiers, whether it's, you know, Swedish, European, Japanese, Yashoku cuisine, or British Cantonese tatanteng food. There are so many subsections to the Cantonese cuisine. I think there's particularly a lot in real life, but not only that, due to the immigration waves and the patterns, they are all represented in New York's Chinatown. Let's check out the bakers. These type of bakeries were incredibly popular in the 1940s in Hong Kong. They continue to be to this day. I will say they have some more modernized things, obviously, Ito and matcha Japanese cheesecake slice. You know, I like to see the more modern stuff personally. That's what I'm going to go for. Oh my goodness. This is a churren type out. This is an incredible hot dog bun, guys. This is like one of my favorites. This and the ham and the egg. You know, these are some of the more old school Cantonese pastries right here, the Lotus, low-paw bangs and things like that. All right, you guys, I have the classic Swiss roll. My parents rarely ever let me get this growing up. It was a little bit more expensive and obviously, you know, not good for your health. But this isn't good for your health either. This is the coconut cream bun. Ergonomically speaking, it's actually really good to eat it this way. So you eat it from the middle, but let's just rip this open. Dude, mom and dad would never let me get this one either, man. Mm, that's buttercream. That's very buttery. Yo, Andrew, this is actually a matcha take on mom's favorite sponge cake. Listen, if your parents are from the older generation, I'm telling you, all the other cakes with creams and all that stuff is too sweet. They have to have the sponge cake. The sponge cake has very, very little sugar relative to it being a cake. Europeans couldn't stand it. Let's check it out. I have the taste buds of a fob. Hong Kong bakeries have always been morphing and adding new bakery items over the years, you know, taking influences from all different countries. Of course, the fluffy bun bread, you gotta attribute it somewhat to the British because, you know, traditional Chinese bread is not this fluffy. But this pineapple bun, man, the full-loop out, this is probably the most famous and quintessential bun of a Cantonese bakery. But they stuffed it with custard. David, these are kind of like old-school powder drinks. I'm pretty sure they've been around for at least 40 years each. And they're kind of your original slim-fast mixtures. They kind of praise themselves.  Ovaltine Horlicks. It's comparable to like a Milo mix with a watered-down hot chocolate. I would say Horlicks kind of tastes like a soybean milk vanilla powdered milk flavoring. Cheap, tasty dim sum is truly one of the wonders of the world, in my opinion. You have 50 different dishes. Each one is prepared with different flavors, different ingredients. Some are braised, some are fried, but they're almost all delicately steamed in bamboo baskets, only to charge anywhere from $3 to $6 a dish. Handmade food for that price, honestly, is underrated.  This is the Chilzhao Fenggou. And Chilzhao people, they really love the mochi wrapper. This is something that nobody else does that's Cantonese, not Guangzhou cantos, not Hakkas, called Hamsurukong. Also, as you can tell, very chilled out, looking on the inside and very mochi-like on the outside, but this one's fried additionally. If you ever wondered how they came up with such a gigantic variety of dim sum dishes, it's because they are incorporating many different Southern tribes together as one. These two are Hakka dishes. This is Muchoe Kauyok, and this is Tai Ping Mai Fun. And actually, Hakka people led the Tai Ping Revolution, which was actually against the Manchu Qing dynasty. So that is an interesting thing about Tai Ping. And of course, this is a classic Kanto dish. Growing up, our dad is actually more of like a GZ, I guess like Kanto-Kanto. So we did not eat a lot of Chilzhao and Hakka food until I moved to Monterey Park, Alhambra area, which has a ton of Chilzhao people and some Hakkas. So there are some dishes that are more popular outside of Hong Kong more in Guangzhou, or Tui San, or Zhong San, or different signs. You know, there's signs all over the Guangdong area. And two of them are, I would say, the Chuyok Bang and this Fu Gua beef. I definitely remember eating this growing up, but I did not really eat too much of this. If you take anything away from this video, just remember that the beloved Sacha sauce is from the Chao Zhou people. They deserve credit for it. If you ask any true Cantonese foodies, they'll know about Chilzhao food. Everything from Sacha sauce to the Daipai Dongs. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of Chao Zhou restaurants in America right now. You get to try their food mostly by way of the diaspora dishes from Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, and so on.


despite Typhoon at that day, I still remember. So I'm really happy that you all get to come to Taipei this time so that we can have a face-to-face conversation. Now, just as in video link, Slido, we still use Slido, but because we're, this is a small room anyway, so you don't have to, but if you would like, you can scan the QR code, or go to Slido.com and enter 01019 for such a face-to-face closed meeting. I usually prefer that people raise their hand and we just have a conversation together. But on the other hand, there's people who would rather like to compose their questions very carefully, and so this still provides an alternative channel for people to have input, even when somebody like me is hogging the microphone. So I guess it's still a good auxiliary space. And so the structure would be like this. I will start with maybe five to 10 minutes of very brief presentation of what my office, the public digital innovation space in the Taiwanese cabinet do, and as well as quite a few, maybe two or three additional innovations of work that we've been working on. But during this very like 10 minutes talk, I would encourage you to just start thinking about questions or just start posting those questions online on the Slido platform so that when I switch back to the Slido platform, we can just start talking about anything that people would like to talk about. And again, please feel free to just, you know, interact with me at any given time. So without further ado, let's begin the introduction. So that's what I'm saying when president of Taiwan said a very inspiring line, a very inauguration speech. She said, before, when we think of democracy, we think of a position between two opposing values. But now, as thinking about democracy, we must create a space for conversation between diverse values. And in creating space for diverse values has been the focus of the digital space in Taiwan so that we can respond to the new social developments without over-relying on the old hierarchical way to respond to them, which is frankly, speaking too slow. This is the old bad days before the invention of this important technology called hashtag, so I'll just erase it. So before hashtags, people often think of liberal democracies as essentially organizers, like party leaders. Perhaps one party would speak for economic development, another would speak for environmental sustainability, or one would speak for technological innovation, and the other would speak for social justice as a one. But during those different political factions, the career public service is the road in between. There remains anonymous, absorb all the risk, and very much working on not breaking so that the society can still keep each other, trust it and just hang around and co-develop some solutions that are good trade-offs between those competing interests. However, with the advent of mobile computing and most importantly hashtags, this metaphor is very quickly outdated. The idea of hashtags is that people don't need a organizer, a party leader, a organizational leader, a member of the parliament, a council member, a minister to start working together. So coordination that used to take a lot of time for hierarchical support now can get horizontal support in no time through crowdfunding and crowdsourcing and indeed hashtag me too, hashtag climate strike, hashtag occupied parliament and so on, all became just movement that can mobilize half a million people or more on the street and many more online so that the society would then return to those agenda centers much quicker than the traditional representative democracy do, which relies on maybe five bits of information uploaded every four years, which is called voting. And so the idea is that in new ages democracy, we're now working on ways instead of asking who are the representatives every four years and who are the representatives of trade-offs and that's still important. We're also focusing on the day-to-day work so that people can at any time come to us and with emerging topics without having to wait a quarter a year or four years. And so this is literally my office, which is actually quite close to here so I encourage you to have a visit or maybe you already had a visit and this is the social innovation lab. My three working conditions entering the cabinet is location independence. So wherever I'm working, I'm working so that's my favorite working space and ready for transparency, meaning that anyone can come and visit me and talk for 40 minutes at a time. Every Wednesday from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. everybody can talk to me. But my only ask is that whatever we have talked about, we will have to publish to the internet. So to date after being the digital minister for three years, you can see that I've hosted 1,000 meetings, met with 4,500 people and talked to 100,000 or so different speeches and this is not just summary of the meetings but rather a very comprehensive lines and indeed the developing arguments and the recent one was the visit by the center for American progress and then people can very quickly see what are their interests are, what questions I have answered and each one can be quoted within context. And so the great thing about this radical transparency is that people don't have to fight in the same room. They can come to me separately but instead of lobbying for their private interests which is what would happen with the radical transparency they would have to instead argue for public interest because it's going to be transparent. And so through this new way of mechanism design we make sure that people of different positions in society gradually come to common values. So I use one example. A year and a half ago a few people from the MIT Media Lab came to me in my office hour. So not just human beings came but also robots. Robots came to my office hour and they were like, hey, these are the newest self-driving vehicles and they're kind of unstable. We're still testing it and would you like to give it a try? I'm like, well, they're like, no, this is very slow. So even they are self-driving vehicles they're actually slower than a person running in full speed. And so it's very safe even if you run into a building so it will not harm you. I'm like, okay, it's a hub on one and indeed I did not get harmed. And so I learned that their idea is to use what we call a persuasive electric vehicle or a PEV to explore the way of what we call co-governance. The idea of co-governance means that the technologists instead of setting a particular direction for technology to intervene in the society we're asking the society of social innovators to respond to the potential uses of the technology without asking any permissions of the original inventors because they relinquish the copyright and trademarks and patents. This is the idea of an innovation through open source of hardware and open data. And so we just literally put a hacker from there and put the self-driving tricycles there and invited people who come by to think of novel innovative uses of them. And because it's an open lab, right? And it's near the Jembo flower market. So we have the elderly people who just bought some orchid flowers or positive flowers and they just went by. And after they saw these shopping carts, they said, what are you doing with those shopping carts? And we're trying to explain these are tricycles. These are not shopping carts but because they have carried flowers on their arms. They were like, no, this is a shopping cart. I would like to use it as a shopping cart. Okay, sure. So what would you like to see from this shopping cart? Now that you've learned that it's self-driving and they're like, oh, I would like it to follow me around when I shop in the Jembo flower market. When I put into it and it's almost full, I don't have to go back and get another shopping cart. I would like the self-driving shopping cart to join it into a fleet. And once it forms a fleet, once I'm done buying the flowers, I would like to hop on one and I hope it can drive me home and so on. And so this is something that's totally out of the original scope of the MIT Media Lab invention. And they were forced to respond to the social need because if you're going to use it as a shopping cart, you have to communicate with everybody in a very crowded Jembo flower market so that they know where the shopping cart is headed and who are they interacting with. And so it has to have two eyes, not just one eye. It has to understand people's non-verbal gestures and so on. It has to emote with people. So this is an idea of co-domestication because people would like it to act as a shopping cart. What an intelligent shopping cart would do is then co-evolved with the society. And so this is what we call a norm first design. We first ask the society, what would you like to be considered the new normal after this technology entered into your work? And using the norms, the market respond, as I said, was changing this one eye into two eyes and so on. As they open market, everybody can introduce new complements and then that sets the perimeters of the algorithm of the digital technology so that they understand that in Taiwan, it's very important to first yield to the elderly people and then handicapped people and then pregnant women and then maybe children whereas in the MIT media lab, it's the other way around. They have to yield to the children and nobody really care about the elderly. And so basically every different social configuration has its different social norms. If we ignore the norms and start with the code that determine the law, that then colonize the social norm, that a lot of conflict would happen because it's a different culture expectations. But if we start with the cultural norms, that everybody learns something after a year or so of sandbox experiment in the market, that determines the code and that informs the law. The law only affirms, the policy only affirms what the society already learned as a good idea. So this kind of co-governance or co-creation is at the root of our new way of building effective partnerships which conveniently has a SDG numbering, it's called 1717, Encouraging Effective Partnerships. So that's the first part of my talk. I'm really happy that there's already a slide up because otherwise I really don't have more slides. So, an anonymous person, and may I remind you, you can like each other's questions. So the question was the most number of likes would follow to the top. Would I explain a little bit more about radical transparency for sure? So the idea of radical transparency is transparency at a root, meaning that in the Taiwan Freedom of Information Act, I'm sure worldwide in your country as well, the FOIA basically said anything that government makes is a decision must be open to the public. However, in the drafting stage, when we're still brainstorming about ideas, these are not opened by default unless the chair considers that it is good for the public benefit to publish it and the chair's superiors must also approve this whole process. And the idea of drafting stage transparency is by far not the norm. Three years ago when I entered the cabinet to work with the government, for the government, with the government. And but because I made it my negotiation with my premier, the Internet of Time, and I'm like, so all the meetings that I chair, I consider it for public benefit to publish the entire transcript. So I don't have to ask for approval again. I'm like, so anything that you designate me as a chair, I implicitly say to everybody at the very beginning of the meeting that we will make a transcript and after 10 working days of co-editing, we will publish whatever that's remained after the co-editing to the public. And so this is transparency at the root, but this is not a violent, like, live streaming because if you have a two-dimensional camera that does the live streaming, the entire power rests in the person holding that camera because they can use framing effect to just portray the part that they want to portray and they remain hidden from the camera. And so what we are doing essentially is a staged open. The transparent transcript is only sent to the public after each participant have reviewed it. And so during many meetings, there's some in-jokes or people's slides are anecdotal saying about their friend, but their friend did actually not authorize them to make that into the public record. All those could be removed from the transcript and then we publish the result. So basically, this is not saying that everything need to be live streamed. This is rather saying we're making transparency the default and it would take extra effort as an editing to make part of it not transparent compared to the old way of AVOIA, which is everything is non-transparent. It takes extra effort to make it transparent. And so flipping the default is really what a theoretical transparency is doing. And why is this important? Because for the career public service, this changes their payoff matrix. In the sense of mechanism design. So this is my other office hour. The office hour that every Wednesday is people traveling to Taipei, but there are also places that are not covered by the high speed rails, and which is a hot topic in the recent days. But in any case, as the high speed rails extend the scope, of course more and more people can visit me in Taipei with just under two hours of travel, but there's also parts in Taiwan, the rural parts, the mountainous parts, indigenous parts of shore islands, which is the topic of our next speaker. They cannot actually very easily travel to Taipei. And so because of that, I go to Taipei instead of asking them to come to Social Innovation Lab. We bring a portable social innovation lab to the local people. And so I just meet with them where they are. And they maybe gather through this, you know, non-for-profits, charities, social entrepreneurs, cooperatives locally. Maybe they already have a kind of monthly meeting of sorts, Taohou, or the elderly meeting of the indigenous nations and so on. And I just go there, maybe on Sunday, maybe on Monday, and do a ethnographic, well, just hanging out, hanging out for two days. And then I understand the local context. And then I just join their meetings and help facilitating their ideas. But when they're brainstorming about how to make the regional revitalization better, we actually use high-speed bandwidth because we have Brava and the human right. So we always have a ping-dong Taipei-like, stable link to the social innovation lab so that the 12 ministries in charge of this thing is meeting with the people and they're all section chief or higher level, usually. And so instead of the Ministry of Education saying, oh, this is a good idea, but I have to copy the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Interior saying, oh, I have to copy the Ministry of Economy and so on. Each copy, by the way, is what we, in information science, called LOSIC copy. The whole context becomes so condensed that all we have is like two pages of Word document or five pages of PowerPoint so that people in the central government often think that we've solved the problem structurally, but actually we just narrowly missed the original story and therefore the solution isn't quite working, but we will only be notified a quarter or a year later. But in this radically transparent way, people can not only follow through on the previous transcript, but also the Ministry of Education can just say, you know, instead of copying the Ministry of Health and Welfare, demo HW is just sitting next to them. So they will just start brainstorming in a very safe way because even if the local people are unhappy about their presentations or their innovations or their solutions, well, you can't punch anyone over the internet. So they remain in a safe distance so that they can start brainstorming with ease. And before, if they brainstorm something very innovative, it's very rare that a career public service gets their credit. Usually their Ministry gets their credit or the Premier gets their credit. However, if things go wrong, they get a blame because the Ministry can always say, the public public service did not deliver it well. And so you say kind of lose this game for the career public service and our new mechanism designed through radical transparency is to flip this around. As I said, if they deliver it to an innovative solution, people trust them and you have met them through the video link. Anytime we say meeting someone face-to-face builds 30% of trust, 10 million, 17. But if through high-speed video link, maybe 20% of trust. But it means that the government shows trust to the local people to send the agenda. The local people would then see that a career public service is actually very innovative. And so they build rapport between the two sides that they get a credit. And if they don't actually have a good idea or if their ideas ends up not working well, well, I'm the only one in that vicinity. I absorb all the risk. And so because I absorb the risk and they get a credit. And usually in the social innovation meetings, it's actually very easy for the public service who come up with innovative solutions. And if they need extra budget, extra regulatory, extra personnel support, we also have a structural way of ensuring this. And it's called the presidential hackathon. The radical transparency provides this regional map in Taiwan that everybody can see in SI.Taiwan, social innovation.Taiwan, so that people understand what are the current challenges that the Taiwan is facing, what are the people making the proposals, what are our regional touring meetings and their suggestions, and what are the different focus as evidenced by the voluntary local reports, and municipalities as well as their local entrepreneurs working on solving the social environmental issues. And all of this is indexed by the Sustainable Development Goals. And so this is a new digital lab platform for horizontal leadership across different organization types to solve the common issues and all of this is based on the idea of radical transparency. So I hope that's a long enough answer so that we can have more interesting questions. But feel free to raise our hand and give us some. So one person would like to know what have the Taiwan government done to handle this information problem. So actually at the root, having the opportunity of meeting me for 40 minutes at a time every week is actually a really good solution to this information. If you have a friend that you just go out to movies or play some basketball or whatever, every week, if you hear about that person and as a rumor or gossip or whatever, your first instinct would not be sharing it to other people, but rather checking with them the next time you meet. But if your friend only meets you every quarter and always speak in just very Baroque Latin language, nothing against Latin, but basically in an ancient language that very few people understand, then basically that makes it impossible for this kind of real-time interaction to happen. And once you lose this real-time interaction, then people would tend to understand that, oh, maybe there's more information sources that are much more timely, but they're also sensational and also divisive. And so people would much likely to believe in this information if there is no way for this kind of radically transparent real-time interactions. But fortunately in Taiwan, we have totally embraced this idea of digital accountability. So for example, in line today, which is Taiwan's leading face-to-face, sorry, end-to-end encrypted, it's also face-to-face though, it's a video conferencing platform as well. But in any case, if you look at the line today, there are actually two sections. The first one is the top headlines, right? But the second one is disinformation clarification. And so that means that our mimetic output, from the Taiwan Fact Checking Center, from rumors and truth, from the demonstration and so on, is interesting enough on itself as a content for the line today platform to spread to people. And so the basic idea here is that instead of taking anything down, because if you take down, then you get more disinformation about why it's censored by the government. And it actually sometimes just helps the propagation of disinformation. We have a really good idea of just coming out, coming up with a real-time clarification within 60 minutes. And a 60-minutes clarification is always funny. I've seen people laughing just looking at that one because it's obviously registered. The idea is that people can flag anything as disinformation on the line system.  And for the most trending rumors, the International Fact Checking Network, including its Taiwan Chapter, the Taiwan Fact Check Center, will just start investigating. And it's our job as ministries to come up with real-time clarifications within 60 minutes for the International Fact Checkers to work with. And they must be really funny. So there's a lot of mimetic engineering that goes into the manufacturing of this message. The idea, very simply put, is that the title need to be less than 20 characters. So it's very, like, you just see, perm your hair with a subject to a $1 million fine. That's not true. And then the body, the payload, must be less than 200 characters. So you see our premier, but a photo when he was young, saying, I may be bald now, but I would not punish people who look like my youth, Premier Su. And a fine print says, what actually transpired is a labeling requirement for hair products that only takes effect two years later. So that's the clarification. But the mimetic engineering enters because we said each message must fit a phone screen, but it has to have two images. So what's the second image? It's a Premier as he looks now, saying that, however, if you keep permming your hair many times within a week, you will not be fined, but you will damage your hair. And when serious, you will end up looking like me now. And so this is a good humor because he makes fun of himself, not of any other particular person. This makes sense, even if you haven't seen the disinformation before. This is genuinely funny for lying today to syndicate and other news outlets to syndicate. And we have numbers to prove that for people who have seen this card, they will not actually share the disinformation when the disinformation reaches them. So this is a good vaccination. This is a good inoculation against disinformation by making those clarification messages standalone and genuinely funny. People would then have a much better context of policy making instead of just relying on the taking down of messages which always creates new conflicts as well as new rooms for the disinformation to grow. So that's a very quick overview of our efforts against disinformation. So the other question is, do I think regular transparency can also be applied to other government agencies in terms of the additional measures? Yes. We have seen that in many what we call participatory meetings, open collaboration meetings, often in response to people's petitions, this kind of regular transparency is very, very useful because it enables people to have a lot more context. And this is even more useful if the government genuinely don't know what to do. So for example, just a quick example is two years ago, there's somebody in our national petition platform raising a petition. I haven't translated this one. So it's in his original words, our text filing experience is explosively hostile to users. And the payload is even more toxic, so I will save you from this toxicity. But a lot of people in the petition just started making personal attacks on the Minister of Finance calling for his resignation and saying that a vendor may be corrupt or whatever, and they would not listen to the very rational explanation of it's actually, you know, just for non-windows systems and it's because Oracle Corporation have discontinued the use of Java App Blend and so on. This is just a technical explanation that nobody really understand or indeed care. And people just say, you know, it's explosively hostile to use. And so the idea of radical transparency entered the picture because in each ministry we now have a team called participation offices and Daewak is just like media office the talk to journalists or the parliamentary office the talk to MPs. Their job is to talk with those emerging hashtags and just, but how do you talk to a hashtag? There is no clear leader. So you must use the same hashtag and just intervene very quickly saying, we would like to invite everybody who hashtag, you know, texting, text filing to texting or something like that to come to our text agency and co-design the text filing experience for the next year. And very magically after sending out this invitation of course, I just, you know, reply saying this is actually our participation office and not some anonymous person. But in any case, actually 80% of people start offering constructive criticism. They don't just make personal attacks anymore because they understand it's now also their job. Instead of just complaining they're now invited to the multi-signal workshop. And this radical transparency also involves publishing the whole background, contextual information so that we can gather people's ideas through Slido and Livestream so that this is the petitioner, by the way. He is a professional designer so he cares the most and so suffers the most. And so he basically just work with everybody who inputs through Slido. And so we just turned those Slido comments into the post-it notes and using user journey chronicled the entire text filing experience from the before and during and after text filing and we just took every single comment into account. There's many comments that are just repeated and so we just use one single post-it note. For example, this one says that the words are explosively plenty and it's a very common instinct for us working the public service to harmonize this message saying that it's maybe a little bit too verbose or something like that so that our boss don't, you know, have a courier or something like that, right? They basically, we don't want to make a very divisive or very strong message to the public sector. But on the other hand, if we don't post it as is, well, taking away the exclamation marks, but if we don't post this as is, the citizens wouldn't feel that they're being invited as co-creators. They would feel that they're still the population, right? And so for the citizen to take an initiative, the government must show plenty of trust to the citizens by basically using their words as agenda or reading it exactly as said by the Slido questions. So if somebody said that the text-find experience is sober-rock, it's confusing. We must write it sober-rock, it's confusing. And that is the main thing that we have to do to show the trust to the citizens. And then people after seeing that they're, where it's actually became the agenda, then which participate in our co-creation meetings, there's four of them, where the people who are the most toxic online are invited to work with the people that they flamed. Once they meet together, face to face, they're 30% of trust. So it's very difficult actually to keep attacking each other verbally. They have to sit down and start drawing new text-find experience. And so because of radical transparency, along each meeting, we can draw more people who have the passion to improve the text-find experience and draw them into it without losing the previous context. So it's also very important as a recruitment tool. And so last year, this new text-find experience gets piloted on Mac and Linux systems. And this year we roll it out to everybody and with approval rating of 98%. And this is not only because it's a good design, of course it's a good design, but also because thousands of people literally fail, they have a stake in it. They contributed at least one person note. And so through radical transparency, they also want to share it with other constituents that they're friends and family saying, oh, I would like to volunteer, you know, support you using this new text-find experience because I feel it's part of my work as well. And so we had a record number of volunteers who just worked with their friends and family on this text-find experience and all thanks to the idea of radical transparency as adopted by the Ministry of Finance for the Tax Division. And after that success story, and we printed as comic books and manga, in the National Palace Museum, the Ministry of Health and Well-Fail for the Portable Universal Health Care Card case, and many other cases for digital service are now also embracing the same idea of open government collaboration meetings and radical transparency to involve people as co-designers of the service. Two people would like to know what is the most significant achievement under my portfolio of digital ministry and the election is coming. So aside from the more reactive counter-disinformation thing, which is maybe 10% of my work time, we most actually, most of my work focus on the social innovation. And the social innovation, as I explained, involves this presidential promise called the Presidential Hackathon. And this is very significant because this is not directly output of my office. My work is just to design the mechanism so that people can all have their own innovations that work with the civil society and the academic to solve real social problems. And we're very happy to have our two champions here who have won twice, I think, in the past couple years. And so they were one of the five champion teams the first year, which is last year, and also this year, working on a different topic that you will listen here for. So I'll just explain the structure a little bit. Every year we invite everybody from the civil society, from the social sector, from academia, from the private sector, as well as the public sector to start proposing ideas that can solve a real tangible public service issue. And the ideas may just be a very small thing. For example, last year, one of the teams started with interviewing these repairs people of the Taiwan Water Corporation. Most of their work is just to listen to the pipes and find out they are not leaking, so it kind of boring work. But sometimes they will listen to pipes that are leaking and so their work become creative and they start solving the leaks. The Taiwan Water Corporation maintains one of the world's longest pipelines, many plastic pipelines as well. And so on average for the Jilong area, which is pretty close to here, it took two months between one newly coined for its detection by those touring repairs people. And so it's a very long time. And so also they were having troubles recruiting young people because this really is a kind of not very psychologically rewarding work. And so they just made a wish, no wishing well. And the wish was, what if we can make a chatbot on the line system, which was like, what's up, that every repairs people just wake up and their digital apprentice says, here are the three most likely leaking points for you to tour today. And each one maybe has 70% of precision accuracy. So they would not wander a day. Every day they were about to listen to one or two leaking points and do it in a very creative fashion in their job satisfaction. And so it's a good idea. They work with machine learning experts as well as people in academia and they co-created a pilot for the Jilong area and that really works. But they don't have the funding or the personnel to scale it out to the inside of Taiwan. And this is where the presidential hackathon enters play. Many hackathons are just for two days or three days. Presidential hackathon is three months. And during the three months, we coach each team to be tri-sectoral involving the data collaboratives from the government, non-government research and industry. And so they can together co-develop their reliable data for the water flow, water pressure analysis and so on to make such machine learning solutions. So there's incentive for all the sectors to participate. And when they win one of the five winning teams, the trophy is actually a projector. And if you turn on the projector, it projects the image of Dr. Tsai Ing-wen handing the trophy to you. And so this is very useful, especially for people in the public sector because if you're a director general, well, we have a director general here who is actually one of the champions. But if sometime you're a director general who is not part of the team, would sometimes say, oh, this is too expensive. I don't want to scale down and so on. You just turn on the projector and project the president. And the director general will say, oh, there's budget. There's budget before the end of the year. We still have some budget left.  There's a lot of communication to do. I have more interesting issue on my hands. Maybe wait until next year. You just turn on the projector and your minister will say, oh, I'll have a call with the minister of health and welfare next week. Because that trophy is the presidential promise that we will do whatever it takes, personnel, budget, regulation to make your idea that we're prototyped across sectors for three months into public policy within the next five months. And so that we deliver on that five out of five for the previous year. So we get some street credibility. And so for this year, there's a record number, more than 100 that entered into the presidential hackathon. And so many of them has a combination of assistive intelligence AI with collective intelligence CI. And all of them are required to choose one sustainability market target as the banner of their web so that people internationally can also understand what are the solutions here to plastic waste, to detect illicit financial flows, to measure for waterway pollutions and upload it to a distributed ledger otherwise there's no chain to keep. Everybody honest and so on. And so all this are also mechanism designed because they involve all three sectors that encourage people to share the data in a way that are more reliable and also internationally relevant. And so for example, the water saviors which because they save water, you see, the water saviors were then invited by the New Zealand government who didn't used to have the water shortage problem but because of climate change you're starting to do. And so instead of just buying off the shelf application, they co-create with the Taiwanese team for another three months after three months of presidential hackathon. And so we also deliver together this kind of solutions for the Wellington Water Company as well. And so the whole idea here is just to make a infrastructure on which the social innovations can thrive and overcome the political inertia, the silo effect that divides the different ministries and in the different branches of the government apart. So that's the main idea. It's one of the most significant achievement but it's not under my portfolio rather I support this using my mechanism design skills and so on. So there's a question saying, do you encounter opposition from other government agency for a project that I do in the digital ministry? So I introduced three working conditions. The two of them are location independence and radical transparency. So the third is voluntary association meaning that I don't give orders and I don't take orders. So this is a very Taoist way of working on public policy. I ask each ministry to send one person at most to my office. So my office is a assemblage of all the different values because each ministry represent a value. In Taiwan, we have 32 ministries each with a very different value. Otherwise they might as well merge. So these are the 32 vertical ministries each with a vertical ministry. But in the executive Yuan which is the administration proper, there are nine horizontal ministers that take care of the value, policing the values between all those different ministries. And so for digital ministry, what we're working on instead of working with any particular ministry, we're asking if each particular ministry would like to send somebody to experience the idea of working out loud of radical transparency of working with people. Now I'll be honest and say, we only had I think a dozen or so ministries voluntarily sending people. There's people like Foreign Service that after watching for a year finally decided to send somebody here and for public diplomacy. And so we have delegate from many ministries. But there are also a number of ministry who never send anyone. For example, the Ministry of Defense never send anyone. I don't know why. So obviously because radical transparency actually be their focus. Right, but most people facing ministries and agencies do send people. The Ministry of Culture, Communication, Education, Interior, Finance, Law, you name it, the usual suspects that people facing ones. And so the idea here is that there is no opposition because I'm literally not giving them orders. They just brainstorm and say, oh, we'll have a touring social innovation tour. We'll have a petition platform. We'll have a participation officer arrangement. Let's do a presidential hackathon. And they have to lobby other ministries to make it happen together because they don't have the resource to make it happen by them own. And my main work is just to convince the President and the Premier that these ideas from the career public service actually are worth a shot. And if it doesn't work, well, it's mean to blame. So I'm just absorbing the risk for all the delegates that's in my office. And so operating in this way in a purely horizontal way, there's no way that I can face opposition because I'm not really pushing anything, right? And I'm just making sure that people can work together to work common values despite their initially different positions across different ministries. And so I don't really have additional ministry. This is a kind of virtualized ministry. The additional ministry's office is just literally one person from each ministry working in purely horizontal way. One person said, introducing new technology to create a culture known can be tough on the conservative in traditional politics. How would you communicate it to them? So I call myself a quote unquote conservative and entirely not hierarchical in nature. This is very easy to explain. But what about a conservative part? The conservative part means that I would like to conserve each and every culture that I work with. So this is the idea of social innovation tours. Instead of asking people to come to Taipei to give a 40 minutes presentation, I visit their local habitat and learn from their culture, learn from their traditions, learn their languages. Our participation of this manga actually have indigenous Amis language version so that we communicate the idea of bringing technology to where people are instead of asking people to come to the sites of technology. And that again is our presidential champion's idea. Last year is just to instead of flying through helicopters, all the people who are sick from the offshore islands into the main Taiwan Island, how about we use broadband connection to build a platform that the large hospitals, doctors, the local nurses or clinic doctors, and the people who are in charge of operating the helicopter can work on the same virtualized platform to convince the people who are taking care of their parents or their friends and families in their local clinic that they have the same access to have quality healthcare service without having to send that somebody through helicopter to Taiwan unless absolutely necessary. And so this idea of bringing technology to where people are in need means that we conserve the local people's trust on their local clinics, on their local social support and so on instead of flying people out and using digital technology to create arbitrary divisions between people who are good using phones and people who are not good using their phones or basically saying it's good if you can answer either questions but by all means as questions through face-to-face conversation. So the last question I'll slide down we still have some 15 minutes for face-to-face questions is that could you say that efforts in the digitalization of Taiwan is causing the problem of populism? That's a great question. So when you look at the term populism what really this is saying is two things. The first is that instead of just a bunch of elites making decisions for everyone people would like everyone to make the decisions of everyone. This is the old idea of nothing about us without us. But it's also a dangerous thing if people call it a problem because it excludes some part of the population and calling them essentially non-people. And so that is the danger of populism is to create a pocket that you call your fellow people and exclude everybody else and call them non-people. And that actually is the danger of populism. So inclusive populism for some may be oxymoron but it's actually the kind of work we're working on. It is just to include more people to consider people that did not have a say in the politics. For example, people who are 15 or 16 years old they don't have the right to vote. When I started my first company I was 15 years old so I'm really insistent on this. I feel that I have a lot to contribute but there's no way for me even to vote for the district chief or for my vicinity. And so the entire idea of participatory budgeting of petition platforms and so on is that people who are 15 years old and who have a lot to say can have a way to enter into the policymaking process. So it's inclusive populism in a sense that it makes people who are otherwise excluded by representative democracy into a active member. So many of our most active petitions are in fact raised by people who are 16 years old. The two most active age group are 15 years old and 65 years old. I think that's because they have more time on their hands but also because they care more about the next generation kind of by definition because they haven't yet or has done already this kind of private sector thing and they're now working much more on the social sector. So around two years ago there's a 16 year old which we didn't know their real age at the time actually because the petition platform allows for pseudonyms and we only know them by the pseudonyms. I love elephants and elephants love me. So somebody with that pseudonyms started a petition saying we should ban all the plastic straws and indeed all the plastic single use utensils from the restaurants and cafes and we just know that it got 5,000 signatures in no time. So they're really good mobilizer and the environmental protection agency as well as our delegates to my office imagined that this must be a very senior leader in environmental activism to get such a good report in such a short time. But when we meet them face to face in collaboration meetings, she's just 16 years old and she said this is my civics class assignment. My teacher just said there's this new petition platform just find something that resonates with people but she's really good at digital marketing as social media. So in no time through hashtags they get 5,000 petitions and all work as public service is just to invite the people who actually produce those single use utensils. It may be chopsticks, it may be straws and so on and they explained many of them in their 60s now, 65 years ago now, saying I entered this business 30 years ago not because I want to make a quick profit but rather I was a social entrepreneur because at that time hepatitis B is a real problem inside of one. There's a lot of infections going on and people rely on those single use chopsticks and other utensils to prevent hepatitis B from spreading but hepatitis B is now fixed, just take a pill, it's gone and so because of that they're also looking at alternative materials that are carbon neutral that doesn't damage the water waste and to renew their commitment to the social entrepreneurship and then the young people started brainstorming with that earlier and they found maybe cafe wastes or the coffee wastes or the sugar cane wastes or literally reinforcing straws and things like that that are carbon neutral or even better and that can serve as new materials to make straws and or even redesign the cups so it doesn't require straw anymore except for our national identity drink which is ice bubble tea which kind of requires a straw but in any case they just work on the eco design for all the appliances and utensils and the great thing is that it builds intergenerational solidarity, the younger generation sets the direction, the older generation still produce the facilities and produce the straws, the utensils themselves just for that in a different direction set by the young people in a 16 year old petitioner who on the scholarship don't really have to go to strike on Fridays anymore so that is our Greta and we also had a really good conversation with many other 16 years old that choose to raise the social consciousness on those petition platforms and so my main point is that populism may not be a problem if it's led by the people who are going to be impacted the most that the young people namely and if the elderly can see them as very important agenda setters, reverse mentors essentially instead of people are looking to cause a trouble if we can design the mechanism that can reinforce each other's work then the populism may not be probably maybe a solution and so one additional question asked does the presidential hackathon engage any international exchange with other units or events is we do so if we go to the presidential hackathon which is PH Taiwan so this is kind of like a signature everything that we design and it's in Taiwan.gov.tw or not.gov.tw for national and there's eight international track so you're now cordially invited for the next year's presidential hackathon we will very much likely to repeat the same topic which is enabling sustainable infrastructure the idea is that Taiwan is one of the leading jurisdictions to publish the entire procurement reports not just the annual summaries but the actual contracts that was in the RFP process as well as that finished a bit and for all the WTO participating countries it's very rare for jurisdiction to publish all of it usually people just publish the absolute minimum as required by the WTO rules but because we do believe in radical transparency for all the research and academic purposes you can get an entire transcript in the entire data dump of the procurement process and then the question is that we ask with our international partners like the open contracting partnership what can you do when you have this kind of standardized format of open contracting information and so we ask everybody around the world to participate and last year we did not have this OCP connection but we already start building the international connections such as sending people to New Zealand and now we're saying people should come to Taiwan and solve our common issues on open contracting partnerships and so the OCP worked with many other organizations and so we invited a lot of people and the two teams that won very briefly are the main tech team from Malaysia working on cartology so basically it's a study of cartels by analyzing the open contracting they can find people who often bit together but very consistently one company wins and every other company is just kind of escorting then for the win and just this kind of cartel-like behaviors they use machine learning algorithm to detect potential cartels and potential collusions and Hodoraz is also very innovative they use the same open contracting data and causes the impact because they're one of the jurisdictions with the most impact from the climate change then the most use so they use the contract data to analyze the environmental impact even on the planning stage so when you have a bit to plan some construction they would then already project the environmental impact that's likely to cause and work with the environmental MPOs and the people around them to co-design an eco-friendly way because it can actually contribute to eco-sustainability if you start designing early enough but if you design without eco-sustainability in mind in the later phases you can only minimize the damage so the idea is to involve the eco-designers as early as possible when the government is still just thinking about post-potential builds and all of this is of course powered by the open contracting partnerships, technologies and know-hows and standards as well as Taiwan's mentors and Taiwan's people working to solve that problem not only locally for Taiwan but also internationally for our participating countries as well so if you have some ideas of how to use procurement data or indeed any other data to further the building of sustainable infrastructures feel free to start writing your proposal and you just might get invited to the presentation office and get a trophy from our president starting next year and so that's the answer to the last question on slide and I promise that I will leave a question or two for the face-to-face crowd so I will just ignore the slide now and then focus on all of you and whether you have something to share and unnecessary questions around presidential hackathon or any of those creative mechanisms that we've been doing, please raise your hand. But really no questions? We will have a session with Audrey after this so you can still think about your questions and ask them later but Audrey if you couldn't invite you to sit we still have a short program with you Okay, of course and look, this is not a surprise very much, can you join me on stage? So I'll just sit where? Here, okay, that's great Let's see this place, okay So again, thank you very much for the presentation I'm Nini Sadao I'm with the Frederick Norman Foundation I'm Jeremiah Tamas from the Liberal Party of the Philippines You shared a lot of information about your work and I'm sure our participants would like to know more about you as Audrey Dan and as part of Radical Transparency We will publish this online as well Of course, of course The video, I'm sure, yes So we will do fast talk so we will ask short questions and we would like you to answer them as quickly as short as possible as quickly as possible We can try with Jeremiah What's your favorite color? Blue Who's your favorite actor? Um... I don't think of any Did you rehearse it? My favorite color is transparent We'll ask the first set of questions So the first question is What's your favorite movie? My favorite movie is Arrival That talk about emojis What's your favorite book? My favorite book is Finnegan's Wake It's a very rarely read book Who's your favorite superhero? My favorite superhero is Everybody is everyday citizens Everybody who solves their problems on their own Especially on each All the citizens and innovators are my superheroes Ok, so we need you to answer the question Which do you like better? Green tea or milk tea? A mix Milk, green tea With pearls, with boba or without? All of them Humans and robots Humans and robots Humans and robots Who do you prefer talking to? Alexa or Siri? This is a bias Because I worked with Siri for six years Of course, I haven't yet talked to Alexa Maybe Siri will make an introduction So what do you use? Earphones or headphones? Both What song do you listen to most on Spotify? I don't really use Spotify I use Apple Music But on Apple Music I was just putting on repeat the song Glory to Hong Kong But then that was a kind of pirate version So they took it down So I have to loop it on YouTube instead So what's your favorite series on Netflix? If you do watch Netflix I do watch Netflix So I don't really have a favorite But I learned a lot from Black Mirror And Black Mirror, pre and after Netflix Provide a lot of kind of what not to do when doing make-up and design Okay, briefly, complete the sentence Liberalism is? Radical Innovation is? Liberating Taiwan is? Taiwan can help So where should I just return there? And maybe we switch to... We'll have some tokens for you So now... So now we'll be heading on to our second session Which will be facilitated by Sir Jason Gonzalez from The Philippines as well And he's the director general of the Liberal Party of the Philippines


Well, it's a tradition that started 12 years ago and for Bemidji State University showing the community that they're appreciated is important. Hady Clodder shows us how BSU says thank you. I'm just happy we live here and get to do this. Bemidji has really fun stuff. The support for Bemidji State University runs deep in this town. BSU's way of saying thank you is at the 12th annual community appreciation day. Without the community support, without a positive town-gown relationship, it would be a little bit difficult for our students and for our faculty and staff here. So it's really a wonderful opportunity for them to see not only what we have going on and for parents and children to connect with some of our student athletes and to understand what they might be able to participate in later in the year. About a thousand people showed up to enjoy free food and just mingle. We just love to support the whole Bemidji communities and all the eateries around or whatever you would call it. This year's event was bigger and more space was available for local businesses to set up shops. For fellow alum Brett Barr, having a relationship with the community is valuable. There's a reason why the event was held on the lakeside lawn. They can be amongst the buildings, communicate with some of the different programs that are out here, the academic programs, the student clubs and organizations to be able to experience campus a little bit. In the midst of the crowd was a sea of green and BSU supporters like Sue and Steve Engel weren't going to miss this day. Seeing all the players come back after their summer and they're excited for their seasons and nice to see them and then it's just nice to see people out here enjoying the campus. It feels pretty good. I mean I'm a freshman and I've never seen anything like this so it's kind of cool to be in this atmosphere. To have all these people come out and support not only athletics but BSU as a school and as a campus and it really means a lot and just kind of shows what this northern capital has to offer to its schools. It's nice to be appreciated. We love the Mid-State University. Role Bees! In Bemidji, Haiti-Quatter, Lakeland News. During the two-hour event the Bemidji Area Alumni Chapter served 1,000 hot dogs. If you've enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland Public Television.