Roasted Sweet Potatoes in Taiwan

The strange history of the sweet potato

"Taiwan is in the shape of a sweet potato. So called the Taiwanese ‘Son of sweet potatoes’. 

There is a popular saying in Mandarin : "番薯救人無人情".  

Translation: Sweet potatoes rescue people without favor.

Meaning: Sweet potatoes help a lot of people to survive, but after they get rich they forget about it, forget that cheap shit. It helped a lot of people in that era. Kind of like burning bridges. The meaning is not about the potato, but how people think of the potato. It can help you a lot but we ignore them.

Another saying in Mandarin : 番薯無驚入土爛 只求枝葉代代傳

Translation: Sweet potato is not afraid of rotting in the mud, it only asks that its leaves go on into the next generation.

Meaning: If you put a sweet potato in the mud will be rotten, right? But a sweet potato is not afraid of it. Although it’s rotten, its leaf will grow up and still have another sweet potato; the leaf is used to propagate it.