Drink in Life’s Rich Cocktail

A NIGHT IN THE LIFE AT THE BAR

By Brian Curran

20 Years in

Taiwan.

Brian co-owns and operates Highway 11 Bar in Dulan, and recently began a venture making soda with Jo from Mosa Surf Zinc (a previous contributor to Hello Taitung).

Taitung is the kind of place where people are continually reinventing themselves, an environment where there is the freedom to create a new life altogether or just explore different ways of living. You can give form to whatever daydream you have and, so far anyway, there is still plenty of scope to see it come to fruition here.

When I first arrived here in 2001 I had no inkling that, 21 years later, my wife (Min Shu, co-owner of Highway 11) and I would build and own a bar right in the main building of the Dulan Sugar Factory. No idea that I’d be creating my own unique recipes for beer, mead and sodas. Booking bands to play, setting up craft markets and hosting all manner of events.

For me most days start with either a jog through the foothills above the highway, or laps at Flowing Lake right on the edge of the city. I should really pick up surfing, but 8 years of running a bar has definitely turned me away from craving any sort of social interaction before noon. We supply a number of local guesthouses, restaurants and market stalls with our products and so there are usually beer and mead deliveries to be made throughout the day. We personally deliver to the Dulan area, Taitung city or even as far as Zhiben. We also package cases and ship them out to various other cities in Taiwan.

Work on the bar itself seems to never really be finished: there’s always something to nail back down or apply a fresh coat of lacquer to; light bulbs to change or throw out altogether in favor of something more atmospheric; there are plants to water, grass huts to re-thatch, weeds to pull and paint to touch up. The overall aesthetic of our place seems to demand ever finer tweaks to all the little details.

We have live shows every Saturday night (and more frequently on holiday weekends), so finding and booking bands is another almost daily task. Thankfully Taitung has a collection of very talented local and transplanted musicians from which to draw. In years past (pre-COVID) we were fortunate enough to get quite a few acts from Okinawa and hopefully that will start up again soon. I also enjoy making posters for our monthly line-ups, finding and tweaking images that reflect the vibe of the bar. I spend a bit of time each day on the bar’s playlist. I’m constantly revising it, adding new songs and retiring others that have overstayed their welcome. The essential guiding principle of the Highway 11 playlist is that it must be eclectic and stay far away from “typical” or “generic” bar music. As much as I love those kinds of songs, I like the idea of walking into a place and hearing something I’ve either never heard before or have never heard in this context.

Another project that I’ve been spending time on lately is making sodas. I recently started up a “soda factory” with a friend of mine, Jo from Mosa Surf Zinc. We’ve renovated and re-purposed a kitchen just a stone’s throw from the bar. We’ve been meticulously and laboriously working on getting two new sodas on to the market (a ginger beer and a roselle soda). We’ve also been experimenting with making rum (not yet ready for sale).

All of the aforementioned work and play transitions into the evening when the bar opens (6pm, Wednesday through Sunday). Most nights don’t really kick off until later, around 8 or 9pm, but it’s nice to sit and chat with some regulars before the place fills up. One of the things we’re pleased with is that our bar attracts a diverse crowd. It’s not “just” tourists or “just” locals. There’s a nice mix and I like to think everyone feels welcome. I’ve noticed that during the last two COVID dominated years we’ve been getting quite a few folks from Taipei, Taichung and other big cities who have never even visited the area before. Weekends, Saturdays in particular, are when we get the bigger crowds. Shows start at 8pm and the place fills up by 9pm. It’s always a great feeling to see so many people enjoying themselves. There are plenty of familiar faces and a host of new ones. In many ways Saturday nights feel like our time to unwind after all the work we’ve put in keeping the place afloat all week.

Something I was conscious of when making the bar was creating lots of little “spaces”. I wanted to give people the freedom to interact with other guests as little or as much as they wanted. There are a couple of driftwood and bamboo huts where people can congregate and have their own private parties. There are also tables spaced far enough apart so that people are free to hang out with their “crew” while not being so far apart that one feels isolated. There’s a firepit that has its own distinct zone and gets a lot of use in the winter! Even inside there are a couple of discreet areas, each with its own feel. You can play darts, linger at the driftwood and metal bar or chill out in the sofa area.

I’m very aware, as I go through my work day and work night, that I’m living in a special place. The people I know here, artists, entrepreneurs, farmers and shopkeepers all share that awareness. My wife and I have been living here, on and off, for about 20 years. In some ways the area has changed (a few more shops, a few more houses in the hills, more people at the beaches), but fundamentally, it remains the same. One thing I think has been true the entire time we’ve lived here. We, the people who move here from wherever, have not changed the place. It has changed us. Our responsibility is to adapt to Taitung. Not the other way around. I sincerely hope that this holds true moving forward. I feel fairly confident that will be the case. Over the years I’ve watched a few people come in with big plans, big schemes to “make Taitung more like ... (fill in the blank)”. So far, those enterprises haven’t lasted very long. The place has a kind of built-in safety valve which has managed to weed out anyone wanting to make too many changes too quickly. Taitung is perfect the way it is. It’s up to you to explore it, enjoy it and find where you fit in and how you can contribute to keeping it excellent.