The Making of an Ordinary Woman | Sakariba — Explaining Coffin Bread While Fighting Nausea

She has the client, she has the material, and she is describing coffin bread to a foreigner as the soup-and-bread course of a Western meal. She is also in the first weeks of a pregnancy she has not told anyone about, and the smell of it is turning her stomach on camera. Competence and nausea in the same shot, which is the register this whole series works in.

The Tainan City map lists three stalls by name for the scene: Rongsheng glutinous rice, A-cai sausage and cold cuts, Chihkan coffin bread. They are all still trading, within twenty metres of each other.

One correction worth knowing before you go. The official map prints the address as Fuqian Road Section 2, number 213. That points at an izakaya four hundred and sixty metres away that happens to share the name. The real Sakariba is the Kangle Market block where Zhongzheng Road, Youai Street and Hai'an Road meet.

The name is Japanese — sakariba, a lively place. The stalls were moved here in 1936 onto a filled-in fish pond behind the West Market, and the block still has the low, dim, alley-fed geometry of a pre-war market rather than a modern food court.

Chihkan serves on its own blue-rimmed plates, fired with the shop's founding year and its two dishes in red glaze, so the date is literally under your food. The coffin bread arrives as a deep-fried bread box with the lid laid back and thick pale chowder spilling down the crust, carrot and pea flecked through it.

Order one and eat it hot. It is enormous, it is very rich, and about halfway through you will understand her problem entirely.

Location data: Tainan City Market Administration Office and the official filming location map. Coordinates corrected to the Kangle Market site.