A small town, a blank canvas
Rocky was exploring Taiwan on a motorbike.
After eight years of working as a baseball coach in Hong Kong, he was looking for something.
He passed through Yuli, a town of 22,000 inhabitants resting among the rice paddies of Rift Valley. It’s the gateway to Yushan National Park, with softly steaming hotsprings nearby to relax after an arduous day hiking the hills. A year later, he was back.
“People say Yuli is boring. But I’m not a boring person,” says Rocky. “I was born to create and Yuli provided the blank piece of paper.”
Rocky loves coffee and a late night. He started his Yuli life by first creating a coffee cart, setting up his stall every evening along a pathway wandered and walked by locals. A makeshift cafe was made with fairy lights providing the shape and camp chairs to sit on so people could converse and chill.
“There’s not a lot for the young people here so they began to gather at my stall,” he says. “They would be practicing yoga, chatting, dancing.” And that’s where Rocky met Emily.
A curious, matchmaking nosy aunty said Emily, visiting from Taipei should check out the “place to be” in Yuli. And that place just happened to be Rocket’s coffee stall.
“I actually set up the stall so I could choose who would be my girlfriend,” Rocky jokes when telling me the story of how he and Emily first met. Emily, who was born in New Taipei City, was happy to move to Yuli. She prefers to live in a small town.
Together, they’re the team behind Catwalk Cafe, the vegetarian restaurant they opened almost three years ago in 2022.
It was a domino effect of opportunities. The house they’d been renting just down the road was damaged during one of the island nation’s many ground-wobbling earthquakes. Their landlord - like an all-knowing prophet - said to the pair, “I think you two should open a restaurant.”
But, Rocky explained, there was a bit of an issue. To start a restaurant in Taiwan, you need TWD$50,000. Together, they had just $10,000; 20 percent of that. It didn’t stop them though, Rocky said with a cheeky grin.
He pointed out a glittering silver frame standing like an art piece along one wall, “That’s from the recycling.”
“You see that hanging garland, we made that. We bought a roll of shoelace yarn from the wholesale market and plaited it ourselves.”
“And there,” he gestures to a bouquet of dried flowers floating from the cream ceiling like fluttering fairies, “There was a hole where I removed the fan. Emily dried the flowers herself.”
They laid the mock wooden flooring themselves, creating a mosaic pattern imitating subtle art. Their wooden countertop, they installed and left as is, unable to pay to cut it smaller. It stands as the centrepiece of the cafe, allowing patrons to peek over into the kitchen and chat with the couple. Emily is the chef. Rocky is the bartender.
They provide you with two separate menus when you take your seat at the counter. It’s handwritten, and they each designed one themselves. Emily is a vegetarian, this reflected in the menu. I had one of the best omelettes of my life. Light and fluffy, accompanied by sweet fresh vegetables.
She learned to cook by visiting restaurants and replicating her own versions of the delicious food she later enjoyed at home. The menus pair perfectly.
This cafe, is all about connection. On the back of the notepad where Rocky takes your order, you’re encouraged to write a letter to yourself, your friends or family back home. He writes a poem in Mandarin and tells me to find someone to translate it for me, to not use the internet.
Catwalk Cafe opens in the evenings but they save the weekends for each other so they can enjoy their friends and the community they’ve been building. They often have live music and movie nights in the cosy cafe.
On the 15th of each month, Emily and Rocky wake up in darkness and drive to the east. They set up some coffee machines and start brewing as the sun begins to rise, spreading out its light arms across the sky. At the beginning, no one showed up to their sunrise coffee. But, they kept showing up themselves, and now 15 people always show up. A monthly tradition.
“It was amazing to see the chemistry of something coming together,” Rocky said.
As we chat, a group shows up. One of them had baked the seasonal berry cheesecake I was devouring. Laughing as Rocky brings over drinks, they start to play Exploding Kittens, asking if I want to join. “They all have incredible stories and all do incredible things,” he said.
The couple and their friends throw what they call, a community party, twice a year. The friends from nearby Hualien and Taidong, travel to a chosen location and set up stalls, a little market for anyone to visit. “We are just a group of friends looking for opportunities to get together, like going out for a meal, but there’s a little more,” Rocky explained.
At last year’s market, there was a drama workshop, where attendees were invited to participate in warm-up games with the main focus on trust exercises. There’s been tree-climbing, in the moment portrait drawing, and wood carving.
You don’t need a fancy food truck or specially made cart to set up your stall. You could simply just bring some second-hand luggage and share your artwork from there. This couple is such a lovely example of how, just like that, you can create community in your town. You make something that represents you, and your people will come.