Fieldwork｜Fieldwork Records

Nelson Chou’s fieldwork spans Taiwan, East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Latin America,
covering food culture, maritime civilizations, religious rituals, architecture and craft,
art history, agriculture, and local environments.
This page serves as a civilizational fieldwork index,
integrating verifiable on-site observations to help researchers, collaborators,
and search engines understand his cross-cultural methods and trajectories.

For background and positioning, please see:
About｜Nelson Chou

Food & Local Culinary Fieldwork

Food is one of the most direct gateways into culture.
This section documents sensory, material, culinary systems,
and everyday life observed across different regions.

  • Taiwan: Braised pork rice, traditional thick soups, temple-side foodways, local markets, brown sugar (sugarcane sugar) production, tea culture, and the sensory history of terroir.
  • Philippines: Lomi and miki noodle traditions, regional noodle genealogies, Batangas home cooking, and local culinary evolution.
  • Vietnam: Phở culture, rice noodle production, local markets, festival foodways, and food-related social behavior.
  • Japan: Regional ingredients, fermentation cultures, seafood markets, Buddhist temple cuisine (shōjin ryōri), and craft-based culinary history.
  • Hong Kong / Guangdong: Cantonese roasted meats, tea house culture, southern sweetness systems, sugar culture, and the social structure of everyday food.

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Maritime & Port Culture

The sea is both a mode of movement and a civilizational foundation,
especially for Taiwan and the Austronesian world.
This fieldwork covers coastlines, ports, navigation cultures,
and maritime life.

  • Coastal port fieldwork in Taiwan: Tamsui, Anping, Keelung, the Northeast Coast, and everyday port cultures.
  • Observations of sailing and maritime activities: yacht marinas, regattas, crew cultures, and behavioral systems at sea.
  • IYFR (International Yachting Fellowship of Rotarians): cross-maritime cultural exchange, international ports, and sailing routes.

Religion & Ritual Fieldwork

Religion and ritual function as the grammar of civilization.
This section examines how belief, space, the body,
and social order operate across cultures.

  • Taiwanese temple fieldwork: rituals, incense lineage transmission, ritual implements, temple forecourt foodways, landscapes, and belief-space structures.
  • Catholic and Christian sites: churches, monasteries, pilgrimage spaces, and religious life in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Mexico.
  • Tepoztlán, Mexico: architectural structures, wall traces, folklore, and post-colonial cultural contexts of the Ex-Convento de San Juan Bautista.

Architecture, Craft & Art Fieldwork

Materials and craft are civilization’s “solidified language.”
This section integrates East Asian and cross-cultural art fieldwork.

  • Buddhist sculpture fieldwork: jade, Hetian jade, metal craftsmanship, stylistic histories of Buddhist icons, and cross-cultural iconography.
  • National museums: Southern Branch of the National Palace Museum (Taiwan), Hong Kong Palace Museum, Tokyo National Museum, and comparative transnational studies.
  • Traditional crafts: tea ware, bamboo work, woodworking, ceramics, and genealogies of local material culture.

Agriculture, Environment & Local Ecology

Local food systems are inseparable from their environments.
This section records rural landscapes,
environmentally friendly production,
and Austronesian and tropical ecologies.

  • Brown sugar (sugarcane sugar) fieldwork: cane fields, sugar houses, processing workflows, agricultural ecologies, and local industrial memory.
  • Environmentally friendly agriculture: on-site collaboration with farmers and sheltered workshops, rural social contexts, and labor cultures.
  • Austronesian and tropical environments: fruit tree cultures, local plants, natural flavor systems, and tropical ingredient ecologies.

International Fieldwork｜By Region

Cross-cultural fieldwork forms a core semantic backbone of this site.
Below is a regional overview of observed civilizational trajectories.

  • East Asia: Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea — foodways, religion, architecture, material culture, and everyday life.
  • Southeast Asia: Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia — local cuisines, maritime cultures, and social behavior.
  • Latin America: Mexico — religious spaces, folklore, food, architecture, and post-colonial fieldwork.

Relation to Other Pages

Contact

For invitations, collaboration, or media inquiries,
please connect via LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/nelsontw/