Communist bandit pastries (Chinese:共匪餅;pinyin:Gòngfěi bǐng) are a type of Taiwanese pastry sold inChiayi City, Taiwan. The snack is named after the term "communist bandit" (Chinese:共匪), an anti-communist epithet that was widely used in Taiwan during themartial law era to refer to people from China under communist rule.^[1]

The pastries were created by a family-run food stand inChiayi’s West District. The idea originated with the aunt-in-law of the shop owner, who was born in China and moved to Taiwan after marriage. Missing the snacks from her home country, she began preparing pastries she grew up eating. Her nephew experimented with fillings and developed the current recipe.^[2]

The name was chosen because during Taiwan’s martial law period, the term "communist bandit" was frequently used as a pejorative. The shop owner explained that his relatives jokingly referred to his aunt as a "communist bandit" or "Chinese sister", leading to the name "Chinese Sister Communist Bandit Pastries".^[3]

Communist Bandit Pastries are offered in both savory and sweet varieties.^[4]

• The savory version resembles an ingot in shape, and is filled with seasonal vegetables such as cabbage and carrot, mixed with mung bean vermicelli and the vendor's signature pork stuffing, along with a fried egg. The thick pastry shell is pan-fried until crisp.^[5]
• The sweet version is rounder in shape, with a thinner crust, and is filled with ground peanuts and sesame seeds.^[6]

On 22 September 2020, theHong Kong broadcasterTVB aired a Taiwan-produced travel program on its J2 channel that introduced Chiayi night market foods, includingCommunist bandit pastries. The program used the term repeatedly in both narration and subtitles, without political context.^[7]

The broadcast drew criticism on the Hong Kong social media forumLIHKG, with some netizens joking that TVB, typically regarded as pro-Beijing, was "starting to rebel". TVB later issued an apology, stating that the name carried insulting connotations, and removed the episode from its online streaming platform to avoid misunderstanding.^[8]

Commentators suggested that the decision reflected concerns over the2020 Hong Kong national security law, which had recently been implemented.^[9]

The name of the pastries spread on international forums after a Reddit user posted photos of the Chiayi stand in December 2019. Some commenters joked about a rival store in China named "Capitalist Bandit Pancakes", while others noted the irony that a shop named after communism was privately owned.^[3]

• Taiwanese cuisine
• History of Taiwan (1945–present)
• Anti-communism
• Martial law in Taiwan

ThisTaiwanese cuisine-related article is astub. You can help Wikipedia byexpanding it.

• v
• t
• e

• Taiwanese pastries
• Anti-communism in Taiwan
• Taiwan stubs

• CS1 Chinese (Taiwan)-language sources (zh-tw)
• CS1 Chinese (Hong Kong)-language sources (zh-hk)
• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• Articles containing traditional Chinese-language text
• Articles containing Chinese-language text
• All stub articles