The family behind Taiwan's beloved BB Hot Sauce — Sophia Chang, "A Little Bit Sweet" Film

At one point the hot sauce was that every. Train station restaurant. when we were filming in Taiwan, every single person knew what it was. Even when I tell Taiwanese people now what it is, and they're like, oh yeah, I know about it. It still shocks me every single time.

You know that feeling when you realize you never asked your grandparents the questions you really wanted to ask, and that there are whole chapters of your family's story that might just disappear. Well, that's the feeling that drove Sophia Chang to make her first documentary film. Today's episode is near and dear to my heart because Sophia is family. She is my cousin-in-law and she's a talented food stylist and photographer who's worked on food network shows, commercials and projects for brands like Pokemon, Starbucks, and the show Baker's Dozen on Hulu. But her most personal project to date is called A Little Bit Sweet. It's a documentary she's been working on about her family's famous hot sauce brand in Taiwan called BB Sauce. But the film is spelled so much more than hot sauce, and I think it'll resonate with a lot of Asian Americans as well as first and second generation immigrant families. If Sophia's story resonates with you, head to seed and spark and search up a little bit sweet. You can follow the campaign or donate and every little bit helps get this film in front of the world. All the links are in the show notes. Sophia, welcome to Farm to Future. All right, we are in the studio here with my cousin Sophia Chang. I'm so excited to have you on the pod. I think you're the first family member I'm having on Farm to Future, so this is a big day. Welcome. Welcome.

I'm so honored. Thank you, Jane.

For listeners, Sophia is a very talented food creative, she works as a food stylist, which is a real job and a very cool job. I'd love for you to just like, give us a little bit of background of, your career and what brought you to this film,

I mean, I'll say when it comes to career, I feel like I have had a very varied path. My very first job was a front end web, designer, and afterwards, I worked for an agency. I've done freelance for a larger portion of the decade. In this sort of gig economy, you're, just doing all sorts of different types of projects, whether that's food styling or photography or working on set for a TV show. It's, it really runs the gamut, but I think that's just part of what makes it so fun. Should we go into how I started this documentary?'cause that's a whole, story in itself.

Yeah. Well, we can jump right in. So your documentary is called A Little Bit Sweet, so I was reading on your campaign page that your ahma, your grandmother, maternal grandmother had a huge influence on you in terms of food and cooking. Over here, we've been spending a lot of time with, Ethan, my husband's parents, my in-laws. And I've been hearing stories about Emma as well and how they used to have Sunday dinners together and she would cook things like Al, which is rice cakes. And Ethan to this day loves rice cakes. Um, but I would love to hear your relationship to her and how she set some of the scene for this film.

Yeah, well, first off, my experience is going to be very different from Ethan's family because he lives in New Jersey and that was of course in the same state as Amah. I grew up in Los Angeles, so I really only got to see. The East coast family for winter breaks, growing up. Having Christmas dinner with everybody and seeing everyone for that short maybe two week period. But I think I really treasured that because I grew up as an only child and so I viewed my cousins as like, oh, they're kind of my siblings that I only get to see maybe these two weeks out of the year. And we'd always play and have a lot of fun. And I just remember, um, like she would always cook amazing things. And I'm kind of sad because I honestly don't remember a lot of the dishes. I think there's only a few that I truly remember. Like Taiwanese sticky rice. I remember that she would also have, um, like GaN mm-hmm. For the holidays, growing up, when I would go to New Jersey, I would often get sick from the plane for some reason. And so she would always do like, honey and lemon water for me. Yeah. I distinctly remember the last thing that she made. Cooking wise was always like the silky chicken with Dcon. She made like almost every single day, the last time that I was at their house. I think no matter what though, everything that she made, I don't remember. There's a single thing I didn't enjoy. And so that was such a huge part of my That's a

good sign.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. That was such a huge part of it. I remember I asked my mom and I asked the rest of the family like, oh, do you have any of Amma's recipes? You know, I'd love to try to recreate some of them. And everybody said no to me. That was devastating. I was like, how could not a single person have any of those recipes? I felt so. remorseful. Like, ugh, I hadn't written down anything. No one else had written down anything. I didn't talk to her more before she got dementia, and I didn't ask all these things that, that I, I guess I could have.

That resonates with me. My dad is probably the big cook in our family and he rarely writes stuff down. And when we ask him how, he makes something, he's just like, oh, you throw in a little bit of ginger, a little bit of soy sauce. There's not really measurements. Right. You kind of like go with the heart. But luckily, Ethan had like brought this up multiple times and as a wedding gift, my dad actually wrote down some of his recipes and made a little book for Ethan. So we are working through that. But it feels like this documentary in a way is you going back and unearthing maybe not so much the recipes, although, correct me if I'm wrong, but some of the stories behind your family and food.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. I mean, I think I viewed it as. A sort of proxy, like I wasn't able to do that with my own grandparents, but when I found out that I had two other grand uncles, I thought, you know what? They're at least of the same generation, so, right. Yeah. That's at least some kind of story that I could get.

So when did you discover that your family had a hot sauce company?

So, funny enough, it was in 2015. I had gone to Taiwan with my aunt and uncle, which are Ethan's parents and his younger brother Tristan. And so this is the first time that we had gone to Taiwan together, I believe ever at that time, I think I was 25. That's the last time I saw my in-law as well. She was in hospice at the time. It was a very meaningful trip in many ways because of that. And at some point during the trip, my aunt and uncle were like, oh, we're going to see your grand uncles. And I was like, who?

Who never heard of these

people? Oh, yeah. Never heard of these people. Don't remember seeing them. And they're like, yeah, they have some kind of hot sauce business. I was like, okay. Sure. So we went to the factory. We met both grand uncles I mean, at that point I still didn't really know much about it. I was like, okay, yeah, sure. They make some kind of hot sauce. There are these two grand uncles. They seem like family. I guess it was like pretty brief. I think we only met for maybe a couple hours at most. And then we just moved on with the rest of our trip. And later on when I was talking to my parents, and of course my uncle and aunt more about it, and they're like, yeah, it's actually pretty well known. At one point the hot sauce was that every. Train station restaurant. Wow. And so I was like, oh, that's interesting. Just getting little pieces of stories that are being passed down like bit by bit. I asked my mom like, oh, how come you've never mentioned this before? And she would say, oh, I just didn't think it was particularly. Relevant or interesting,

the things parents don't remember to mention. It's funny, I was googling BB hot Sauce and I can actually order it off of we, the Chinese grocery or Asian Grocery Delivery app. Here in Boston. It's like a common hot sauce brand,

I guess so, i'll say that when we were filming in Taiwan, people would always ask us. Oh, what are you filming? And we would say, oh, we are filming, the BB hot sauce. And every single person knew what it was. Even when I tell Taiwanese people now what it is, and they're like, oh yeah, I know about it. It still shocks me every single time.

Does BB stand for BB q or does it stand for anything?

Yeah, it stands for Beautiful, beautiful. Because the Chinese name is Meme la so Mei is like beautiful.

That's so cute. And very Taiwanese.

Yeah, absolutely.

So at what point did you say to yourself, I need to make a film about all this?

Yeah, so I had been working in media for a number of years before then. I've been working on shorts, TV shows, commercials, everything like that. But it was always for other people. I had really started to think about what do I wanna do for myself? One of my very first projects that I did for myself was like a. Three part series where I had some friends learn a recipe from one of their parents, and to me that was like, oh, well I'm not able to do this with ama, so I'll just have other people do it and record them and get their stories. Like what is the one recipe that. The parent wanted to pass down or that the child wanted to learn from their parent. And why is it significant? Because like you said, not a lot of people measure it out, but this is like the opportunity to write it down, talk about where it comes from and what it means to them. That was my first foray into doing a project of my own. And then afterwards I was still thinking about it. I was like, well, yeah, it is my own project, but it's not really. Fully my story either'cause I'm getting it from other people. So I was talking to my friend Alan, who's also the dp, the director of photography for the documentary, and I had mentioned the hot sauce and he was also Taiwanese, so he, he was like, oh, you should do it on this hot sauce because it's such a big thing. And for me, I'm still grasping that concept of this hot sauce being a big thing, but I thought it was, an interesting story so the end of 2019 was really when we started, formulating a plan to make it happen.

So we basically owe it to Alan.

Yeah. This

documentary.

Yes.

Was it 2019 when you actually took the trip to Taiwan to actually go and film this documentary.

No. So in 2019, we were starting to do pre-production, in 2020 we decided to do a crowdfunding campaign. For production. So like actual filming costs. At that time, we had already booked flights to go to Taiwan. In March of 2020. We raised over$10,000 and we were like, yes, we're ready to go. And then of course, COVID happened,

right? Oh.

So unfortunately we had to cancel all our. Because essentially at that time, Taiwan had shut down. They had enforced a mandatory quarantine for, at least two weeks. And honestly, I could not afford that. We did have to postpone. And so we didn't actually go to Taiwan and film until 2023

so this film is seven years in the making now.

Yeah.

Wow.

Well, I say on and off though it's not a consistent seven years, but I do hear from a lot of other documentary filmmakers that they tend to spend a lot of time working on a project like this.

Yeah. So tell us about the trip. What was your plan going in and how did the trip actually unfold?

We planned it so that the first week would be pre-production, like boots on the ground. A lot of people. In Taiwan weren't too certain about booking certain dates. They're like, oh, we'll just figure it out when you come here, kind of thing. Yeah, right, right. Very like casual. Yeah, very casual. And for me, as someone who's also producing the project, I was like, no, I need, the concrete dates, I need the times. We had less than two weeks to actually film. So our time there is extremely limited. It's not like I'm working with a huge budget. My friends volunteer their time and their equipment to make this happen. Everything was pretty packed. Yeah.

I would love to get like some teaser, moments. About the film and, the story. Looking back on the trip, what's one or two moments that really stuck out to you as like, oh, wow, like this is. A key shot or interview or something new that you learned?

I mean, I think even just having the opportunity to talk to my grand uncles was so special because, they are getting quite old. One of them prior to shooting had already. Gone through two strokes, even during COVID, I was super scared that they would pass before we'd even be able to do this documentary. So the fact that that we were there and that we could even talk to them was. Really meaningful to me.'cause at the very least I have something. I wasn't able to do that with my grandparents, but I could do it with these grand uncles.

Was it easy to get them to open up to you?

For one of my grand uncles, he was super excited to share and he had so much great energy. He loved being able to tell his side of the story, so I think that was really wonderful. I'm not sure if anyone had really asked him in that kind of context, and I wish we got this on camera, but there was one moment where he said in Mandarin, like, oh, when I was young I also did some of this video thing. Cute. Yeah. So I thought that was really fun. Another thing is that when we were in Taiwan, so much of the family. Came out to support and they're like, I really, really wanna treat you guys to a banquet. So we had. Three different parts of the family treat us to three different banquets doing our three week stay. Wow. Which is a, for royalty, essentially we felt very, very loved. They even say like, oh yeah, include the entire crew, your friends, so it's not just family. And that felt very welcoming and warm. And these are people I barely know And there was still so much like, oh yeah, just come over. We want to treat you to some good food. You wanna just talk, even through all the language barriers, I mean, I had my mom and my aunt to help with translating, but still, I think it's, it's just that universal form of showing love and care. And oftentimes through food,

Uh, that reminds me so much of our trips to China, where I similarly have relatives that some of whom I've only met once or twice before, but they always roll out the red carpet for us. And you know, part of it is like with blood relatives, maybe it's an Asian culture thing, like family comes first then a certain part is just like this deep seated warmth that you have for family. And so we got the royal treatment too. That sounds very familiar and very wonderful. Did these, scenes, the banquets, the relatives, did these scenes also make it into the documentary?

Yeah, I would say it. They, they are part of it. In general, this film really is about connecting with family, right? It's not just about the hot sauce, it's about trying to learn. Things that, at least for me, like I never even knew to ask.'cause I didn't know that they existed before.

Do you have an example of that?

I mean, the hot sauce company is the biggest example.

The company itself.

Yeah, the company itself is a big example. Even during the 2015 trip we met technically a grand aunt somewhere in the family tree. But she had talked about how my grandmother had raised her as a child and how much my grandmother meant to her as like a second mom. I didn't even know that happened before either. That she grew up with my mom and her siblings. And I was just like, where was this part of the story? And clearly my grandma meant so much to her, but I just had never heard about it.

Your mom and, your aunt and uncle were on the trip with you what was it like having them with you and. Learning all these new things about your family, were some of the things new to them as well, or were they like, oh yeah, like of course, this is in our family history

I think there's a lot that we all didn't know about the hot sauce company specifically. My parents moved to the US in, the late seventies. during that time, the late seventies too. 2015, there's a huge gap, right? Like even if they had visited Taiwan, they didn't live there. And so a lot of what happened at that time is pretty much unknown to them, I think a lot of it was a, huge learning experience for all of us in terms of what that history was, what actually happened. There are a couple different accounts of what happened and it's, I think

as goes with family history.

Yeah, and I think it's one of the challenges of oral history, right? If people don't necessarily write things down, if there aren't hard records of what happened, then your understanding of the history is pretty limited, right? You can only hear from. The people that are still living. There's not necessarily anyone else to verify which part is correct and which one is not.

I'm imagining your job on set is almost like a investigative journalist, right? Like you're trying to tease out, facts and storylines from different family members and try to piece together this story both in terms of like recording your own family history, but also now as a documentary filmmaker, like how do I tell this cohesive story to an audience?

Yeah, you're absolutely right. Especially as someone who also put themselves in the documentary, it was pretty challenging to play both roles it's a little hard to listen and also to think about. What else needs to be in the documentary at the same time?

The project is so personal too, I'm sure there's a lot of emotional stake there. yeah. I'm curious, since your background is so much around food and, media, how much of the film is about people and how much of it is about food? Even just like thinking visually about the shots.

I would almost say 50 50.

Wow.

Okay. Surprisingly, because I would say that we filmed primarily in Taiwan. Taiwan, and Taiwan is known. In Taiwan as like the food capital. It's also the former capital. It's known for a lot of shsu, which are like small snacks. So that's a huge component of what we highlighted. Even when you think about. What the hot sauce pairs well with. It's oftentimes a lot of little snacks, like the fats on the sticky rice, the vermicelli, even like daon cakes, things like that. Mm-hmm. Like those are all sort of snack type food, right?

Mm-hmm.

And so I think the sauce itself is very much a combination of. The local culture. I think about the title a little bit Sweet. A lot of people say that Ty on food specifically, has an additional sweetness compared to cuisine around the rest of the island. And from what I understand, a lot of that also has to do with China being a huge port city. They also had large sugar production in the area, and I believe. That all of that contributed to the added sweetness of the food.

Interesting. This is giving me new perspective on my mother-in-law's cooking, where she always likes to add a little bit of sweetener, like a brown sugar or honey to like the sauces she makes, and it just like chef's kiss it, it always just tastes so good. Would you say that's kind of like the secret sauce, so to speak of Bebe Sauce? Is it like, on the sweeter side compared to other sauces,

I would say it's pretty balanced. Like when I think of BB sauce, it is a fermented hot sauce. So it has that slight vinegars. Um, the vinegar is, can. Definitely increase the older it gets. But at least from talking to my grand uncles, a lot of the flavor profiles were based off the local palette. So it's not a super spicy knock your socks off kind of heat. I would say it's pretty balanced. It's sweetness does come from pineapple, which is. Regarded very highly in Taiwan. I think Taiwanese pineapple it's a big thing.

Yeah. Is it a Taiwan big exporter of pineapple?

Yeah, I think so. It's also known a lot for the pineapple cakes, although I will say a lot of. Pineapple cakes don't actually contain pineapple.

Right.

Which is an interesting thing.

How do you think about Taiwanese food and how has that view changed with making the film?

I've always loved Taiwanese food and cuisine, but knowing that my family has a deeper part in it, that they actually have a role in Taiwanese cuisine is, pretty special. Before, I'd be like, oh, yay, I'm going to get like popcorn chicken. I'm going to get stinky tofu and all these things la. But I don't know if I even really had, the BB hot sauce until much later on. At home we had a different brand because we didn't have bb hot sauce like available, but we did have another sweet chili sauce that we used that's kind of similar.

Oh, that's interesting.

Maybe I would

think your family has like a secret, um, supply chain of BB hot sauce.

Yeah, you would think so, but not at my parents' house. I mean, when I talked to Ethan and Tristan, I think they said that they would have it at. ONGs house, but I don't remember this.

So when was the first time you tasted it?

maybe it was during that 2015 trip.

Wow. Okay.

Yeah.

So you were like 25 ish.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, it was the first time you tried your family's hot sauce.

Right? And then even later on, like I went back into our family photo albums and I think there was a photo with. Me and one of the grand uncles when I was two years old. That was probably the last time I saw them. So it was over 20 year difference.

Wow.

Um, and I remember even when we went there, we had to explain who I was. To the family, like, oh, who's this person? How are they related? Oh yes. Okay.

That's so funny. Have you like tried any new recipes inspired by Bibb hot sauce?

So I only learned that the Phoebe hot sauce could be used as an ingredient recently, as of last week.

Oh,

wow.

Very recent.

Yeah, very recent. So that is something that I am looking forward to experimenting with. One of my friends had said that like, oh, you can use it as. The hot sauce mixture that's typically served with the oyster omelet. And that's something I hadn't heard about before, so I was like, oh, I need to look up some recipes right now to see how to utilize it in that way.

How much are you trying to like promote the BB. Brand with this film versus telling a family story?

Well, it's definitely not an ad, I'll say that,

right?

The hot sauce is a huge motivator for doing this film in the first place. But it almost takes a backseat to the overall family story and to the idea of wanting to connect with people. It's like a secondary story. Even though it was the initial push for doing it.

So the hot sauce itself was like, the impetus and then it became a vehicle for The family story.

Yeah.

Who would you say that this documentary is for?

I would say this documentary is. For Asian Americans or really any, first or second generation immigrants who kind of feel this disconnect between their home country, relatives that they may or may not know exists. People that. I've generally been separated, whether it's by time or distance, or both. I think anyone who lives in the Asian diaspora has this. Curiosity of what their ancestry is like. Whether or not they wanna connect to it. I, I'm sure everyone has their own opinions on it. And I think that also matters if you are the type of person to go back pretty frequently. Like for me, I don't go back to Taiwan every single year, then I don't. Even see or talk to my relatives every single year, we're not that close. So I think there are a lot more question marks in my head that I wanted answers to compared to other people who might be more connected. At least talking to the people that I had on my crew, they had very similar ideas in terms of not knowing. Too much detail about their family history. They A lot of it's still a mystery. Part of it might be like the language barrier too, right? Do you speak Mandarin? I speak Mandarin and Taiwanese on an extremely elementary level, so very conversational. Even talking about the film, I had to learn what documentary was which steel pin. A lot of more technical terms. I dunno, I can get by, I can survive. I think,

yeah, you can survive and you can make a Ian now.

Yeah. Yeah. I can survive and I can make a Ian, but if you ask me about any other camera terminology, then, I mean not, probably won't understand, Google Translate has, really improved a lot.

Yeah. And now you can ask at GBT too in real time. Fun question. What were your favorite things that you ate, on that trip?

I mean, honestly, 2023 was also the first time I had sizzling steak. Which was the main thing that people ate with BB sauce, um, wait, what is

sizzling steak?

It's essentially a steak on a teki pan. Typically, they would have it either at a dedicated restaurant or you could also see it at night markets a lot, and so a lot of times they will serve it. Like a steak on the te Yaki pan over noodles. They're kind of like spaghetti noodles, so it's a kind of a weird mixture where it is kind of like a westernized plate. And then they'll often serve like a fried egg on top and then gravy. And then you can add gravy, gravy, gravy. Yeah. And gravy. So it's a very strange like Japanese plus Western influence and then you have this BB hot sauce.

Yeah. I mean that, that kind of makes sense given that Taiwan itself has had so much influence from Japan and from the us and so it's like Taiwanese politics on a plate.

Oh, for sure. Taiwan's history is extremely diverse, I guess you could say. Mm-hmm. Um, even in the country's aesthetics, the buildings, you can see a lot of Portuguese or Japanese or, Dutch influence on the buildings there, especially in China, which is a much older city compared to Taipei. You definitely see that mix. Even in the food, like one example is your own man, like beef noodle soup. Uh, if you think about it, like beef, at my parents' generation was not popular because. It's expensive and you don't really have that many cows in Taiwan because it's such a small island. So a lot of time beef is imported and now it's more affordable. Right. And then you think about the. The pickles, the swanie that you would have on top of the mia and like those pickles are probably more influenced by haka culture. Some of the beef noodle soup might be a bit spicier, and a lot of Taiwanese people say they don't really have spice. So you know, that might be an influence from Chinese cuisine. If you think about it, it has all these different elements from different cultures in one dish, and I think that's a lot of how Taiwanese food is. It's a lot of borrowed elements from other cultures to create its own unique flavor.

And that kind of feels like how it feels to be a third culture kid growing up in North America. Yeah. You do have this mixing of both American culture, which itself is this melting pot of all different kinds of cultures. And, your background, which. Sounds like Taiwan itself is like its own, mixture of all these different, cultures and inspirations and flavors.

Yeah, absolutely. How has

Making this film changed your view of food?

All right. I didn't answer that question completely. Well, I'll say that Doing this documentary has allowed me to have a greater understanding of the food history and culture behind it. Previously, I think I would just eat things in Taiwan and I wouldn't necessarily know or understand where it came from. We had a really wonderful culinary expert who joined us on the trip and in the documentary to show us a few traditional foods around Ty. She told us more details about. The significance of certain dishes and why they were important in Taiwanese culture and history. Even though they're not necessarily dishes that you would have with hot sauce, it gives you a better understanding of why Taiwan and Taiwan are the way they are. So I think for me, just being able to. Know what those influences are, to be able to appreciate the food on a deeper level. To even know my own family history, where this hot sauce comes from and why it was developed, like I think some people just think of food as. Something to eat and that you have to nourish your body with. But I think it's also really important to think about where it comes from, whether it's influenced by politics, whether it's influenced by immigration, the accessibility to ingredients, everything we eat is influenced by the world that we live in, right? It's not just food that appears on a plate. You know, someone had to grow it, someone had to bring it over, maybe import it, you know, someone had to think of putting these flavors and ingredients together.

Yeah, that's so well said. Food is like our primary connection to the physical world, right? Like our environment around us, whether that's our natural environment or the logistics supply chain that like got this frozen fish, two year fridge, there's so many layers and I, love having a dish or you know, a hot sauce. As like the vehicle to tell all these stories. I can't wait for the film you are currently launching a crowdfunding campaign to get the film to the finish line. Do you wanna tell us about that?

Yeah, so the crowdfunding campaign is on seed and spark, and it's part of the A API Renaissance Rally, and this rally is an effort to highlight more Asian American and Asian Canadian filmmakers and their stories. So we need to reach our goal of$20,000 and at least 350 followers to be considered a finalist for this. Rally. So it's a bit of a competition. Making a film is quite expensive, so it helps to have more support in whichever way possible to get this film available so that more people can see it. I definitely want to inspire others to. Look further into their own family history to ask those questions that you might not even know to ask. I think it's a great story. Of course, I might be a little biased, but that is definitely a huge inspiration. Even my DP Allen, filming the documentary was also really inspirational for him in capturing stories from his grandmother before she passed. And so I already know that it's already making an impact and I wanna continue doing that in the future.

Oh, that's so cool. And it feels like it's coming full circle because Alan was the one that, inspired you to, embark on this project.

Yeah. Yeah.

For listeners, I will leave all the links in the show notes below. But if you wanna Google it, seed and Spark is the name of the platform and the film's name is a little bit sweet. And with that, um, thank you so much Sophia, for coming on the pod. I wish you the best, best of luck with this project. Can't wait to see it. Come to life.

Thank you so much, Jane. I love you and I appreciate you having me on.

Love you too.