By Zhen-Kang — 18 Aug 2025

Bond, lots of James Bond

Vintage James Bond posters at a beef noodle shop in Tainan…

Tomorrow Never Dies (1997).

Taiwan’s unofficial national dish is beef noodle soup.

By all accounts, it’s delicious.

But as someone who doesn’t eat beef and rarely eats noodle soup, I don’t have much to say about beef noodle shops. Except for this one: Jiaxiang Beef Noodle Restaurant (家鄉牛肉麵館) in Yanshui District, at the northern edge of Tainan City…

Exterior of Jiaxiang Beef Noodle Restaurant on a quiet street corner in Tainan City. A bicycle and half a dozen motorbikes are parked outside. — Jiaxiang Beef Noodle Restaurant.

It’s unassuming on the outside. And unassuming on the inside too—apart from a collection of vintage James Bond posters along one of the walls:

Interior of Jiaxiang Beef Noodle Restaurant. There are three customers at different tables. An array of framed posters, at haphazard angles, is visible on the far wall. — James Bond posters on the far wall of Jiaxiang Beef Noodle Restaurant.

I counted 18 posters in total, representing all Eon-produced Bond films of the 20th century—except for You Only Live Twice from 1967.

(I wondered if its omission was intentional, given that casual racism and East Asian cultural insensitivity don’t hold up so well in 2025…)

I enjoyed looking at the posters and reading taglines from another age (including “Far up! Far out! Far more!” and “Look up! Look down! Look out!”). I was impressed by the collection, if not the copywriting.

The restaurant owner said he saved the posters from magazines over the decades. He’d also previously had a collection of NBA posters, but they’ve now found a new home.

I think he appreciated my interest.

Here are the posters: