Fun Day, West of Taipei

Xiao Jiu Jiu, An An, my dad, Chris, and I started the day intending to visit a place with amazing woodworking crafts, but by lunchtime, we conceded defeat to the heavy Chinese New Year's traffic and turned off the jammed freeway.

The Fish Beating

This was one of Chris's most memorable Taiwan moments. We had stopped at a town near the Shimen Dam, so naturally all the restaurants were serving the specialty of the area -- fish. Specifically, "huo yu" or "live fish".

So, what happens when you go to one of these restaurants is that they first show you to a table (yeah, normal so far), and then immediately lead you to a pool in the back, which is filled with long gray fishes. You're supposed to pick the fish you'd like to eat from the pool. Here's ours:

They then weigh the fish and tell you how many dishes they can make with it. In our case, they assured us that we could get five different dishes with our fish.

Chris remembers thinking about how unhappy the fish looked as it was scooped out of the water and put on the scale. But the fish was about to get even more unhappy. When the weighing was done, they dumped the it unceremoniously onto the floor, and beat it on the head with a small wooden club as it thrashed around.

Well, at least we know it's fresh right?

The five fish dishes were delicious however. The first four dishes were just chopped up fish with various degrees of frying or different sauces. The last dish was the soup, with the fish's big head floating in the middle. All very yummy, though I was too stuffed to have much room for the soup. :-)

Little Person's World (Xiao Ren Guo)

Next, we went to an amusement park called Little Person's World -- Window on China. The park featured miniature versions of beautiful and notable buildings from all over the world.

Here's a picture of Xiao Jiu Jiu with some mini boats, since he's a retired naval officer:

Here's a picture of the miniature Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial. We were amused to note that:

• The name on the brown sign has not yet been changed to "Democracy Hall" yet.
• The door is open so you can see the statue inside.
• There's no green tarp over the area between the stairs, so you can see the symbol of the sun.

The displays were very ornate. Here's one of the impressive ones, the Forbidden Palace in China:

And here's the Fokung Pagoda! Impressive facts:

• It was completed in 1056 A.D. and is still standing today.
• It was built without a single metal nail.
• It is China's oldest existing wooden pagoda.
• It is the highest wooden structure in the world.

Someday, we'll have to see the real thing!

The park even had a section dedicated to western wonders, although for some reason, other visitors didn't seem very interested in these and the area was practically deserted. I guess in retrospect, a small Stonehenge is just...not that cool, right?

It was also the only structure in the park that was attributed to a wizard.


"Pottery Heaven" at Ying Ge

There's a street in Ying Ge that is filled with shop after shop selling lovely pottery. The first store we visited was run by a famous teapot artist, who made gorgeous tiny teapots with elegant swan necks or dragon heads as the handles and spouts. Each teapot was tiny -- about the size of your palm -- and all of the clay they use is special to that part of Taiwan. I absolutely fell in love with the swans and dragons, but felt a little silly buying a decorative teapot-for-one for $60-70 apiece. <sigh> Maybe next time.

They wouldn't let us take pictures for fear of plagiarism, but here's us in front of the shop: