Night Lanterns at Pingxi

The Chinese New Year celebrations officially end with the Lantern Festival, which occurs 15 days into the new year. It sounds really spectacular, we sadly wouldn't be staying long enough to see it, since this was our last full day in Taiwan.

The good news was that An An and Chian Chian took us to Pingxi, where impressive crowds of people were sending lanterns into the air daily for fun. It was a fantastic and poignant way to mark the end of our Chinese New Year celebrations.

At about noon, we took the MRT (again) to the end of the Muzha line, but this time, instead of riding gondolas, we hopped onto some buses. I've only gotten carsick once in my life, but this bus ride came close to being the second time. Pingxi is in a very mountainous area, and the roads were narrow, winding, and full of traffic. It was a good thing that we took a bus, because they were denying all car traffic (except residents of course) from driving up the mountain in an attempt to control the traffic.

Since it was still early to be lighting night lanterns, we wandered around the little village and took our time looking around. While looking for ways to burn time, we did the single Stupidest Scariest Thing we did all trip. My cousins were delighted that they finally found an activity to scare the shit out of Fearless Jenn. (Yes, apparently I have a reputation for being "fearless", not sure where that comes from...)

So there's an old suspended train track that runs through the village, and as we were strolling around around, we saw people occasionally walking on the tracks overhead with their little kids. Neat, my cousins thought. We should go walk on the train tracks too.

Me: But what if there's a train?
Them: Umm...there's probably no train.
Me: Probably?

Then I think, well those tracks do look pretty rusty and unmaintained. What kind of train could run on that? So we figure out how to get on the train tracks, and started walking along, being careful not to step on rotten wood planks and not to let our feet fall through the gaps.

At some point, we realize that we are really high up. Furthermore, there are people walking the opposite direction, so sometimes you have to stand on the very edge of these splintering planks so that two can people squeeze by each other. No guard rails or anything keeping us from falling. And...OF COURSE. We eventually heard a train clanging warning bells and roaring up behind us.

That was definitely a moment of despair. Apparently my cousins didn't know there was a train either. Somehow I managed to just keep putting one jello-y foot in front of another as quickly as I could and finally made it to someplace where we could jump off safely. (Plus in retrospect I think the train slowed down due to all the people on the tracks, thank goodness.)

Lesson that you could have learned from a cartoon: There's always a train.

Luckily, we found some longxutang (dragon whisker candy) to make me feel better. I ate like five packages.

Lighting the Night Lanterns

The night lanterns at Pingxi are like awesome little hot air balloons that you send into the air with your wishes for the new year. They're made out of colored paper, and people typically write a little message about their hopes for the year before lighting it and watching it fly out of sight. I saw some people who wrote long elaborate thoughtful paragraphs on all four faces of the lantern. I wasn't feeling quite so poetic, but I definitely did have a wish for the year!

There's a circular bamboo ring at the bottom of each lantern to help keep its shape, and there are wires crossing the center of the ring so that you can attach kerosene-soaked stacks of parchment for fuel.

It's a pretty amazing sight to see everyone releasing these lanterns into the air all at the same time, especially since they're representing everyone's hopes and dreams. Here's a video I found (lots more on YouTube):


The best part is how high they fly, because they become tinier and tinier in the sky, until they literally disappear from sight. We never saw one coming back down. (Well except for the ones that went down Hindenburg-style shortly after takeoff. Not sure what to make of the symbolism for those people's hopes and dreams.) My cousins say that eventually, when the fuel runs out, the lantern itself burns up, leaving only the metal wires to fall back to the ground. I was somewhat concerned about the environmental implications of this, but they seemed to think that they would land "in the forest" and not bother anyone. Hrrrm.

But ultimately, what a great way to spend our last evening!

Tea Time in Maokong

Chris and I both enjoy drinking tea, especially since Google has conditioned us to expect "tea time" every afternoon, where multiple flavors of tea and small pastries are served to us at our cubes, off cute little carts. (Sooo nice of them, I love tea time.)

Of course, it's not like we were starved for tea at this point, since tea is served with every meal in Taiwan, but we thought it would be fun to visit a "real" Asian tea house. I was afraid that we would have to venture too far outside of Taipei to find such a place, but it turned out that the nearby suburb of Maokong was well known both for growing tea and for having lots and lots of nice tea houses. Even more compelling was the way to get to Maokong; we definitely wanted to ride in the cool new Maokong Gondolas, which just opened to the public recently.

So Chris and I took the MRT down to the end of the brown (Muzha) line, where we caught a ride on the Maokong Gondolas for $50 TPE, which is like $1.50 US. This seems shockingly cheap for a 25-minute gondola ride over some beautiful mountains with gorgeous views of Taipei City below. I mean, consider what $1.50 buys you on Caltrain. (Answer: Nothing. The cheapest fare is $1.75.)

When we arrived at Maokong, we were somewhat overwhelmed by the number of busy teahouses, street vendors, tour buses, and restaurants immediately outside of the gondola station. So we started walking along the road to see what else was around. Here's Chris with what presumably are some tea bushes on a hillside:

We encountered many hiking trail entrances along the way, which would have been fun to try if we'd had more time. We also saw a temple and lots more tea houses, some of which had funny signs. I think these (ahem) well-meaning people had the "use 'well' instead of 'good'" rule drilled into them too hard:

We finally stopped at a quiet place called Shan Shui Ke (Mountain Water Guest?) where they recommended that we try the Oolong tea, a favorite in Taiwan. They also gifted us with a complimentary bag of tangy/sweet red pickled plums that went very nicely with the tea. We sat outside so we could get a good view of the mountains (though the fog obscured most of Taipei).

You'll note that this looks like a very complicated setup, but here's how it works:

1. First, the waitress brought out the hot pot (the black one in the picture) to get the water boiling.
   
2. Once the water started boiling, the waitress brought out the rest of the kit. She put the tea pot and tea cups into a wide bowl, and poured the steaming water over everything, to demonstrate that it was clean.
3. She then opened our pink cannister of Oolong tea (which we bought earlier at the counter) and scooped enough to fill a quarter of the small teapot-for-two.
4. She poured the hot water into the teapot and then, to our surprise, immediately poured out all the water from the teapot into the metal tray. Apparently the purpose of this is to "wash" the tea leaves, in case they have any residual pesticides or chemicals.
5. She then filled the teapot again. We were told to let it steep for 40 seconds. While it was steeping, she also poured hot water OVER the little teapot (which was still sitting in the bowl), and filled the bowl with hot water in order to keep the teapot (and its contents) warm.
6. At 40 seconds, we expected to finally have some tea poured into our cute tiny cups! But wait. First she poured all of the tea from the teapot into a small ceramic pitcher. She explained that this would prevent the extra tea from getting over-steeped while we drank the first cups. Smart! Plus, we could start steeping the next batch while we were drinking the current one.
   
7. At last, she pours us each some tea from the pitcher. Oolong tea has a very light and refreshing taste, and we were certainly thankful that it was so nice and warm!

Definitely a fun experience. But on the other hand, tea bags and a hot water dispenser are pretty clever too. :-)

Visiting a Starbucks Copycat

Having returned to Taipei, we started the day by grabbing a bite to eat at Dante Coffee Shop. Western-style coffee shops are abundant and in Taipei, but unlike in America, they're not all run by Starbucks. There were a surprising number of strong competing chains, one of which was Dante. My cousins explained that years ago, when Starbucks first entered the Taiwan market, they were the lone dominant coffee shop. But soon, local businessmen copied their successful business model and started offering more local tastes (for instance, bubble tea) at lower prices. (And I do mean "copy" since lots of these competing chains use some form of Starbucks-esque green circle or green lettering on their signs.) Today, it seems to be a point of national pride that Taiwan's local businesses have won back the lion's share of the market.

Not being a coffee drinker, I couldn't evaluate the quality of coffee at Dante, but we did immediately see the shop's appeal. Chris ordered a hot "quesadilla" of sorts, which was filled with delicious finely minced chicken, onions, peppers, cheese, and spices -- all very delicately put together. (As I write this, Chris is saying "I really want another one.") I ordered a curry chicken calzone-thing, which was also great. The bread was soft and fluffy and the filling warm and spicy. Plus we ordered two pots of tea. The best part: all of this cost just $6 (US).


Returning to Eggwater (Danshui)

Danshui is a port city to the north of Taipei. It's apparently a popular place for young people to visit, because of all the little traditional shops and carnival-style arcade games along the street. Couples also like it because it's a lovely place to watch the sunset. We actually visited on Valentine's Day, but there were no couples to be seen, probably due to the cold foggy weather.

My family calls the place "Eggwater" in English because that's how I translated "Danshui" when I was little. I actually got the "water" part right, but "dan" in this context means something like "light" or "dilute". This is where the river meets the ocean, so the water is "lighter" in the sense that it's less salty. Here, I bought a nifty box of wooden chopsticks, and we also tried out some interesting foods.

• Agei - A big fried tofu block served in a bowl. It was stuffed with rice noodles (iirc). Apparently one of my cousins got hooked on this stuff when she was in college.
• Fish ball soup.

There were also some "iron eggs" being sold on the street side, but we weren't brave enough to try them. They looked like small bird eggs of some sort, but Da Ayi explained that they're normal chicken eggs that have somehow been dehydrated to the point where there really tiny and hard. In retrospect, it might have been fun to eat one.

The one food I really wanted, however, was "longxutang" or "dragon whisker candy". It's a candy that you can usually watch them make on the spot, out of a brick of taffy-like sugar. The maker will stretch the brick into a long skinny rope, then fold it over and stretch again. They keep folding and stretching until the threads are so fine and wispy that they do seem like a fine dragon beard (if dragons do indeed have beards). Then they'll cut off little chunks and fold in some sesame powder in the middle, so the candy looks like fluffy white silk worm cocoons (yum). Longxutang are one of my favorite candies in Taiwan, so it was a bummer that the stand was closed.

Later in the evening, Gu Gu treated my entire mom's side of the family to dinner at a fantastic vegetarian restaurant in TianMu.

Hualien and the Taroko Gorge

Taiwan is sometimes been called Formosa, which means "beautiful island" in Portuguese. I'd been to Taiwan a half dozen times before this trip, and I must admit that I never thought it was beautiful. Full of fun sights, shops and food? Definitely. But "beautiful" was a word that I reserved for places like Yosemite or the Grand Canyon, not a busy and often chaotic city.

Of course, I had never been to Hualien or the Taroko Gorge before. Unfortunately, my crummy pictures won't do it justice, because it's a gorge, and you have to be standing in it to get the full experience. But here's an example of what you'd see looking up versus looking down (imagine that the following two pictures are a slightly-mismatched vertical panorama):

Here's another attempt to show the height and narrowness of the gorge (I think this is at the Tunnel of Nine Turns):

To explain the geography a little bit, Hualien is located on the mountainous east coast of Taiwan, roughly a hundred or so miles south of Taipei. (Side note: The proper spelling in pinyin should be "Hualian" with an "a" but a quick search on Google reveals that there are 941,000 documents for [Hualien] versus 260,000 for [Hualian] so I'll go with the majority spelling.) There's a freeway that runs down the east coast of Taiwan, and it's very similar to California's Pacific Coast Highway in that it's very close to the coast and if there's been heavy rain, you should be pretty careful because the roads can be narrow and twisty. We took the safer route -- a three-hour train ride at 7 a.m. from the Songshan Train Station.

When I wrote earlier about planning the trip to Hualien, I described how we were terrified that we would end up destitute on the streets, but it all turned out very smoothly. We stayed at the Grand Taroko Formosa, which is the only hotel that's actually inside of Taroko National Park.

Other hotels were all about an hour's drive outside of the park, so we were in a pretty fantastic location. For the hotel itself, we were expecting a bit of a let-down, given the modest price and the fact that we'd been spoiled silly by the Grand Hyatt...but it turned out to be great. Very clean, English-friendly and full of good restaurants and little shops. The recreation area was fun too -- swimming pools, tennis courts, ping pong tables, and an extensive arcade complete with mini-bowling and whack-a-pup (yes, we spent one evening smashing puppy-heads with a mallet). The food was a bit less spectacular that what my relatives had been treating us to in Taipei, but perhaps that's not too surprising.

When we arrived at Hualien Train Station, a nice man from the hotel picked us up in a van and took us to the hotel. We had about an hour to settle in, and then we set off on our tour (also provided by the hotel for a small charge). The "hiking" was mostly on wide paved walkways that would probably mortify most hikers here, but the scenery was amazing.

The water was very clear and clean. Apparently the gorgeous turquoise color comes from the calcium carbonate in the marble that forms the gorge. Here's a picture from the Shakadang Trail:

The roads and trails along the gorge were also an amazing feat of engineering, as they were carved from a sheer cliff face by hand by Chiang Kai-Shek's army. At the hotel there were black-and-white pictures of guys standing precariously on wooden scaffolding poles jammed into the cliff-side, chipping away with their pickaxes. Hundreds of men died during the construction of the Taroko Highway, and the Eternal Spring Shrine was built to honor their memory.

The tour also took us to the beach.

This allowed me to back up enough to get a good picture of how tall and enormously steep mountains were. (That's Chris in blue, standing under the little roof, and I'm taking the picture with my back to the ocean, while trying not to let my shoes get wet.)

The last interesting observation about the tour was less about the scenery and more about our fellow tour-takers. There were six couples total on our tour (including ourselves), and three of these couples featured a Chinese chick with a white guy. None the other way around. I guess we really are a trend.

Finally, before we left for Taipei, I got calls from my dad insisting that we must remember to buy lots of HualienShu, which is a special treat from the area. They're like round, fat little cookies (maybe about the size of a plum in diameter, but flatter) where the inside is made from either mashed sweet potato or mashed taro, and the outside is sort of like the outsides of a Fig Newton. I thought they were pretty tasty, but perhaps six bags of them was overkill. :-)

We'd definitely recommend the Taroko Gorge to anyone who visits Taiwan, especially if you're looking for someplace to escape from the city. It was one of the best highlights of our trip!

Shopping at Ximending

Ximending is a trendy area in Taipei where lots of young people go to hang out and shop. My cousin Shuen Shuen took us around. It probably doesn't surprise you at this point that the main thing we did was eat tons and tons of food.

• Oamisua (oyster noodle soup) for lunch. We accidentally dumped too much spicy sauce into our soup and I was crying as I ate it because it was so spicy. Apparently the norm is to eat a bowl of this stuff standing up on the sidewalk, which was difficult with my bad arm. But it was ohhh so yummy and warm on a cold rainy day.
• Black herbal goo/jelly in warm milk tea. I think I liked this stuff even better than bubble tea! Too bad I can't remember what it was actually called.
• Green tea flavored muaji (mochi).
• Fried chicken nuggets.
• Mister Donut, the Japanese answer to awful Dunkin Donuts. Both these chains are popular in Taiwan, but most people seemed to prefer Mister Donut, because the pastries were much more pretty and delicate-tasting. I associate Dunkin Donuts with being stale, crusty, and having messy glaze globbed on unevenly. But maybe that's unfair of me, because I only ever went to the Dunkin Donuts underground at the Harvard T stop, where everything smelled like the T.

Longshan Temple

While we were in the area, we visited the famous Longshan Temple, where there were huge lines of people praying for a great new year.

Here's us with a rat statue, for the year of the rat:

7-Eleven Doesn't Have Drugs

Chris woke up the next day with a nasty cold, so my first objective of the day was to find some cold medicine for him. No problem, I thought. There are 7-Elevens on practically every block in the city. I walked to the one across the street from the Hyatt, fully expecting that household brands like Tylenol and Advil would be readily available. If not, there were two other convenience stores next to the 7-Eleven (funny how they cluster like that), and surely one of them would have something recognizable, right?

Wrong. Can has none.

Turns out that convenience stores in Taiwan do not carry any medicine. My cousin An An later explained this to us. The explanation went something like this:

Typically, educated people here don't buy themselves random medicines from stores. Some people still do it, but they are mostly uneducated countryside hicks who don't know better. I mean, what if you choose the wrong medicine? We think it's much better to see a doctor to get medicine. But in America, your health care is too expensive, so I guess I understand why you have to do it.

Ouch. So us high and mighty Americans are living like Taiwan's poor and uneducated because our health care system is so inferior.

It's not so bad, I said, trying to defend our system. Most of the time, you know when you have a minor head cold, so why waste the time and money to see a doctor? Oh that's true, my cousin replied, trying to agree with me. But after a few seconds, he added, it's not like it takes much time or money to see a doctor here. You can just walk into any doctor's office to be checked (no appointment necessary) and it's practically free. They only pay $5-10 US dollars per paycheck into the health care system too.

On the other hand, in separate conversation with my cousin, Shuen Shuen, I found that people in Taiwan don't necessarily trust their doctors to do more advanced procedures. Shuen Shuen actually has the same chronic arm-dislocation problem that I had before my Bankart repair. (Hm, this may be evidence that my family has genetically weak rotator cuffs.) She asked me about the surgery, and concluded that it sounded good, but that she was afraid the doctors and hospitals in Taiwan would mess it up.

Anyways, we eventually went to a special drugstore and found a box of pills for Chris. We couldn't read anything on the box, except for one word in the ingredients list: "acetaminophen". Thank goodness for medical words not being translatable into Chinese! I also found some ibuprofen for my shoulder, although those were sold as individual pills and were quite expensive.

Burned Cheese, Italian Food in Taipei

Since Chris was sick and craving some western food, we stopped by an "Italian" restaurant for lunch, called Burned Cheese.

We ordered spaghetti with beef and tomato sauce, a dish where we thought we knew exactly what we would get.

Wrong for the second time of the day.

It was indeed spaghetti with beef and tomato sauce, as marketed, but with a distinctly Chinese taste. Or maybe this is how it's actually served in Italy and we Americans are eating the wrong stuff. Anyways the beef wasn't ground beef. Instead, it was chunks of tender beef like you might get in a beef stew. And the tomato sauce wasn't thick and full of spices and tomato paste. Instead it was thin and watery and full of diced tomatoes. Of course, it was still very good -- we were just surprised that even spaghetti with meat sauce in Taiwan was different.

For dessert, we ordered the "Burned Cheese" on the menu, which turned out to be like cheesecake, but less sweet:


Big Dinner at Fang's Restaurant

Every time I have visit Taiwan, my grandfather treats us to dinner at Fang's Restaurant.

Lots and lots of tasty dumplings here! The main difference on this visit was that Chris and I got to sit at the grownups table. I guess we count as grownup now that we're married. :-)

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:

Lilies on Yangmingshan

The weather had been cold and dreary every single day, so when it finally stopped raining, we decided to go see Yangmingshan (or Yangming Mountain). Xiao Jiu Jiu ("little uncle", the younger of my mom's two younger brothers) drove us to the top of the mountain, where there is supposed to be a beautiful vista.

But there were a couple things I hadn't planned for:

• Since we were visiting a national park, I assumed we would be going hiking. And I definitely didn't want to hike in jeans, so I wore shorts.
• Just because it has stopped raining or become less cold at sea level doesn't mean the same conditions hold true at the top of the mountain.

When we arrived at the top of the mountain, we found that we were the ONLY car in a vast parking lot. When we got out of the car, we were blasted with bitterly cold wind and rain. So we made a mad dash around the vista area, briefly beheld the beautiful fog, and then made a frenzied retreat back to the car.

There was only one other car we saw at the top of the mountain, and it was an empty van. I assumed it was just a regularly scheduled tour van for visitors, but my uncle explained that it also makes special runs at night, to make sure that the spirits have a way to get down the mountain. The story definitely reminded me of the cat-bus in My Neighbor Totoro (minus the cat part).

Our next stop was a valley full of lovely calla lilies.

Apparently, they're a major part of the floral industry in Taiwan. I would have loved to buy some, but I felt guilty for taking such pretty flowers when we would just leave them to wilt and die slow, lonely deaths in a stuffy hotel room.

Next up, time for more food! There were vendors selling various fruits and vegetables that were grown in the nearby gardens. My uncles ignored them and led us up a hill instead. Along the path, we saw rows and rows of tiered vegetable gardens:

Finally, near the top of the hill, we saw a disreputable-looking little shack.

But disreputable-looking places, we learned, often have the greatest food. Maybe it's because your expectations are so low when you see the place, or maybe we were just cold and wet and craving something warm. Whatever the reason, this was probably my favorite meal of the trip.

All of the vegetables we ate were grown in the gardens we had just walked past. We had:

• Sweet yam and ginger soup.
• Some exotic tempura mushrooms (shaped like shiitakes, but with a milder taste).
• A vegetable with bright green, thick, slippery leaves in a light sauce.
• Some more garlic-wok'd greens.
  
• Spicy cabbage.

We also had some more drunken chicken, but the soups and vegetables were the stars of the show.

Night in the City

Later in the evening (after we got back to Tianmu and changed into some dryer clothes), my cousins Shuen Shuen and Chian Chian took us to a place like Dave & Buster's, but pleasantly devoid of gangs and other scary people. Or like Chuck E. Cheese's, but pleasantly devoid of screaming brats and animatronic mouse bands. There was a batting cage where Chris pounded some 80 kph pitches, and acquitted himself with reasonable dignity on the 110 kph pitches. There were also pitching cages where you could see how fast you could pitch and how well you could hit certain spots.

It was interesting to see that all the posters and figurines in the baseball area were of Chien-Ming Wang, which I guess makes sense because he's the lone MLB player from Taiwan (that I know of). My cousins explained, "actually we used to hate the Yankees like everyone else, but we've gotta root for Wang Chien-Ming!" (They insisted on calling him "Wang Chien-Ming" which was very confusing to me at first.)

We also played darts, air hockey, and mini-bowling at this place. Fun times:

Now, for the last adventure of the day -- more food! Shuen Shuen took us to a night market on the way back to the Hyatt, and we bought some very unique food:

• Bell cakes. Little yellow bell-shaped cakes, where the cake batter is cooked in something resembling a bell-shaped waffle iron, and injected with some delicious custard in the middle. Mmmmm...so yummy.
• Tempura everything (squid, tofu, chicken, yams, mushrooms, you name it).
• Spicy papaya salad.
• Beef intestines.
• Pork and scallion burgers on steamed buns.
• Pig's blood cake. Black congealed pig's blood on a stick.

Most of this was fun to try, but I must say that I finally met a food I didn't like when I got to the pig's blood cake. Something about the texture was just too weird. Also, the taste. <shudder>

Final note: I described two meals in this blog post. You may be amused to learn that neither of them counted as breakfast, lunch, or dinner. That's right. We had a grand total of five meals.

Fun with Fireworks

Happy Chinese New Year!!

The day started with lots of drums , firecrackers, and dragons. And lions! All at the Hyatt. The lions did all sorts of great acrobatic tricks. At the end, there was an interesting act where kids could "feed" red envelopes (full of money) to the lions.

For lunch, we went to my paternal grandmother's place, where Dad proudly demonstrated the new internet connection that he'd set up for my grandmother. We tried to use AIM and Google Talk to chat with my brother in LA, and I think we timed the maximum latency at 14 seconds. Dial-up sucks. We gave up pretty quickly.

Nighttime brought far more excitement. Fireworks in Taiwan are sort of like under-age drinking in the U.S. -- it's illegal to sell them, but not illegal to have them! And I'm not just talking about sparklers. I mean 6-pack-sized boxes of explosives -- the type that shoot way high into the air. All my cousins and one of my uncles (Xiao Yizhang, little uncle married to my mom's youngest sister) went to nearby Tianmu Park to set off the fireworks.

At some point, we accidentally lit one of the big fireworks under a bunch of trees. Yeah oops. After we got over the initial fear of having set a tree on fire, and then the secondary disappointment of having wasted one of the big fireworks (since we couldn't see it explode through all the leaves), I realized, hey wait, this is kind of unsafe, right? After all, irresponsible people like us were setting off fireworks all over the city! I asked my cousins -- don't you think there should be stricter laws about this? In America, fireworks are illegal -- even the sparklers.

Awesome response: "Yeah, but you guys can buy guns."

Chinese New Year's Eve

Chinese New Year's is the biggest and most important holiday of the year in Taiwan. Workers there only get one day of vacation for holidays like Christmas, but they get five full days for Chinese New Year's -- the longest break of the year. During the holiday, it's traditional for everyone to return home and spend time with their extended families. This obviously causes a lot of chaos and traffic, as people all pack onto the deadlocked highways at the same time. Luckily, the net effect on the city of Taipei is good; things are actually calmer, because most people have departed for the southern parts of the island.

Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial (a.k.a. Democracy Memorial)

So it was a quiet day when we visited the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial. My older cousin, An An, first took us to get some breakfast at a hole-in-the-wall shop serving typical breakfast foods such as egg pancakes (dan bing), warm sweetened soy milk (dou jiang), and something called "shao bing you tiao," which roughly translates to "hot pancake with grease stick". Soooooo yummy. With a name like that, how could it not be awesome? An An had also wanted to get us shaved ice with strawberries (mmmm), but most stores turned out to be closed for Chinese New Year's Eve.

In fact, even the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial was closed, but the only thing we actually missed was the statue of Chiang Kai-Shek. The rest of the the courtyard, gardens, and memorial were free for the wandering.

Things to note about this picture:

• The little brown sign on the memorial (in the center, underneath the roof), reads "Democracy Memorial" as opposed to its former, more well-known name, "Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial".
• The green and white tarp in front of the door (parallel to the stairway) covers up the carving of a sun -- the official symbol of Taiwan and the KMT.

The reason for this (according to my relatives) is that Chen Shui-Bian, the current Taiwan president, is the leader of the party that defeated the long-ruling KMT. Throughout his presidency, he has apparently done all sorts of crazy unpopular things (making noise about declaring independence from China, for one). But in recent years, his approval rating has been so low that he can't accomplish anything that actually matters, so he goes around renaming historical monuments and streets around Taipei. Yes, think freedom fries. And yes, also think George W. Bush.

I actually thought it was hilarious how many parallels we could draw between Chen Shui-Bian and George W. Bush.

• They both tried to provoke unnecessary wars (one of them was successful).
• They are both hated by the "educated elite" of the north, but supported by the (ahem) "rural southern hicks".
  
• They both inspire vile epithets anytime you ask "so, do you think he's a good president?"
• They have both been in office for 8 years.
  
• They will both be gone soon.

Seriously, whenever I brought up this topic of conversation, the furious bashing would begin anew. "He's SUCH an idiot." "Thank God he's leaving soon!" "His name is so stupid sounding." It was almost like being at home. :-)

Okay I'm done talking politics now. Next, we fed the big fat koi in the gardens.

Chris also bought an asparagus soft drink. Yes you heard right. Asparagus. From a vending machine.


Learning to Play Mahjong

Tired of being cold and wet, we soon headed back to Lao Lao's (my maternal grandmother's) house. Traditionally speaking, we're supposed to spend New Year's Eve with the father's side of the family, but I have lots more cousins on my mom's side, and we thought it would be more fun to hang out with them. (More on the traditions later.)

When we arrived, we found my relatives sitting around a table and playing a game of Chinese Mahjong. (Note that I'm NOT talking about those weird single-player games online that are also somehow called Mahjong.) The spirit of this game is much like poker, with my aunts and uncles and grandparents exchanging some small bets each round. The game-play is also similar in the sense that there's some element of both strategy and luck. Mahjong finally motivated Chris to learn to read some Chinese characters too! It's a really fun game. Too bad we don't have enough friends to play with here. :-(

Evening Celebrations

For dinner, we had a couple more special foods:

• Nian gao (year cake?). This is a sticky rice cake, with the same texture as the outsides of mochis. Except there was also red bean paste mixed in with the rice paste, and it was all fried with a bit of egg. Apparently the "gao" also means "high," symbolizing a year to reach new heights.
• Soup with a special name I don't remember. It was something about how it smelled SO delicious that vegetarian monks came jumping out over the walls of their temple to eat some. (And it's not a vegetarian soup.) Chris and I were a little taken aback by the texture of the sea cucumbers in there...but otherwise it was good!

And now, we stay up until midnight and celebrate New Year's Eve!! Right? Right?

Nope.

Turns out that some of us (Chris, me, and my cousins An An and Shuen Shuen) had to leave around 10 or 11 p.m. But my other several cousins could stay. Trying to pick out the pattern, I was like, "uh, why us?" Answer: Because we were the children of the girls of the family, and our presence at our maternal family's New Year's celebration would bring bad luck. So we missed out on the making of the traditional dumplings, and took the MRT back to the hotel. Interesting, isn't it? I had no idea that these traditional rules were so strict! But that's okay. We saw some pretty cool fireworks from our 17th-floor window. :-)

Jade Cabbage and Wax Apples

The next morning, I was very brave and grown-up. Several friends and relatives had recommended that Chris and I plan a trip to beautiful Hualian, which is on the east coast of Taiwan.


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So, without knowing what one actually does in Hualian (or where to stay, how to get there, or how much it should cost), I walked up to the concierge and tried to make the trip happen. Now, I'd been to Taiwan several times when I was younger, but this would be my first independent excursion, with no parents or relatives to buy me food or keep me from doing something stupid. I was just imagining all the horrible catastrophes that I might be in for. We might take the train to the wrong city, or we might not be able to find our hotel, or we might get totally ripped off by a cab driver and stranded in the countryside with no money. But I was determined to prove that I, proud 26-year-old college-graduate and gainfully-employed adult, could plan a two-day outing without help from mom and dad. (Yes [I] can!)

By the end of the conversation, I had successfully reserved train tickets, a hotel room, and even tours around the city. The most confusing part of the entire trip (which, by the way, I'll describe later in more detail), was picking up the train tickets. The man at the concierge told us to go to the post office, because apparently post offices can give you train tickets? And then there was some confusion because we didn't have "ID numbers". Adding to the confusion was that I didn't understand "ID" in Chinese, so I futilely started offering all sorts of other "numbers". (Confirmation number? Nope. Phone number? Nope. Passport number? Nope.) But we did eventually get the tickets. I felt very pleased with myself.

Now, time for the real day to begin...

Hot Pot Lunch

We met up with Da Ayi ("big aunt", my mom's big sister), Da Jou Jou ("big uncle", the older of my mom's two younger brothers), and my cousin Chian Chian for lunch at the Shipai MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) station. They took us to get Chinese hot pot -- YUM! Each person had:

• A pot of hot water.
• A little knob to control the temperature of the water.
• A platter of raw vegetables.
• A platter of raw meat.
• A dish full of interesting sauce that we mix at the sauce bar. I think we mixed in some of everything (a brown lumpy base, soy sauce, daikon mash, chili peppers, scallions, ginger, raw egg white, and a few other things that we didn't fully understand but ate anyways).

You can probably guess what comes next. Hint: Raw food + boiling water = cooked food.

Chris had an especially tasty beef dish. You can see some of the platter in the bottom right corner of the picture. It's apparently a very high quality sort of beef, sliced nearly paper thin (much thinner than bacon for instance). If you dip it into the boiling water for just a few seconds, and then pull it back out, it's soooo tender and delicious, especially with the sauce. Chris, having never had hot pot before, claims that this was one of his favorite meals of the trip. I bet we can find someplace that does hot pot in Cupertino. Must remember to look at some point!

National Palace Museum

After lunch, Da Jou Jou drove us all to the National Palace Museum. This museum is amazing. It's the single largest collection of Chinese treasures in the world, because the Kuomintang (KMT) absconded with all of the mainland's priceless art when it fled to the island after the Communist Revolution in 1949. The museum had a spectacular 1984-evoking plaque explaining this particular piece of history from Taiwan's perspective. I seriously regret that I don't remember it verbatim, but it went something like this: "To protect them from the ravages of war, the government relocated these priceless treasures to Taiwan for permanent safe-keeping." I wonder who they think "the government" is here. :-)

Another interesting political fact about the National Palace Museum is that it seldom loans its collections to foreign countries, because they're terrified that it may be seized by China. While we were in Taiwan, the Economist published a short article about how they force the receiving country's government to guarantee the artwork immunity from seizure by China as a precondition of receiving the exhibit. Given how few countries even diplomatically recognize Taiwan, small wonder that this stuff doesn't leave the island often!

The centerpiece of the museum is a magnificent jade cabbage.

Jade, I learned, can be many colors. I had always assumed it was just green, it's often found in white, blue, and pink too. Historically, it was valued for its hardness and durability, and apparently the white variety of jade was especially prized. The cabbage is especially cool because it's a chunk of white jade blended with green jade. Kudos to the artist who saw a cabbage in that rock! It's so perfect. If you look carefully, you might also be able to see the green insect sitting in the leaves -- also carved in intricate detail.

I won't go through all the exhibits we saw, but I did wish I knew more about Chinese history so I could understand these objects in more context. All their plaques were neatly translated into English, but I got the feeling that they assumed some basic skeletal knowledge of the various dynasties. When my aunt (a former school teacher) asked what I knew about Chinese history, I said, well, I know Genghis Khan... She and my uncle stared at me blankly until Chian Chian finally understood and translated for them. They responded, "Ohhhhh, yes yes him. <hesitation> He's not actually Chinese you know."

Yes, I did know that Genghis Khan isn't ethnically Chinese, but how embarrassing that the only Chinese historical figures I could name (Genghis Khan and Marco Polo) weren't really Chinese! Three cheers for our Euro-centric history education.

Anyways, here's us outside the museum:


Grandmother's House

Next, Da Jou Jou and company dropped us off at my other grandmother's place (my dad's mom). Here's a picture of my dad's half of the family. From left to right, Gu Gu (my aunt), Shu Shu (my uncle, Ama (my grandmother), myself, and Chris.


We hung out for a while and snacked on tasty fruits, the most notable of which was the wax apple (called "lian wu" in Chinese). It's really a very delicious fruit; the name "wax apple" doesn't do it justice at all. It's light, juicy, and refreshing, with a slight sweet crisp when you bite into it. It probably wins Chris's award for Best Fruit of the Trip. He demolished dozens of them. Here's a picture of some wax apples that have been cut in half and cored (the red ones). The green ones are the football-shaped plums I mentioned in an earlier post -- see how they're pointy at one end?

For dinner we went to an excellent restaurant where we again, cooked our own food, but this time over a grill. What a coincidence right? Note that we were hanging out with different halves of the family for lunch and dinner, so this wasn't at all coordinated. But it was a fantastic dinner -- the meats were especially flavorful and delicious.

You'll quickly notice that eating is a big theme on this trip. My relatives said on several occasions that they thought the most special thing about Taiwan is all the great food. And seriously, we were eating ALL the time. It was all so irresistible. Jumping ahead two weeks, when we got back home to Sunnyvale, Chris got on the scale, and the scale said he'd gained 25 pounds. (!!!) I'm sure the scale was lying, since...well...I think it's impossible to gain weight that fast, but it certainly wouldn't surprise me if it wasn't off by all that much!

Super Bowl XLII and Taipei 101

We started our vacation with zero plans for what we wanted to do. Our calendar was completely and refreshingly blank. Except, of course, for the Super Bowl. That was the one thing that Chris insisted we absolutely HAD to do while we were in Taiwan. Sigh. Way to be adventurous and experience new things, right?

Kickoff was at 7 a.m. local time. The Hyatt had an impressive lobby set up with multiple projection screens to show the game. They also poured us endless refills of soothing hot tea. Sadly, the entire broadcast was in Chinese, so there were no hilarious Super Bowl commercials to make fun of. So I guess, in the end, it did turn out to be a somewhat special only-in-Asia type of experience. I mean, I watched an entire NFL football game without seeing a single Budweiser frog/horse or Coors ice train/stupid mock press conference. When will that ever happen again?

Taipei 101

After the game ended, Chris was gloomy because the Patriots lost, and I was totally spazzing out, doubtless from the endless refills of highly-caffeinated, not-so-soothing-after-all, hot tea. But my aunt and my cousin Chian-Chian soon cheered us up and took us to Taipei 101, currently the tallest building in the world. (It will soon be overtaken by a new building in Dubai, when that's finished.)

Taiwan, like Japan, is in the Pacific "Ring of Fire" and therefore has a lot of earthquakes. And if that isn't enough to scare you, Taiwan also sees plenty of tropical typhoons, which (allegedly) cause the tops of tall buildings to sway freakily with the wind. So given the conditions, I thought it was very...um, gutsy...of them to have built this very tall and impressive skyscraper. I was not particularly reassured when my aunt explained that there was a "big rock" hanging from the top of the building, ostensibly to stabilize the it from the natural disasters I just mentioned. Now, I'm imagining this giant boulder, hanging by a string from the ceiling of the building -- exactly last thing I would want dangling over my head, should the building ever start to shake violently.

But it turns out that it's true, and we have a picture to prove it! Funny thing about words -- the explanation sounds so much more believable and reassuring when you call it a "damper" instead of a "big rock". By the way, "big rock" just happened to be the lowest common denominator of what my aunt could explain and what I could understand. I think she tried a half dozen explanations, until she gave up and just said "okay it's kind of like a big rock".

Besides the damper, Taipei 101 boasts the world's fastest elevator, reaching speeds of over 37 mph. Let me tell you, that caused some serious ear-popping.

Here's a picture of us standing at the top of Taipei 101 (I forget exactly which floor) with a picture of Taipei 101. It was too foggy to get a real picture of the building. This made for a somewhat obscured view from the top too, as you can see from the window:


One of my best memories of Taipei 101 was one we didn't even experience in person. This is a video of what they did to celebrate real New Year's Eve (i.e. December 31, 2007). Pretty friggin' fantastic! Chris kept wishing we could have seen it, since they have posters of the fireworks posted all over the city. But sadly, they may never do it again because they will no longer be the world's tallest building by the end of this year.



But wait! Our day's not over yet! Next, we visited Dihua Street, a very busy and festive street, full of people selling crazy goodies for Chinese New Year's. This is what it looked like from Chris's perspective:


Yes, Chris is tall:

We tried samples of all sorts of neat snacks. So far, our Adventures in Food included:

• Drunken chicken.
• Crispy salted whole shrimps. We ate the heads, eyeballs, whiskers, legs, tails, shells, and everything. I really liked these, mmm. Chris, not so much, haha.
• Little candied tomatoes on a stick. But they weren't dipped in caramel or syrup like on a candied apple. It was more like a tomato with a thin coating/shell of crunchy lollipop goodness on the outside. You buy them four at a time on a little shish-kebab stick. They're bigger than cherry tomatoes -- just big enough that you struggle to get it in your mouth all at once and chew it without making a mess. I tried eating one in two bites, but much like sushi, that creates an even bigger mess. I'm gonna miss those things!
• Dried squid.
• "Grape wine". At least that's how I translated it. I was confused because I thought all wine was made out of grapes. This tasted like normal wine, perhaps mixed with grape juice, or something else really sweet.
• Hot ginger pickled prune juice. (I think...)
• Green plums. Actually we ate several fruits called "plums". These plums were shaped like little footballs, and they were actually a lot like apples. They were green like Granny Smith applies, and the texture was quite crunchy.

Afterwards, we went to my grandmother and grandfather's house (on my mom's side) for a delicious dinner. From left to right, my grandmother, me, Chris, my grandfather, dad, and my aunt.