Gems of Brick

As ugly as many expats find Taipei, I really don't find it such (although there are plenty of horrifically ugly buildings, I'll grant you that). 

I haven't had much time or energy to post these past few weeks, but I have managed to amass several photos over the past few months highlighting some of the best of Taipei's old architecture - which is thankfully starting to be restored rather than culled. 

I do believe it's worth it to occasionally post a few of these photos, as my tiny, eensy-weensy contribution to an online archive of Taipei's considerable architectural gems - and to remind people that these gems even exist.

So, I'm not going to bother with captions - just enjoy. Most of these photos were taken somewhere in the vicinity of Yanping N. Road, Anxi St., Liangzhou Rd., Dihua Street, Minquan W. Road or some intersection thereof.

                         

Reason #26 to Love Taiwan

I think I'm at 26, anyway.

Getting clothes made or copied.

In college, I walked into a Goodwill once (as one does when one is in college and something of a nascent hipster, although I never quite made it to actual hipsterdom...I think) and saw this used faux leather jacket for sale for $6:

(This picture is at least 5 years old).

I wore it through the rest of college, to China, for a few years after I got back from China, and brought it to Taiwan where I wore it until the faux leather had deteriorated to the point where I could not possibly wear it any longer. As in, big tears under the armpits and patches where the netted lining, but not the "leather", was still there. I'd worn that already used jacket for at least 8 years since I bought it. For years it languished in a bag in my closet until I finally got my act together and took it to a tailor on Dihua Street. She made the copy and then sent it off to a specialist for the dragon embroidery. They couldn't do it by machine so she did it by hand. It cost me a pretty penny (far more than $6!) but what I got back was amazing:

踹共！

Yes, it's a 5-clawed golden dragon, which a.) is a male symbol and b.) was once reserved for the emperor, but whatevs. I wanted a dragon, not a phoenix and Chinese symbolism can stuff it. I've always been more interested in male symbols (tigers, dragons, yang rather than yin) than female ones (plum blossoms, yin, phoenixes) anyway.

I couldn't have had this done - I couldn't have afforded the hand-embroidery, certainly (which came to NT$2700 alone, which I obviously can afford) - in the USA.

I still wonder, other than for family reasons, what the point of going "home" would ever be.

Taiwanese Opera: Fun vs. Fine Art

It's no secret that I'm a fan of Taiwanese opera (歌仔戲), even if I post about it far less often than I do temple parades and other festivals. 

This time of year happens to be a great one for Taiwanese opera fans, enthusiasts and people who are just interested and want to check it out. Baosheng Dadi's birthday was this past week, and Bao'an Temple, as a part of its Baosheng Cultural Festival, puts on several operas around the time of the festival: all free, all by good performers, all outdoors in the open stage area directly across from the main temple (which is where firewalking also takes place).

Then, in May, the theater on the top floor of Yongle Market on Dihua Street (yes, there is a theater up there) will start a series of not free but still very good operas that you can buy tickets for online. What's great about these performances is that you can learn about the story ahead of time - drop by Yongle Market or pick up a brochure at Bao'an Temple, where they are often available - and it will list which operas are playing on which days, what tickets cost and how to buy them, and a synopsis of each opera. The summaries are in Chinese, but if you can read Chinese or get a friend to help, you can go in knowing the basic outlines of the story you'll be watching. The operas on Dihua Street will last through June and July, with the Xiahai City God Temple celebrating the City God's birthday and more.

If you've never tried Taiwanese opera, or can read Chinese but are too intimidated by an opera in Taiwanese to check it out, but are interested - now is the time! (Note: for the outside, free operas, lines form as early as 1pm, for some performances you could get away with lining up at 4pm, and chairs are distributed around 5:30 or 6 for a 7pm showing. Show up early or you'll be stuck all the way in the back. You can put a bag down to save a space in line and get those around you to watch it for you and explore the area if you don't want to stand in line for that long.

Me and Sasha waiting in line at Bao'an Temple. I've got the all-important brochure in hand.

I'm lucky to have a local friend who is passionate about Taiwanese opera to occasionally take me along, explain a few details through the show and let me know if something good is coming up (with a story she can fill me in on beforehand). Most younger Taiwanese folks are not as into opera as Sasha is, but if you have such a friend, see if they'd be willing to introduce you to this art form.

I'm not quite sure why I like Taiwanese opera so much, because while I do enjoy Western opera (Tosca, Aida and The Ring of the Nibelung - especially Rheingold - are favorites), I never managed to get into Beijing opera or really any "Chinese opera" form from China - although I don't mind Sichuanese opera. Generally, though - too much caterwauling, not enough feeling. Too much screeching and clanging, not enough melody.

Taiwanese opera is, however, different. It is more melodic, with less screaming and more music. I find it to be more aurally pleasant overall, rather than the sound of swinging an angry cat at a metal pole.

I like it because it's more interactive - almost democratic. Taiwanese opera, while it has the trappings of a rarefied form of fine art, is really entertainment for the masses. You don't go to fancy theaters in fancy dress like a tourist herded through Beijing and sit quietly while performers wow you. You sit in the open air - much of the time - in jeans, with a corn dog and a bag of guava slices you bought outside - and pay little or nothing to be entertained.

Performers regularly add "au courant" jokes into the libretto: at one point in the opera I saw last night - 薛丁山與樊梨花 - General Xue Dingshan asked what to do: he didn't want to marry the non-Han sorceress Fan Lihua, but he was forced into promising to do so. What could he say that would allow him to please her, stay honest and not break a promise?


"Why don't you like her proposal on Facebook?" Fan Lihua's servant said.


I know - ha ha ha - but we're talking mass entertainment, and in the middle of an opera full of glittering costumes and live music, it was kind of funny. The same servant later on came out wearing big sunglasses as a "disguise" and later still wandered around "drunk" with a tallboy of Asahi in hand.

Performers regularly break the fourth wall, as well. One looked at us after the younger sister of one of the general's wives stormed off and we started clapping, and said "don't you clap for her!" General Xue himself turned to the audience at one point to ask what we would do if we had three wives and couldn't please all of them no matter what decision we made. I wanted to shout "就選一個太太而已！" but held back. In the middle of a scene, performers will regularly wink at the audience, or "shush" them, or ask them for backup.

I like this - it shows Taiwanese opera's roots in entertaining people, not being an art form consumed merely by the upper classes (take a look around any audience for an open-air opera at Bao'an Temple, and your first thought will not be "these are the upper classes". This is what the neighborhood middle-class obasans do for fun in the evening). I don't feel like I have to dress nicely or wait for "intermission" to get a glass of wine. While both are art forms, I feel entirely different at a Taiwanese opera than I did at the opera I saw in Prague (Rigoletto) years ago, or the operas I've seen at the Kennedy Center.

Most Taiwanese operas will begin with a warm-up of sorts - Fu, Lu and Shou (the three gods you see on top of temples) will make an appearance, and you might see 跳加官 (the dancing god in a mask), 喜神 (the two "men" in red robes) and 麻姑 (dancing women with fans). 


There are photos of all of these above. 

You might also see a 財神 (Wealth God - the one who "comes to your door" on Chinese New Year) who might throw out gold-foil wrapped candies from a gold ingot into the crowd.


These aren't the main part of the opera, but it's believed that an opera can't be performed well if these short performances don't take place first. It's like "blessing" the opera, if you will.

The opera we saw - Xue Dingshan and Fan Lihua (薛丁山興樊梨花) was about General Xue - famous for not only his marriage to Fan Lihua, but also for accidentally killing his father (which was depicted in a later scene). Fan Lihua, a non-Han woman who knows magic, is told that her fate is to be Xue Dingshan's wife.

"Her kung fu is better than his" (as explained Sasha), so she manages to capture him, and then sings a song about how she's too shy to tell him she loves him and wants to marry him - within his earshot, of course, and after he's captured her, so she's fooling nobody.

He doesn't want to marry her but the other choice is to fight her again, which he also doesn't want to do, so he swears to marry her. He then tries to escape, but she uses her magic to make his promise to stay come true (he tries to leave but can't due to floods and storms). This is supposed to happen three times, but it was condensed into one for this play.

They marry, but for whatever reason Xue Dingshan doesn't love Fan Lihua (gee, I wonder why!) and "divorces" her (apparently you could divorce a woman in ancient Chinese folk tales by saying "I'm leaving").

Then Xue changes his mind and they re-marry, only to be divorced again when Lihua's godson arrives, and he's almost as old as she is. I'm not sure why this is important, but it's implied she keeps bad company and he leaves again.

Fan Lihua then lures him back by pretending to be dead. At her funeral, Xue Dingshan is in tears, and Fan Lihua "reappears", and they marry yet again, in front of her funeral altar, or whatever you call it in English. Hooray! His other wives, who disliked her before, are happy now because they need her magic and want her back.

Then it's over, everyone comes out to bow, and someone gives General Xue's "old counselor" a giant teddy bear with a pink bow on it, which is hilarious.

Next month: 我愛何東獅, about Song Dynasty poet Su Dongpo's "terrible wife who is not tender to her husband", and after that, 紅樓夢, which, if you don't know this classic story, go look it up!

Everything's Closed, or, My Chinese New Year Staycation

You know what it's like: the weather is a dark, drizzly Taipei Gray, roads are mostly devoid of people,   accordion metal pull-down doors cover every storefront. Everything's gray, everything's quiet, and everything is closed. What do you do when you're stuck in a city that's shut down for an entire week? When much of the population takes flight and you have expect the horsemen of the Apocalypse to come riding down the empty streets?

It wasn't quite so gray on Saturday, but Dunhua South Road was still dead.

This year, for the first time, I spent the entirety of Chinese New Year vacation in Taipei. Last year we went to Kaohsiung and visited a friend, among other things. The year before that, it was attempting and failing to camp at Cingjing Farm and eventually escaping the rain in Puli. Before that had been trips abroad: Egypt and India (including the gorgeous Hampi), Indonesia, the Philippines.

Never before had I attempted a staycation - in fact, I'd never really done that in my life previously, being a bit of a wanderlust and all, but so soon after our trip to Turkey, our CELTA courses and our new apartment we couldn't justify the expense of leaving town, and we had enough to do in Taipei to keep us occupied.

I have to say that staying home for a week gave me a taste of what it might be like to be a housewife (not stay-at-home mom, since I don't want kinds - that's different) and while I fully support others' choices if that's what they want, I can now say for sure that it's not for me. It was a fun week, but I like my career.  I'm ready to be a breadwinner again.

Taipei is infamous for being the city that shuts down over Chinese New Year. Other cities celebrate briefly, with businesses closing for maybe one or two days. Taipei shuts down for days on end. Why? Because unlike most other cities (Hsinchu may be an exception), most people in Taipei aren't from there - they're from somewhere else in the country and they go home. The incentive to stay open in everyone's hometowns (which always seem to be Taichung, Miaoli or Kaohsiung - I swear Miaoli's tourism slogan could be "Miaoli: Home Of Every Taiwanese Person's 92-Year Old Hakka Grandmother") is greater, because everyone's home. In Taipei, they've all left to go home, so why stay open? A lot of business owners and employees want to go home themselves.

A lot of foreigners stay in - movies, books, TV, 7-11 food - but I find that that's not really necessary - although I didn't set foot outside between Monday evening and Wednesday afternoon. There are things to do, if you know where to look.

So, basically, this is how I spent 11 days off (you all had 9, I had 11, but that's not necessarily a good thing) in Taipei - what does one do when "everything's closed"? For more than a week?

I wish I could have posted this before Chinese New Year, but I couldn't - and didn't - but I had to live it to be able to write about it.

Here are some things to keep yourself occupied:

1.) Walk around Xinyi at night

(no photo for this one yet, sorry)

Shinkong Mitsukoshi and the 101 mall are generally open, and by the second or third day of Chinese New Year, you can bet on it all being open and there being a crowd. The length of the public walking space down Shinkong Mitsukoshi's multiple buildings is decked out with red lanterns and, especially in the evening after the sun sets, bustling with people. Come here to shop if you like, eat - everything's open, including the 101 food court, but expect crowds because this is what a lot of the locals still in town do, too -  or just walk around and take pictures. I didn't get the chance to, although I might head out and try to get a few shots in the next day or two.  There are also outdoor market stalls and public art installations and a stage where I assume there are performances.

If you're feeling like the city has completely emptied out, this is also a good place to go if you just want to be in a lively place to soak up the atmosphere.

2.) Wander Tianmu for awhile

Me, on a romantic sausage-eating excursion with Brendan at Wendel's German Bistro, Tianmu
...and, with glasses!

Things in Tianmu tend to stay open, because that's where expats tend to live, and where businesses catering to them tend to congregate - by the second day or so of the New Year (and often before that), things tend to stay open. Many restaurants that are often crowded and attract foreigners not only stay open but are easier to get into, since much of the city's population is gone. Most likely this will be posted on the websites of such establishments. One example: Wendel's German bakery and bistro. Notice on website ("We still open for Chinese New Year!") and not that hard to get a seat. Brendan and I went the other day for a nice, if expensive, meal out and had no trouble getting a table and fantastic service. I recommend the beef tartare appetizer, by the way, but ask for bread with it - spreading it pate-like on bread helps cut through the sheer...richness of the dish.

3.) All the grocery stores are open - buy ingredients and practice your cooking skills; try new recipes

I made kung pao chicken!

Wellcome is open as usual even on the main Chinese New Year day and all of the fancy groceries, such as Jason's and City Super, stay open (though on Chinese New Year's Day they may have shorter hours). The Indian import store near MRT City Hall is also open.

So, with a quiet city, generally bad weather - we got, what, two days of decent weather over this vacation? - and everything open, if you have the means, then this is absolutely the time to try your hand at recipes that intrigue you. I'm lucky in that I live walking distance from a City Super (we are practically across the street from the Far Eastern Plaza Hotel - I know, faaaancy) and I could make muhammara, babaghanoush, lamb biriyani and other treats without too much fuss (although the biriyani wasn't as good as I would have liked).

4.) Decorate! New paint job!

PURPLE AND GREEN OFFICE!!

Our painted bedroom, with cat and man

If your lease allows and you are willing to make the financial investment - ours does, as our landlady is a rockin' Buddhist nun - this is a great time to repaint your apartment - as well as to do various decorating jobs (IKEA is also still open!) and hanging shelves and pictures (Sheng Li, at Fuxing/Heping intersection, is open and sells Dr. Hook for all of your hanging needs, without needing to drill). We did this, and ended up with a gorgeous cranberry and gray bedroom with textiles framed in IKEA frames hung up with Dr. Hook and a crazy colorful purple and green office (the teal living room wall had already been done). The places where you would go to get decorating supplies and paint - Carrefour, B&Q (for paint - one in Neihu near Costco and one in Qizhang above the big Carrefour), IKEA, Ikat (some days), Hola, Sheng Li - all open.

5.) Invite friends over

Biriyani night - don't even ask what they're doing

My food-loving whiskey-drinking Taiwanese friends

Chances are you are not the only foreigner, or friend (Taiwanese or not)  who is in town for some of all of Chinese New Year. There are tons of foreigners who find the weather generally too gross to travel in Taiwan and too expensive to go abroad, and you may have Taiwanese friends who are from Taipei and itching for a chance to get away from family for a night.

With everything open and your gorgeous newly-painted apartment, what a great time to get everyone out of the house and host a dinner party - especially for those poor friends of yours who have been eating at 7-11 for days on end?

6.) Visit temples

The too-often overlooked Qingshan Temple on Guiyang Street is a favorite of mine

Longshan Temple and Xingtian Temple are popular spots for public prayer in Taipei on Chinese New Year - visiting these can get you out and among other people, which might perk up your spirits (it does for me; I'm a natural extrovert). These are great spots to visit anytime during the week, especially on New Year's Day itself, and remain crowded through the vacation period.

Alternately, you could visit Bao'an Temple or some of the lesser-known or less visited temples in Taipei, such as Qingshan or Qingshui temples. They stay open,  are crowded but not as much as the big draw temples, and for these reasons, CNY is a good time to do this kind of sightseeing.

7.) Wander around the Longshan Temple Area

People-watching...or are they watching you?

With so many people pouring into Longshan Temple to pray, the areas around it are hopping, Chinese New Year is a good time to visit Bopiliao, the Longshan Temple Underground Mall, Guiyang Street (linked above) or the street market that pops up along Guangzhou Street and seems to be open in the daytime on most days of the Chinese New Year vacation. If you're feeling isolated or lonely and don't like hoew quiet the city has gotten in your neighborhood (I live in Da'an - it was pretty bad), this is the place to go to get your mojo back.

Also, great for people-watching!

8.) Try your hand at a new hobby or get back into an old one

A necklace I made for a much-loved but rarely-worn jade pendant

My favorite DIY shop

Dihua Street shuts down to scarily quiet levels right after Chinese New Year's Eve - the crazy market selling all sorts of products and foodstuffs goes silent and most of the shops are shuttered. In the days leading up to that, though, it's all open and if you're a crafts freak like me, that's fantastic. My hobbies, besides travel, reading and blogging, are beading and drawing. I have the drawing supplies I need but in the days leading up to the vacation I paid a visit to my favorite bead shop to stock up on stuff for various specific projects I had in mind. I only got one done - I made a beaded chain (faux) for a jade pendant of mine (real). I have a few other things up my sleeve, though, that I might putter around with tonight.

You don't have to be a beader or artist - what do you like to do? Do that! It's a great time to catch up on blogging, even if you write up posts in word to be posted later. It's a fantastic time to meditate, practice yoga, go biking (bike trails are dead quiet), write or do whatever it is you like to do. It's also a decent time to take photographs of Taipei without crowds in your way.

No, really, certain photos are much easier to capture when nobody's around to walk in front of your camera or bump into you.

9.) Get your Taiwanese friends who are still in town (there are probably a few) to teach you how to play mahjong.


(no photo, but check your own Facebook feed. If you have any Taiwanese friends you'll see pictures of this)

Seriously. They're all doing it (got Taiwanese friends on Facebook? Look at their CNY photos. It's all mahjong, all the time) and some of them are probably still in Taipei. See if you can't learn how and get invited to such a party. Could be fun!

All in all, I enjoyed my week off in Taipei. I might be up for another staycation next year. One thing I can say for sure - I didn't feel bored!

Taipei Love: Guiyang Street

The weather yesterday was beautiful - one nice day out of 11 days (for me) off - so before some friends came over, we went to the Longshan Temple area to wander and take some photos on and around Guiyang Street.

Guiyang Street is one of my favorite overlooked streets in old Taipei - it's not as fancy or lengthy as Dihua Street nor as renovated and promoted as Bopiliao, but also usually not as crowded. It really only gets going once a year for 青山王's birthday festival  and otherwise a quiet, lovely place to take a quick stroll, see some old architecture, eat a few snacks, visit two historic temples and have a cup of coffee. The shophouses here aren't as "wealthy" as Dihua's, but that almost makes them more charming in their slightly decrepit way. My not-so-secret: deep down I was hoping I would have the chance to live in this area, and rent a renovated apartment in an old shophouse. That didn't happen - I ended up on the other side of the spectrum completely - but it really would be my Taipei dream come true.

Crab for sale!

First we wandered up Guangzhou Street, which is the non-touristy branch of the popular Huaxi Night Market (this part is often called Guangzhou St. Night market). At one end is Longshan Temple. Midway through you reach Huaxi Street, and if you keep going you'll hit Naruwan Indigenous People's Market and Xuehai Academy (also mentioned in the previous link). You'll also pass Mangka Gate  - worthy of a quick bite of history and also shown in a scene in the Taiwanese movie Monga. We had some food, did some people watching and walked north a bit.

I prefer the Guangzhou Street part of this market to Huaxi - the dingy, mostly-for-the-tourists sex shops (although the area does contain brothels) and mediocre food in the covered market keep me away, but Guangzhou Street is packed with good food, people to watch and interesting stuff to buy.

For Chinese New Year, the entire street was open during the day as it would be at night on other days -  rather like the area around Anping Fort outside Tainan. In fact the entire neighborhood was one big outdoor market that has been running for most of the week.

Shredded savory pancakes on Guangzhou Street

 Then, if you take Xiyuan Road north, up the left side of Longshan Temple (if coming from the MRT station), you'll pass lots of stores selling idols. Some are Buddhist, some are Dao/folk religion, some are for home shrines, other supplies are for actual temples. There's usually a bit of decent people-watching - and dog-watching - to do up this way as well.

I particularly like this one

One thing I really love about this neighborhood isn't just the old shophouses - it's the mid-century architecture of note (some of the stuff from that era is godawful - some is charming, though, and some give Taipei a special "look" that I really haven't seen in other Asian cities.

Other than living in a well-renovated shophouse, which is next to impossible (if not actually impossible) to pull off, though, living options in this colorful neighborhood tend to be run-down and cramped, and probably very much roach-infested (because the whole city is, and this area is a lot older and in many ways not well maintained). For example, I wouldn't want to live here and hang my clothes out to dry directly over a busy street, to pick up all sorts of grime and exhaust fumes:

 But then you make it up to Guiyang Street and more charming buildings come into view. I love this one and hope it can be more fully restored - the outside looks fine, but it seems to be unused, and possibly uninhabitable. I'd love to see that change - I've never seen any sign of life on the upper story, although there is some use made of the first floor.

Turn left and you reach Qingshan Temple - it is said that it was built here when settlers from Fujian carried Qingshan's idol up what is now Guiyang Street (it's that old, yo) and the idol suddenly grew heavy and immovable on that site. The carriers knew this was a sign that the Lord of Green Mountain wanted his temple placed there, so there they built it (interestingly, this story of idols becoming too heavy to move when they don't wish to be moved is not limited to China and Taiwan - Amitav Ghosh mentions similar stories in North Africa, the Middle East and India in his book, In An Antique Land, which I highly recommend).

I tell the story of Qingshan in the link to his birthday festival above.

Of course, these days kids just check their cell phones outside.

One thing I really love about this neighborhood is that it's not all shiny and perfect - that you get lovely little details such as these roof decorations on temples, right next to apartment buildings, many of which are older and downright ugly. There's a strangely pleasing contrast in that.

 Much of the ceiling work in this temple was put in without nails, by the way. Some master craftsmanship, that.

Some more photos of Qingshan Temple:

We didn't visit Qingshui Temple on this walk, because I actually sprained my ankle slightly at Qingshan, and we had to get back to Da'an to greet guests who were coming over (and who showed up five minutes early - a first for people I invite over). It's at the other end of this section of Guiyang Street and well worth a visit (photos in the link above, with some background and photos of Guiyang Street during festivals).

Guiyang Street is quite charming

Other than shophouse architecture and old temples, Guiyang Street is also home to an old incense shop, at least one Pu'er tea shop and a jade store. Many of the shops on this street are also historic, some dating back at least a century.

This is basically my dream apartment - maybe with nicer windows with wooden Chinese screens. It's hard to find something like this, though, to rent in Taipei.

Next door is a coffeeshop, kind of decrepit and ancient with an old cat (who may or may not still be alive) - tables for that shop and the street stand shown are positioned to take advantage of the pleasant street atmosphere. The coffee's dark and bitter, but the neighborhood makes up for it.

Walking back towards Longshan Temple MRT via Kangding Street, you pass a lot of this:

I feel like this is 50 years' worth of hardware, machinery and junk buildup. I have to wonder how long it would take to create something this dense and chaotic. It's almost like a modern art installation exploring neglect, hoarding, decrepitude, industrialism and chaos in the modern world.

Walking back this way you pass Bopiliao and, around New Year, a whole market full of stuff to eat and buy - something worth doing if you're in Taipei over Chinese New Year and want to get out and be around people.