Nataraj, Moksha and Janny Curry House: Three Indian Restaurants in Taipei

It's been awhile since I've updated my list of Indian restaurants in Taipei, but since then I've not only eaten at Joseph Bistro several times (get the fish marinated in lemon achar, the stinky tofu curry and the argan oil-scented lamb, I'm telling you) but also tried three new places: Nataraj near MRT Nanjing Sanmin, the Da'an branch of Moksha on Dongfeng Street, and Janny Curry House near Yongkang Street. 

These are already on my main list, but I wanted to add my impressions of each in a dedicated post, and then link it over there. 

Sadly, I've culled a huge number of photos recently and my actual pictures of the dishes at these restaurants don't seem to have survived. 

Nataraj

#75 Nanjing East Road Section 5, Songshan District 

台北市松山區南京東路五段75號

MRT Nanjing-Sanmin

Nataraj offers a comfortable, modern space and excellent north Indian food. It's bigger than it looks: the storefront seems a bit narrow but the upstairs dining area goes back quite far. We went here for a group dinner so we got to try a variety of dishes, including a truly outstanding fish curry (this was awhile ago, so I forget exactly which one it was). Some of the chefs are from South India -- they came out to say hello -- so any southern-style curry is also likely to be good. 

The actual menu is pretty standard northern-style food: you won't find a surprise Chettinad Chicken or Goan caldine here. However, once difficult to find delights like paani puri and a variety of breads are available, and their samosas are proof that Indian restaurants in Taipei are really upping their samosa game. It once once easy to say who had the best samosas -- Calcutta Indian Food's lamb samosas, without question. Then, Calcutta moved and quality plummeted; we haven't been back since they served soggy broccoli and potatoes in a typical gravy and called it aloo gobi. 

Now, I'd actually have to think about who is the samosa champion (Mayur, Moksha, the Thali and Nataraj are all top-rate). 

Moksha

#67 Dongfeng Street, Da'an District, Taipei

台北市大安區東豐街67號
MRT Da'an (also walkable from the blue line)

They also have a Shilin branch

I'm a bit lazy about keeping up with the Indian food scene in Shilin, because to be honest, it's a bit far. But now that Moksha has a Da'an branch, I've been happy to give them my business. Their samosas are excellent, and when they ask you about spice level, they actually mean it! We've had various curry take-out meals a few times now, and they do provide a "very spicy" (大辣) experience if you ask for one. Their butter chicken is some of the best I've had, and although I'm having trouble finding it on the menu, there's a Punjabi curry of fritters in a sour yoghurt curry that's just astounding -- I recommend it highly. 

I'll go even farther: their gravies are so good, and so varied, that they could be honestly described with words like lush and velvety. I cannot imagine that Moksha would dare serve me a wet aloo gobi with broccoli, as some restaurants have done. In fact, I know they wouldn't because I've tried their aloo gobi and it's just right: a drier curry with cauliflower and potato, fried up just right.

We've also eaten in at Moksha, trying out their South Indian menu. That, too, is excellent, with crispy paper-thin dosas. The decor is much fancier than at most Indian restaurants, with a great deal of heavy carved wood. This adds to the high-end experience, though they're not particularly expensive as Indian restaurants go. 

Janny Curry House 金華街咖哩屋

(temporarily closed due to COVID19 and family illness)

#4, Alley 1, Lane 199 Jinhua St, Da’an District - 台北市大安區金華街199巷1弄4號

MRT Dongmen

Located very near that weird building on Lishui Street that looks like a Buddhist temple but has a World's Gym inside (it's actually owned by Tamkang University), Janny Curry House isn't a standard Indian restaurant. Run by an Indian-Taiwanese couple, they have a simple menu: various things, in curry. There's fish, beef, chicken, lamb, vegetarian and (interestingly) abalone. You can get a curry with bread or rice, and there drinks on offer. 

Don't let the simplicity fool you: the curry itself is quite good. It sort of feels like someone is making a simple but tasty curry for themselves at home, and have invited you over for the meal. Don't come expecting fancy copper dishes and elaborate preparations; this is back-to-basics, but it's really quite nice. I expected, given the approach they'd taken, that the curries themselves would be too mild. That's not the case however. Mine was well-spiced and while not overly hot, it had enough heat to keep me happy. 

This is a great lunch option in the area, once they re-open.

Review: Joseph Bistro 想想廚房 (high-concept Indian cuisine)

Joseph Bistro 
#13 Lane 69 Songjiang Road

Zhongshan District, Taipei
(MRT Sonjiang Nanjing)

(02) 2508-1329

On the heels of a discussion on whether there is, or should be, a distinction drawn between 'elevated' or 'high-concept' Asian regional cuisines and 'authentic' Asian cooking, it was interesting to find myself at high-concept Indian restaurant Joseph Bistro.

For the record, I don't think the cuisines of Asia need to be 'mom's cooking' to be authentic or delicious, and one of the things I love about living in Asia is that, unlike the West, when someone opens a restaurant that is not 'mom's cooking' and tries to do something different, there's a lot of room for that. You won't hear a gaggle of confused Westerners who mistake knowing something about Asian food for deeper intercultural competence going on about how it's not 'authentic', and they should know. How can it not be? It's Asian food, made by Asian people, in Asia. And, to quote Tricky Taipei: "Why does cheap have to equal authentic when it comes to Asian food that’s not Japanese? Why is it so hard for us to say a simple but quality bowl of beef noodle soup can be worth paying US$14 for?"

I'll only add two caveats to that. If I can get excellent, say, dumplings at one price point, I'm not likely to pay a higher price point for dumplings that I can't tell are any better. But if you wow me with your more expensive dumplings, I will pay. Second, there is (and I honestly think should be) more room for people with cultural ties to a place, who have been eating and preparing food from that place their whole lives, to get creative with its cuisine. There is less room for foreigners to come in and say what is and is not 'elevated' (as opposed to just odd). If you're in the latter group, that doesn't mean you can't jump in, but there's simply a higher chance that you won't really know what you're doing because you didn't grow up with that food - and it's more likely to show in the output. If you want to go there, know your stuff.

All of this brings me back to Joseph Bistro. Forget 'elevated' vs. 'authentic' - it doesn't matter. The food at Joseph Bistro is simply great. You'll pay for that greatness (by Taipei standards at least), but you'll be happy to fork over the cash, because Chef Joseph will wow you.

Joseph Bistro fills a much-needed gap in Taipei's culinary scene - there isn't another place quite like it among Indian restaurants, and outside of some high-concept Japanese restaurants, there isn't a lot of this kind of high-end cuisine from other parts of Asia available. There are tons of Indian restaurants, some of them quite good, but they are standard Indian restaurants. And that's as it should be - we need a selection of such places, and I frequent them. But none of them 'elevate' the way Joseph Bistro does.

I went with friends I don't get to see often, so we were feeling spendy. First, while I would not typically order wine with Indian food (to me it's beer food), the food here matches well with wine. We chose what I cheekily ordered as "a bottle of your cheapest red, please!" But the dry Italian red we got was scrumptious and matched the food well. A good price, too - NT$950/bottle is not bad for wine in a restaurant. (White wines start at NT$1500/bottle, but I'm a red wine person.) There is also a robust selection of beer non-alcoholic drinks.

We started with an appetizer of potato kofte served in a fruit salad raita (raita is a spiced, salted yoghurt). It came topped with edible flowers and we were instructed to mix everything together to eat it - and let me tell you, it was phenomenal. The distinctive flavor of raita mixed with the flowers and fruit - which included both fresh and dried fruits for varied texture and flavor - produced a memorable salty-savory combination that defies description. The potato puffs provided an umami base for this distinctive taste.





We also ordered a Goan fish croquette topped with sea urchin, which combined flavors from three cuisines: the fish cake is a lightly spiced Goan take on a Portuguese classic, with Japanese-style sea urchin for a burst of saltiness. It's great on its own or eaten with pappadum for a bit of a crunch.

The mains run the gamut from clear fusion to classic Indian - we stuck closer to classic Indian but I'm now curious to try their more adventurous dishes, which include a longyan duck leg and argan-oil scented rack of lamb, as well as a cobia steak served with tandoor spices, lemon pickle and grape mint sauce. We had the Goan fish curry, palak paneer and tandoori chicken with coriander chutney. In part I was just feeling like that sort of food, and in part I wanted to see how well Joseph Bistro could do the classics.





Everything was superb - the chicken especially stands out as being perfectly cooked and tender (not dry as some tandoori chicken can be) in an intensely flavorful sauce, the Goan fish curry reminded me of the delicious fish curries I had there - far from Goa but just as good, if not better. I appreciated that the palak paneer used large chunks of high-quality paneer. Basically, although writing this the next day I realized we ordered some of the most boring items on the menu, every last one of them was absolutely wonderful and worth the money we paid for them. All that's done is make me think I have to go back to try more.





The desserts are also worth saving room for. They're some of the most generous portions of dessert you'll get in Taipei. They look pricey but can easily serve 2-3 people, so don't fret too much about it. Definitely try the deconstructed rasmalai, which comes served in a layered cup with chocolate mousse, coffee jelly and rasmalai-mascarpone sauce. Driving your spoon all the way down to get a bite of each layer, you get salty, sweet and bitter all at once and it comes together perfectly.

Or, as my friend said, "it tastes like...summer!"





We also had the crusty red wine apple with vanilla creme - absolutely wonderful. The soft red wine-marinated apples was a perfect textural counterpoint to the flaky-crispy pastries and creamy vanilla topping.





And all this while, we enjoyed our meal in comfortable, tasteful but unpretentious decor. You don't feel like you have to 'dress up' for Joseph Bistro (though you can), but you still get the feeling that you're having a high-end experience that's worth the money. And yet, there was a (cute) young child at the next table putting spoons on his head and generally being a kid. Nobody bothered about it - classy and comfortable, but also unpretentious and kid-friendly.

Did we blow through more than NT$5000 for three people? Yes. (But then we did everything - starters, wine, desserts, the works).

Did we mind? Not at all.

Forget the 'authentic' vs. 'elevated' Asian food debate. Ask yourself - can Asian food be worth paying real money for? Yes, of course. How is that even a question? And ask yourself, is it good?

If it is, and you've got the cash, just don't worry about it. Fretting over authenticity in Asian food strikes me as a specifically Western thing to do. I assure you that in Asia, it's simply not a thing.

Quick note: the chef recognized me from Lao Ren Cha (I was not paid or asked to do this review and received no special discount for writing it), and made the food spicier than he normally would for Taiwanese diners. He did add just the right amount of kick. If you also want your food to be spicier, you may want to request it. 

Great Britain is an inseparable part of India because of Sanskrit and chicken tikka masala

Indo-British hero Mahatma Gandhi in London, from Wikimedia Commons

I know that some splittists who don't understand 5,000 years of Indo-European culture insist that Great Britain is an independent nation with its own history and culture, but let me explain to you why they are wrong.

In fact, Britain is a renegade province of India, which will eventually be reunified with the motherland. Britain has nothing to fear from this, as Indian British don't hurt other Indian British. However, if they do not comply, this will be done by force. However, India is a peaceful power and it is Britain Province that is causing tensions because it does not agree that it is part of India.

It is a well-known fact that "Britain" and "India" actually share the same history. Both places speak Indo-European languages. Both English and Sanskrit (the ancient root of most modern Indian languages) come from the same roots! Ignorant racists who want to say they are different languages clearly have not thought through the "Indo-" part of Indo-European, and that's why they stupidly assume the languages are different. In fact, they share many of the same features, and people from the India area and the Britain area are typically able to communicate.

Furthermore, historically the India area and the Britain area of Indo-Britain have been united rather than divided. They had the same Queen since antiquity, and only have separate governments now because xenophobic ethno-nationalist splittists in Britain Province force the people to be governed separately against their will. In fact, it is the will of all Indo-British on both sides of the Indian and Atlantic Ocean to be united as it has been through history, and this is undeniable fact that cannot be denied by anyone, as it is known to all people in the world. During this time, everyone agreed that the Queen was the sovereign ruler of all of Indo-Britain and nobody disagreed. Therefore, their histories are exactly the same.

There is also the irrefutable DNA evidence, which shows that all Indo-British people are Aryan and therefore share the same ancestors, which makes them the same. This is an undebatable fact.
 
This is still the case even though some running dog splittists from Britain province want to cause tensions and destroy the world with their hatefulness by saying they are not the same as people from the India area, even though it is undeniable that they are and everyone agrees. 

Furthermore, just as many Indo-British compatriots from the Britain area moved to the India area in the 19th century, many of their compatriots from the India area have also moved to the Britain area. Clearly, Indo-British culture constitutes an unbreakable bond that separates brothers and sisters across the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. Indo-Britains from "Britain" in India built several very nice schools and cute railroads which are also useful, and Indians in "Britain", through running thriving businesses and historically providing the raw goods such as indigo, built the modern British economy we know today. All of this infrastructure and these businesses, as well as several million people, would immediately perish in great anguish if anyone were to deny that Indo-Britain is one united, un-dividable country.

This bond extends to culture in very obvious ways that nobody disagrees with. Indo-British people in both areas traditionally eat dishes such as "chicken tikka masala" and "curry sauce on chips". In both areas, it is quite common to sate ones appetite with a kebab from a local vendor and a cup of hot tea.

Some people say that modern "British" culture is too different from "Indian" culture because they have drifted too far apart to unite now. This is not true. In fact, the India area is a very heterogenous society, with many related cultures all agreeing that they are "Indian" and speaking the same "Indian" language. How can such racists say that "Britain" province cannot fit under this umbrella as well? These people clearly do not understand that Indo-British "ethnic minorities" are not only celebrated in Greater India, but they even get preferential treatment.

Those evil splittists who say "India" and "Britain" are different countries simply cannot explain why there is a statue of Indo-British hero Mahatma Gandhi outside Parliament in Great Britain, nor why there is a statue of Indo-British Queen Victoria in Bangalore, India. In fact, there are many "Indian" places of worship in "Britain, as well as many "British" places of worship and other "British"-style architectural sites and monuments in India.

Some splittists may try to convince you that there are other "historical" reasons for these similarities, but do not be brainwashed by their propaganda which hurts the feelings of all Indo-British people and denies the true fact of 5,000 years of Indo-British history. To say otherwise is a deeply offensive slap in the face of all Indo-British people, which is our culture because of the ancient teachings of Indo-British philosopher Winston Churchill, who is a cultural icon in all parts of Greater Indo-Britain. If you do not agree, you are a racist who can never understand the ancient traditional culture of all Indo-British people.

Amma's Kitchen and other Indian food updates

Over the past few weeks, I've been slowly chipping away at the list of Indian restaurants I have or had not been to so as to keep my Indian food in Taipei list as personally vetted as possible. With that in mind, I went out of my way to eat at Amma's Kitchen, Jai Ho (Tianmu - by the owners of the erstwhile Fusion Asia) and Masala Art (Maji Maji in Yuanshan).

I've also added Moksha and Azeez Indian to the master list, although I haven't been to either.

Masala dosa from Amma's Kitchen

I especially want to plug Amma's Kitchen, so here's my review copied from my main review page fro your convenience:

Amma's Kitchen

#2 Lane 357 Heping East Road Sec. 2, Da'an District Taipei 106
106台北市大安區和平東路二段357巷2號
MRT Technology Building 

Update: Amma's has moved! 

Amma's new address is above, in a small lane off Heping East Road, a short walk from MRT Technology Building (the closest bus stops would be National Taipei University of Education or Wolong Street). 

The new Amma's is larger, and no longer a single long room in a decrepit building but a street-level restaurant. It's all-around nicer, with more tables and is already popular. 

Amma still excels at South Indian tiffin and indeed is one of the few places in Taiwan where it is available. It might be the only place in Taiwan where you can get pongal (a ghee, curry leaf, pepper and ginger flavored mound of cooked moong daal and rice) - if you call ahead. The Thali (below) has dosa but I honestly don't think even they would do pongal.

Their dosas are delicious and their podi idli is still one of my favorite items. It's still South Indian-run and still has the look, smell and flavor of a restaurant in Tamil Nadu. I love that the coffee is served in South Indian-style tumblers with bowls, a style of coffee drinking I came to love while living in Madurai. 

There is a 'but', however. 

Amma used to also serve excellent curries, including the only good (perhaps the only) Chettinad chicken and Chicken 65 available in Taiwan. Having recently been to Chettinad and having lived in Tamil Nadu before, I know Chettinad chicken when I eat it. It's a distinctively pungent, spicy chicken curry. 

Now, sadly, the spice and distinctiveness of the non-tiffin curries (North Indian staples like aloo gobi) are gone. We visited twice shortly after they opened in their new location, once for tiffin - which again, was excellent - and once for more regular curries. While the lemon rice was still amazing, it seemed as though every curry had the same sauce. Granted, the sauce was delicious (though not very spicy), but it was the same sauce on everything, including the aloo gobi, which is supposed to be more of a dry fried curry, not sitting in a gravy. That exact same sauce appeared with the Chettinad chicken, which simply wasn't Chettinad chicken. The coconut chutney, too, lacked flavor - it was really just wet coconut, no curry leaf, mustard seed or anything else you'd put in a proper South Indian coconut chutney. The masala vadai were similarly less flavorful, though the texture was perfect. 

We were told that Taiwanese apparently prefer the less spicy curry - okay, but the same sauce, delicious as it is, on everything? - and that if we wanted real Chettinad chicken we would have to ask in advance or ask for "spicy". 

Okay, but honestly, I shouldn't have to ask. It would be much better to make it properly as a default and ask customers if they want it dumbed down. Don't make the dumbed-down kind and act surprised when people expected something authentic. In any case, unless I call ahead, it's not possible to change a bog-standard gravy into Chettinad chicken. By the time I've sat down and ordered, the damage is already done and adding chili powder won't fix it.



I want these guys to succeed, so I do encourage everyone to patronize their restaurant. I love the idea of idli and dosa just a short walk from my home! Just stick to tiffin or call in advance to let them know you want the real deal. 

* * *


That aside, recently I've been struggling with the Indian food writers' dilemma of late - namely, do I tell them the level of heat I want in my food or do I see what they bring me without special instructions, to find out how they envision their own food? 

The old Amma's Kitchen

As you know - and if you don't know stop reading my blog right now and go jump in a well - different Indian dishes have different levels of spice that are appropriate for the gravy and whatever's been cooked in it. A vindaloo should be so hot it gets you high, with a nice vinegary kick. Channa masala has an afterburn created by a mash of hot green chilis at its base. Butter chicken should be warming but not too hot, balanced with creamy sweetness and tomatoey..ness. Almost like you caramelized the tomatoes before adding the cream. Any sort of methi-based curry (methi paneer, aloo methi) should have appropriate heat to balance out the strong flavor of methi leaves. Actually anything with potato must be good and hot - a good aloo gobi is a bit dry, just a nice coating with the potatoes just giving you a mouth-gasm because they've been fried in ghee, and the cauliflower not too crunchy, but cooked and maybe a bit charred hear and there. Just enough spicy gravy to have something to sop up with rice or naan. A good shahi paneer or malai kofta is warm and creamy and nutty, not too hot. My personal favorite home curry - a Bengali concoction of coconut milk, mustard seed, mustard oil, fried green chilis and heaps of coriander - heats you up from several sources of spice.

Every curry is different, but you should always leave an Indian meal with the feeling that you've been warmed to your bones. 

So, the question remains - do I ask for that, or do I see what they bring me? Do they understand? Do they have The Knowledge? I used to go with the latter - seeing what came - because I want to know what the chef is thinking when she or he creates. It's a great window into how seriously they take their craft. But recently I've been going with the former and being explicit about what I want, because I feel I ought to give any place I review the chance to do as well as possible. Bias for best and all that. If a place can deliver based on instructions you give them, that's good enough. Anyway, I simply must accept that I live in a country where - whether true or just a long-standing urban legend - people simply do not like their Indian food spicy.

Restaurants can and will tone it down for the local market, so I have to be extremely clear that I am not the local market, don't feed me that. That won't warm you. That's just normal food with like a few extra flavors in it. It won't make you understand.

The (very good) samosas at Masala Art

With that in mind, I have to say that while both Jai Ho and Masala Art are fine...the food was well-made, they have great stuff on the menu like paan kulfi and homemade gulab jamun (at Jai Ho) and falooda (at Masala Art - which is good because they don't have beer) - the food is just not spicy enough.

I'm sorry, it's just not. The flavors are balanced. The ingredients are quality. Whoever is back there knows what he or she is doing. But it's not spicy enough. 

I wouldn't be bothered about this, except I specifically asked them to make it good and hot for me. Told them I used to live in India (I studied abroad there - close enough). Told them everyone at the table could handle real heat. We'd all been to India and liked it at that spice level (which won't burn your tongue off, contrary to popular myth. As above - every gravy is different.) Told them not to hold back.

In both cases...it just didn't get there.

I don't know about Masala Art - if anything, the butter chicken was hotter than the channa masala, which is odd, and the butter chicken was great. The samosas were too. Big fan of the falooda. The channa masala was the only thing lacking (well - and the garlic naan was made with garlic powder, not fresh garlic, but I liked that it was thin). But at Jai Ho I said something about it, and the waitress admitted she'd just put in our orders for "medium spicy" (which by Taiwan standards means "not freakin' spicy at all"). Which would have been an excusable mistake, except I'd very clearly specified that that was not what I wanted.

I think the chefs at both restaurants know how to make a good curry. I just...

...well, I hope they listen to me next time. And yes, there will be a next time.

If you're reading this, Jai Ho and Masala Art - when we say hot, we mean it. You probably didn't know this when I ate at your establishments, but I can quite likely match your own chefs curry for curry from my own kitchen. I don't mean "oh I can make a daal", I mean I see your butter chicken and raise you a Hyderabadi mutton biryani. I see your aloo gobi and raise you pumpkin in tamarind-sambar gravy. I see your channa masala and raise you a Bengali shorshe murgi. I only go out for Indian so I can keep that master list updated - think of it as a community service - and so I don't have to do it myself if I'm feeling lazy. If I say hot, I mean hot.

Paan kulfi at Jai Ho

Make it appropriately hot for the dish - that's how you get to the top of the list. (Mayur is at the top because he and his chefs do a good job with this.)

(But seriously I really liked the desserts at both places. Keep it up.)

Onion uthappam at Amma's Kitchen

Review: Fusion Asia Indian Restaurant

Fusion Asia
#34 Section 3 Heping East Road
和平東路三段34號
MRT Technology Building or Liuzhangli

Fusion Asia is easy to miss - just one more storefront along the busy eastern end of Heping Road past Dunhua as it veers toward MRT Liuzhangli. I'd actually walked by it several times thinking "we should eat there" (as a part of my nefarious plan to eat at every Indian restaurant I can find in Taipei and then compile it into one huge blog post - which will be updated with Fusion Asia shortly).

One rainy night when we were both unexpectedly free and planned to walk around the Yanji Street area and just pick something that looked good, we decided instead because of the weather to just go here.

The space inside is actually pretty large by Taipei standards, and we were one of only two sets of customers so it felt a bit empty and cavernous. The decoration was innovative, with musical instruments centered inside frames of PVC pipes draped with Indian women's bangles. I got the feeling, however, that they started out with this idea of being both a restaurant and bar (it advertises itself as such), but that didn't quite work out as the space is made out to really just be a restaurant. For that concept to work, your space has to be decorated and set up accordingly, and Fusion Asia really just screamed "restaurant" despite the full bar and drinks menu. As usual in Indian restaurants in Taipei and elsewhere, a flatscreen TV played Bollywood musical numbers.

We honestly weren't expecting much of the food despite the management from India - it was too empty, too unknown, too trying to be something it wasn't.

But we were surprised...the food was actually pretty good, especially the appetizers.

They were out of Kingfisher (BLASPHEMY!) so we got Taiwan beer, samosas and channa aloo chaat. I love a good chaat and I love any restaurant that can do one well. This was pretty good - chick peas and potatoes in a tangy chaat masala with chopped onion and tomato. I would have added a drizzle of yoghurt and then topped the whole thing in sev (crispy fried potato threads), but that's just me. The samosas were brilliant - the outside golden and crispy, the inside moist and very well-spiced, although the tamarind and coriander chutneys were lackluster and they also gave us some mayonnaise, which we didn't use, because that's gross.

For curry, we ordered baingan bharta (grilled mashed eggplant curry) and butter chicken (my favorite). The baingan bharta was very good - well-flavored with a grilled flavor that still let the freshness of the eggplant come through, and perfectly textured which is hard to do with eggplant.

The butter chicken was also good, but perhaps a bit too mild. I thought it might have just been the result of eating two spicy appetizers, but after washing all of the heat away with beer, the butter chicken was still lacking the bit of heat I like it to have.

The garlic naan, however, was quite good and unlike Out of India, they use real garlic, not crappy garlic butter spread.

The menu was standard north Indian fare - curries in sauces with naan or rice. Don't look for regional specialties here - those are really only to be found at Mayur Indian Kitchen or, for Punjabi specialties, Balle Balle.

All in all, I'll go back. It's not the best Indian meal in Taipei, but it's pretty good and close by. I might just go for samosas and chaat though!

Review: Balle Balle Indian Restaurant

Balle Balle Indian Restaurant



Guangfu N. Road #12, Songshan District, Taipei
台北市松山區光復北路12號
02－2750－7265

I've also updated my "Indian Restaurants in Taipei" post to include Balle Balle, if anyone wants the most comprehensive list one can come up with (there's still one on Heping Road I need to try between Technology Building and Liuzhangli).

Soon after my return to Taipei, and also soon after my husband's birthday, my good friends June and Chelsea planned a welcome back/happy birthday dinner here, knowing I'm a huge fan of Indian food and that I've been wanting to try this place. They left a comment on the original restaurant list asking me to write about them, but the reason I did is that I'm always on board with trying a new Indian restaurant!

And Balle Balle delivers. They were able to accommodate our group of 13 (one person'd had to leave early by the time this picture was taken), even in their small space and the service was good to the point of being obsequious. We got mutter paneer - which my husband had expressed a like for but we never get because I don't care for peas - on the house for his birthday and they were very good about ordering flexibly and making recommendations without flooding us with food, although we did take home lots of leftovers!

The food was also delicious - the samosas were big & stuffed, the curries just right, and the food moderately hot because even though I like my Indian food local-spicy (I did used to live there after all!), some of my friends don't.

We got samosas for all, mutter paneer, tandoori chicken, butter chicken, saag aloo (potato-spinach curry), lamb rogan josh, butter chicken (my favorite!), and channa masala, with a baingan bharta (eggplant curry) substituted for lamb at the table with vegetarians. And yes, I could confidently say that I have eaten Indian food like this in India: it's not overly twisted to suit local tastes, and for those who really can't take the heat, the spice levels can be adjusted.

My only disappointment was that they didn't have Kingfisher - we had to get Taiwan Beer. Realistically the two beers are almost identical and Kingfisher is kind of crap, but it pairs very well with curry. Just don't drink it on its own.



I won't say Balle Balle takes the place of my perennial favorite, Mayur Indian Kitchen -  I like them both for different reasons! Mayur focuses on regional cuisines and you can get a lot there that you can't get at other Indian restaurants: idli-dosa, various chaats and other specialties. Balle Balle focuses almost exclusively on Punjabi-style cuisine, and I love that. It's even evident in the names of the dishes: Patiala this, Haryani that, Amritsari that. "Balle Balle" itself is a phrase uttered while dancing or found in Punjabi music, especially bhangra, to denote a feeling of happiness. They obviously take pride in their Punjabi heritage.



I love that I don't have to choose: want north Indian food with an emphasis on Punjab (where I have been, and yes, the food at Balle Balle captures those flavors)? Go to Balle Balle. Want idli-dosa or something more regional like a Gujarati yoghurt curry? Go to Mayur.

Taiwan's Invisible Innovation

India's Invisible Innovation

Interesting talk, especially when he quotes people who say "Indians don't do innovation...they aren't good with the creative stuff...it has nothing to do with Indians, it's their schooling, based on rote memorization".

This reminds me of what a lot of people say about Taiwan - oh, it's not that Taiwanese aren't creative, it's their schooling which beats creativity out of them and doesn't value opinion, independent thought and artistic expression" - what I myself have said about Taiwan, although I'd like to take a lot of that that back.

I do think the teaching methodology and ideas about education in Taiwan are screwed up: I feel that the education system here doesn't foster creativity, and they don't value opinions, independent thought or artistic expression. There is a lot of regimentation and rote learning, a lot of teaching to the test, a lot of cramming and very little encouraged inquisitiveness. My opinions in that regard have not changed.

BUT...

Despite this, creativity breaks through - more than most Westerners think. In fact, I'm beginning to believe it's snottiness as well as possibly mild (but probably unintentional) racism. It's true that I've noticed trends: students who reply to a question asking for an opinion with a fact ("what, my opinion matters?"), students who come into a class believing that cramming their head with new words or phrases - which they will forget or use incorrectly - is more important than taking the time to practice fewer new lexical items and gain more fluency, students who think that formal usage is always better, or that grammar accuracy always trumps fluency, or who think that fluency is something that can be memorized.

BUT, again...

I've also noticed that there are many creative souls in Taiwan, and that there are people who love to ask questions or who just enjoy gaining the confidence and fluency to talk in a language as naturally and effortlessly as possible. There are so many more inquisitive people, thoughtful people and artistic people than many foreigners give Taiwan credit for having.

All this, not because of but despite the cramming and test prep that defines Taiwanese schooling (both government-run and cram school-based).

So why do I still hear the same "blah blah blah Taiwanese don't do creativity" bullshit, which I myself have been guilty of spewing? Why don't people see it?

Because, like India, a lot of it is invisible. I mean, you have a lot of artistic types who make things, who create, who cover walls with art, who run booths selling their work at markets and fairs, all that terrible poetry from poetry contests published on the MRT (I'm sorry, I'm not a fan) - and you have the entrepreneurial types who get creative when starting up their small businesses. But so much creativity in Taiwan goes into products that don't get branded as being created in Taiwan. "Made in Taiwan", maybe, once upon a time, but not created here. Not innovated here. And yet, in many cases, they were.

Who do you think designed the technology that allows you to stream video on your smartphones? A bunch of Taiwanese R&D guys, that's who (and some other folks, too, but the R&D labs of Taiwan were involved). Who is behind the push to make ever smaller, more powerful semiconductor wafer technology? Taiwanese R&D guys. A lot of apps, branding and design come out of the USA, but a lot of graphics, games and innovation not meant for end users (or meant for end users but not branded as having come from Taiwan or, more generally, Asia) comes out of Asia, including Taiwan.

Basically, everything Nirmalya Kumar says about India in the talk above could also be said about Taiwan - possibly more so (although I don't want to get into a debate on that, I can't really say for sure).

Taiwan is home to innovation, and it is home to creativity. A lot of creativity. You just don't see it because it's not branded that way. It's in the research, development, design and production of components within a product that you think was innovated entirely in the West.

Saturday Night

It’s another Sunday, and I’ve been working my butt off at a local savings bank , stayed out until 2am with friends and feel like writing more fluffy musings (because that’s just about my mental capacity right now).

I’ve lived in three different countries (India, China and Taiwan) and was musing this morning while lying in bed considering whether or not to get up – as one does on Sunday mornings – on what it was like on Saturday night, that iconic bit of free time, in each country.

Bad Girls in India: 2000

I read a comment online recently directed at someone whose boyfriend was about to move to India for a year to study. “While she’s at home on Saturday morning waiting to Skype, you’ll have opportunities to go out, meet people and have beers with other expats. On Sunday morning when you’re ready to Skype, she’ll be going out back home.”

Yeah, uhh…maybe in some of the bigger cities, but that wasn’t my Saturday night experience in Madurai. Mine went something like this:

After spending the day doing some sort of student group activity, I might stop downtown at the tailor’s and then retrieve my bike parked at the post office (the closest place to downtown where I could ride without getting killed and park my bike). I’d ride home on quieter back roads – by quieter, of course, I mean there were only about a million people and forms of livestock walking down the road instead of ten million – stopping off for a Limca and waving to various locals manning their storefronts. The snack guy, the “Indian pizza” guy (it was a chapatti covered in sugary ketchup and paneer), Zum Zum Tailor and the folks who hung out outside the nearby shrine.

I’d rumble on home down a bumpy dirt path as the neighborhood kids shouted “HELLO SISTER!”, maybe swerve to avoid a goat, take my shoes off in the anteroom and head upstairs. A quick cold-water bucket shower and fresh salwar kameez later and I’d reappear downstairs to chat with Meena and Kumar, watch cartoons with Shiva when he wasn’t doing his homework and watch the cook prepare dinner.

Amma would come in, wash her hands, grab a blob of chapati dough and plop down on the floor in her sari. She never had never really gotten used to the idea of chairs. She’d insist on TV rights and Shiva would grumblingly hand her the remote. The cook would roll out a length of wax paper, right there on the floor, Amma would turn on her favorite TV show and watch while rolling out dough rounds.

Meena would begin studying with her son. "He's really dedicated to learning his multiplication tables," I noted once.
"Yes, he is going to be engineer isn't it?" Meena replied.

"Really? He's nine years old!"

"Yes. He is going to be engineer."

This wasn't the desperate push of a mother living vicariously through her son - who seemed to be genuinely good at math - she was an anesthesiologist and her husband was a zoologist. Amma's late husband was a prominent linguist. This was not a family who shied away from intellectual pursuits.

The show was a well-known Tamil drama about three “prostitutes” who live together. Of course, nothing tawdry ever goes on during the show – it’s just understood that these three single Tamil women who live together and solve crimes (???), and who are visited regularly by a gun-wielding fat man, are Ladies of the Night. My Tamil was never all that great but I got the impression that their profession was likewise never openly mentioned – you were supposed to know they were prostitutes because duh, they’re three single women over twenty living together, and one of them wears lipstick! For shame! India has a long and distinguished history of cosmetics – from kohl-lined eyes to whitening cream – but Western-style makeup such as lipstick in more traditional parts of southern India are a major taboo – only prostitutes wear it (it’s fine in cities and in northern India, brides generally wear tons of makeup, including bright lipstick).

Amma thought this show was terrible, which is of course why she watched it so religiously. “Oooh…so bad…those girls are very, very bad,” she’d mutter – in English – as she sat on the floor idly smacking a chapati. “Bad girls. So, so bad only.”

I would sit on the floor next to her, trying and failing to match her chapati-making skills, the edges of my kameez tucked primly under my knees, watching women no less prudishly dressed as I was cavorting on TV.

So bad. So very very bad, only.

Cement and Beer in China: 2002-2003

When I first moved to China, I had no friends. That tends to happen when you pick up and move to an entirely foreign country where you know exactly no-one. For the first few months my Saturday nights consisted of going to the Western-style coffee and teahouse in Zunyi, down by the bus stop and Honghuagang, and studying Chinese while people stared at me…and doing a poor job of it.

Later, Jenny arrived in China and we became fast friends. We’d occasionally have the good fortune of a visit with a coworker and mutual foreign friend, Julian. By then, I’d discovered that the hoppin’ place to go on Saturday night was down by the river – the riverbank was paved over; a long concrete esplanade replaced the natural grassy shore. Along this strip, old laobanniang would set up portable carts selling peanuts, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, beef jerky, various small snacks, beer and ferocious baijiu (rice wine). Jenny and I would head down there, often with Julian, and drink cheap chemical-laced Chinese beer – Moutai if we were cheap, Tsingtao if we were feeling spendy. We’d get plates of snacks and shoot the breeze, make fun of China – not in a mean way, but in a “blowing off steam, culture shock can be stressful, really we’re having a great adventure” way. OK, also sometimes in a “China sucks” way, but only after bad weeks. If it was just me and Jenny, we’d bring cards and play rummy or canasta.

During the colder months we’d stay home, crank up the totally-not-safe-probably-going-to-explode heater, buy local hawberry hooch and mix it with horrific “citrus” soda, grab a bag of beef jerky and some White Rabbit caramels and play canasta at home while watching bad Chinese TV. We’d tell stories about the adorable children we taught, and make jokes about Huang Qi, the school head’s ne’er-do-well spoiled younger brother who had horrible teeth, smoked too much and called me fat to my face, in Chinese, thinking I couldn’t understand. My Chinese wasn’t great at the time, but I could indeed understand.

On my second-to-last day in Zunyi, there was a going-away party held in my honor (awwww) on a Saturday night. Julian and Jenny came, as did Huang Min and the unwanted Huang Qi – the same one I mentioned in this post, who elevated himself in my estimation on the last day I ever saw him and probably ever will see him again – by telling his story. As much as I may dislike a person, I always want to hear their story. To shorten an already-told tale, he was studying in Beijing in June of 1989, was at Tiananmen, and saw his friend get shot in the face. This forever affected his view of the Chinese Communist Party, and I see him as a symbol – an archetype – of the average Chinese person who knows what their government is up to but lacks the ability to do anything about it.

The party was held on a Saturday night and after the obligatory banquet, at which I wore my only remaining ‘nice’ shirt, bought in Hong Kong, a group of us retreated to the riverine cement beer garden.

Another teacher, Angel, was there, as was a random Englishman that Angel literally picked up off the street (and the only other expat in town besides an antisocial Dutch woman). We all got impossibly drunk on beer so bad that the cancer we’ll all get in ten years will have been directly linked to it, Angel went off in search of whores and we found him with his pants down, face down in a gutter (The Englishman dragged him out so he wouldn’t drown in fetid water). Huang Qi told his story and started crying. I got so blotto that I started shouting dirty words in Chinese (not that uncommon on the riverside – nobody really thought anything of it). Jenny and I sat on a bench trying to recover with the Englishman – I’m not sure what happened to Julian. I left for Beijing two days later – the next day I had a hangover that shook the universe and drank six cans of coconut juice – and had my brief romance with Brendan years before we started dating seriously (let’s face it, deep down under everything else there was always a spark between us). Jenny and Graham later got married. Julian moved to Beijing, met a Sichuanese woman and married her. I wandered the globe, dated inappropriate men and then finally got my act together enough to deserve a gem like Brendan. I never did see Angel again but hopefully waking up covered in Chinese gutter sludge made him rethink his lifestyle.

I would say it was something of a life-changing Saturday night.

Taiwan: Funky Student Pubs 2006-present

Last night was a typical Saturday night for me here in Taiwan. I’ve never been much for thumping music in bars, and although I do enjoy dancing I don’t necessarily want to do it more than once every few months, if that. I can’t stand the smell of cigarette smoke that clings to every pore when I do go out to a crowded bar (yes, if you are curious, I have tried a cigarette. It was thoroughly disgusting. Brendan is more sensible – he knew they were disgusting without ever putting one in his mouth, but I’m the sort of person who has to try things, even if I know I won’t like them).

Instead, at about 7 or 8pm I am far more likely to throw on jeans and a beloved t-shirt, a pair of funky earrings and beaded sandals and head up to Gongguan or Shida. Brendan and I might hang out together- we might dissect films we both enjoyed or hated, or talk about politics or travel plans, or make observations about books we’ve read or religious tenets we do or do not agree with (we both agree: religion as a force teaching kindness and tolerance = great. Religion warped into judgmentalism = bad). We might shoot the breeze about current events or just crack jokes over beer. We might just enjoy each other’s physical presence and read or blog, knowing the other is right there, occasionally reaching over to squeeze a knee or give a smile. We’re both big readers, politically engaged enough to keep up with a few news sources each, and I’m into blogging – as you can see - so we don’t always feel the need to talk. Gongguan and Shida are lined with funky student cafes and we’ll pick one of our favorites – La Boheme, Shake House, Drop Coffee, Café Tea or Me, Zabu or Red House.

Or we’ll text a bunch of friends, see who is at loose ends and invite them out. We’ll pick one of the above places, get drinks and talk about much the same things that Brendan and I would normally talk about on our own, although generally more people = more witty banter. We’ll drink but not get drunk. We’ll enjoy good beer – you know me, I always want the best if I’m going to have anything at all – and we’ll keep great conversation going until 2am or later.

Last night was no exception. We went to Red House in Shida (紅家), a long, thin bar built into a funky old brick house of indeterminate age. We met our friends Joseph and Catherine, ordered Belgian beer and fries and kept lively conversation going until the wee hours.

I know a lot of people imagine being thirty, especially married and thirty, means quiet nights at home and settling down, generally acting older. I’d say we’re acting older in the sense of being more mature, but no less fun. I no longer get smashed on Chinese riverbanks, and a Saturday night out in Taipei is far more stimulating than a Saturday night in provincial India, although my India experience was definitely local, eye-opening and authentic. That aside, I like the people we’ve become. Educated and conversant, happy to go out and be sociable but not desperate to find a thumping bar somewhere. Comfortable in our skin, and with discriminating enough taste in beer that we’ll actually consider whether to get the Rochefort Tripel or the Kasteel Rouge rather than “Beer? What’s cheap?”

I do think Saturday night in Taipei is symbolic, in a way, of life here. Equal but different halves of a wonderful whole with my husband, older and wiser, more well-read, maybe not quite as wild as I used to be but still lively and hoping to be so for a long time to come. You’ll have to pry my Abbey Tripel out of my cold, dead hands – and if I die with a Belgian beer in hand I will consider it a good way to go!

Cultural Preservation

Why should the woman on the left be treated with any less respect than the man on the right?

Sometime in the Autumn of 2003, I was heading from Bhubaneshwar to Puri - I had secured a seat by dropping a scarf onto it through the open window and I'd climbed aboard to claim my place. A Telugu man, who looked exactly as though he'd been fashioned out of two balls of gingerbread dough and iced with a white shirt, black pants, glasses and a cartoon mustache plopped down next to me and stuffed a duffel bag under his seat. I rode with my backpack on my lap - partly because I was afraid of razoring and petty theft, and partly because it was so big that I had no choice.

The bus started with a grimace and we began hurtling across the jungled countryside. Mr. Gingerbread introduced himself as Ashok ("My pleasure to make your acquaintance. May I kindly ask your educayshional qualificayshiuns?") and began a thoroughly pleasant discussion with me, mostly asking what I liked about India.

Finally, after assuring him that the dirt was no problem, that I found the auto-rickshaws kind of charming in their way, that saris were beautiful and salwar kameezes comfortable, that I enjoyed studying Tamil, the crowded buses were just par for the course and the food was ridiculously good, he paused.

He then sheepishly asked - "Is there anything you don't like?"

I paused too, because there was something I didn't like. Well, beyond the corruption and poverty, which nobody ever likes. Normally I'd wave this question off with "aaahh, no country is perfect, isn't it? Of course there will be small things, small small things only, that I don't like" (my semester in Southern India made it so that whenever I returned I picked up bits and bobs of the local speech patterns. I do the same thing in Taiwan), "but they are small and generally I like it." With emphatic bobbling of the head.

But I decided I could trust Mr. Gingerbr-err, Ashok - I liked his style. I hadn't told anybody in India about this thing I didn't like - although it ranks right up there in human rights reports with corruption and poverty - because my not liking it (like a little "thumbs-down" on Facebook, not that anyone outside of college used Facebook back then) wasn't going to change anything. Meaningful action would, and saying "I don't like it" isn't meaningful action.

At least I didn't think it was back then. I feel differently now.

Whatever the reason, I told him.

"There is -" intake of breath - "one thing I don't like."
"Oh, and what is that thing?"

"Well, it's...

...the women's rights issue. Basically I think that women have made a lot of progress in India and now you can see many female doctors, politicians and professionals...but in so many ways they're still treated badly."

Should we expect this woman to do her job sweeping the temples and then go home and take care of all the housework?

"What are you meaning by 'badly'?"

"Well, marriages are still arranged and while that affects men, too, it disproportionally affects women - the men's families size criticize the potential brides far more than the bride's family takes issue with the groom. He basically just needs to be same-caste, maybe, and making a good salary. She has to be accomplished, but not more accomplished than he is, and pretty, and fair, and slender, and a good cook and housekeeper. Basically, those marriage ads do care if the woman did well in school but are mostly concerned with looks and housekeeping. I think that's not fair. At home women are still expected to do most of the housework, or supervise the help if they have help - even if they work. If there is a divorce the woman still gets more blame than the man. He can go back to his life - she might get disowned by her family. There are still dowries.

"I just think..." I continued, "I just think it's not fair. It's not good for women. I love India. Don't mistake my meaning. I love to be here, but I want to see this change. I want women to be equal. It makes me sad that I can't do it on my own."

I didn't mention things such as dowry deaths, wife-burnings and domestic violence or emotional abuse because while I did want to be honest, I wanted to wait a bit before delving into those heavier topics with a stranger.

I have no message with this photo, I just like it.

Ashok was silent for a second.

"But...this is our traditional culture! The Indian women understand this! We all have to do what we can to preserve our heritage. The wife will traditionally handle the domestic issue only."

"It may be your traditional culture, but it's not good for women's equality today. It means that women will always have to do these things, even if they don't want to, and men don't have to do them. That means men will always do better in their careers than women. That means women will never have a choice."

"Men don't have a choice either. We have to do our career and make some money, isn't it?"

"Yes, but you can choose your career. You can do what you are interested in. Because men don't really do housework, it's easier to pursue hobbies if they don't like their job. Housework and child-care doesn't give any choice. It's always the same work - you can't choose to do housework you like. You just have to do it, and being in charge of all that means less time for hobbies...although of course many Indian women do have hobbies."

Why isn't this woman allowed to enter a mosque (I know - religious reasons. I'm not actually up for debating that).

"Well, we can't always choose our career. Our parents sometimes choose," he smiled.

I smiled, too, because he had me there. Three years previously I'd sat on the linoleum of a fan-cooled Indian living room while host mother's daughter in law taught her 9-year-old son, Shiva, how to do complex multiplication. Maybe Jenna can answer this one, she said, terrifying me. What's 17 times 42? Errrrrr.... "714!" Shiva had piped up. "Great job," I said. "You could be a mathematician." "He's going to be an engineer," Meena replied purposefully. But he's only nine years old I thought, and said so more politely. "Yes, and he is going to be an engineer."

Shiva's probably an engineer now.

Why should these girls get fewer opportunities and endure more social expectations and criticism - especially regarding looks, marriage and children - than the boy?

Ashok pulled me out of my reverie. We can't be dismantling our traditional culture!

I hear it so often. I heard it in China, too. I've heard of it in Japan and Korea. You'll hear it said in Central America and to some extent the Philippines (although less so). Sometimes I hear it from the far religious right in the USA. I've read it on the Intertubes (I know, but still) and seen it debated in anthropology books talking about groups like the Quechua and tribes of northern Laos. I've seen and heard it all before: women's rights remain an issue, and yet gender roles play a big part in this traditional culture.

I thought then, and still think, that this is utter bollocks (pardon my British).

As I told Ashok, and still believe, it is entirely possible to preserve cultural norms while allowing for greater equality. In cultures where minorities or tribal groups were discriminated against (which is to say all of them, basically), those groups have gained greater rights, treatment and equality without fatally wounding the culture of a place. (I realize some fans of the antebellum south would pause - yes, freeing the slaves did wound pre-Civil War Southern culture, but certain aspects did not die out completely - red velvet cake, debutante balls, certain wedding traditions and cultural norms. Regardless, I think paving the way for a group of humans to be treated as, well, humans was worth the loss).

Look! Men doing laundry! It's a miracle! (I kid - I realize that they're Brahmins washing their own dhotis, and anyway, my husband does laundry of his own volition).

I fail to see how allowing women to be equal members of society with the same expectations as men - physical safety, sharing of housework, career goals, education, right to an opinion, respect regardless of looks, equal work and salary opportunities and freedom from harassment or discriminatory treatment - would "destroy" Indian culture, or any culture.

It might change it a bit, but that change would be heralding half of society gaining equality. I do not think it would change things so much that there would be reason to fear: the fear that Ashok felt, and that many feel even now, is made-up. It's a "Future Bogeyman", a fear of change, not a fear of any realistic outcome.

Seriously, if you start treating women as equals, what will happen? Well, saris and salwar kameezes will still exist because they're fashion items - plenty of women wear them because they want to - not because they have to. Temples and templegoers and the panoply of gods will remain the same, as will their methods of worship.

Does she deserve any less than her husband?

Food might be cooked more often by the men of a household, but it will remain largely the same - expecting men to share an equal burden at home doesn't mean that channa masala will suddenly cease to exist, or that butter chicken will disappear through a space-time distortion.

More women might drink alcohol, and more women might travel alone, but is this such a huge deal? More men will have to pick up dustcloths and brooms and hold crying babies - is this the end of the world? How does this meaningfully change the culture?

(No, it changes it because women traditionally swept the house and held the babies doesn't count, because I used the adverb "meaningfully").

The divorce rate would likely go up, and there might be more pre-marital sexual activity. You could see these as downsides, but really a huge number of those divorces would be as a result of women leaving abusive or loveless (or affair-strewn) marriages - that's a good thing. I don't actually believe that India's currently lower divorce rate means that those who are married are any happier than in any other country, just that they're unhappy but still married. Pre-marital sex is something to be cautious of, for sure, but it would be little more than leveling the playing field (plenty of Indian men have premarital sex, and comparatively fewer women who do not live in major cities do, although it certainly happens and is now more common in bigger metropolises). This is nothing that better sex ed couldn't handle.

I don't mean to say that no Indian men help at home (many do) or that they all have these expectations (many don't). I'm speaking very generally, because there are a billion people in India. If you are going to say anything at all, you by necessity have to be either very general or painfully, almost individually, specific.

Guess what - if we end gender discrimination in India, this bit of cultural history will still be there. It won't disappear.

But, you know, Taiwan has managed to transition to a culture of relatively equal gender relations - problems persist, but it's at the top of the heap in terms of progress in women's rights...and yet has retained a remarkably resilient traditional culture. The food is still there. The night markets are still there. The temples and fortune tellers are still there. Cultural norms, expectations and modes of expression and communication remain largely unchanged other than the normal rigors of adapting to the modern world. The only difference (besides a higher divorce rate, especially in Taipei), is that women can fully participate and not be treated as expectation-laden beasts of burden.

Taiwan is, quite refreshingly, one of the places where I have not heard this pile of steaming crap about how keeping women down is imperative to preserve this amorphous thing called "culture". Taiwan is also one place where I can say with conviction that traditional culture has successfully transitioned into the modern world. Japan and Korea share a similar distinction, but deep gender issues and discrimination persist.

Although there is still work to be done, Taiwan is an example that they don't have to.

My parents have a remarkably egalitarian marriage, as do my in-laws. Choices made are choices made together (I presume, but with confidence), and yet are they any less "American" than couples 150 years ago where the woman had no chance of owning property, voting or having a career in the professional sense?

So...bollocks to all of it. You can have deep cultural roots - roots so deep that you don't even know from where they're growing - and treat women as equals. Yes, you can.

Home Is Where the Lao Jia Is

Photo of colorful yarn from here

"I should let you know," I said recently on the first day of a new class, "that I'll be leaving for a few months in August. I'll come back around mid-October."

"Really?" my new students exclaimed. "Why...how did you get such a long vacation and where are you going?"

"One of the advantages of my job is that I can take all the leave I want, as long as I let the company know well in advance. I don't get paid for it, but that's OK. I'd rather get more unpaid leave than less paid leave. As for why and where, I'm going to Turkey for two months and then home to visit my parents and in-laws."

"Why Turkey?" came the obvious question.

"Because my mother's family is Armenian from Turkey," I said, writing out Armenian (亞美尼亞人) in Chinese on the board as I said it - nobody in Taiwan knows it automatically in English. "Many Armenians used to live there, but in 1915 the Turks started to kill them and force them out, and many died and others ran away. My family came to America. So you could say that southern Turkey is my ancestral home," I replied as I wrote "ancestral home" on the board and invited students to guess what it meant.

"Is it like 老家?" one student surmised.

"Yes, exactly. I'm returning to my lao jia for a visit."

There was a pause.

"Man, I sound Chinese," I said as they laughed.

Since then, two thoughtful blog posts I've read recently - Home is the Lint in My Pocket fromOffbeat Home and Home and Books by Kathmeista have gotten me thinking about home. (Both are definitely worth your reading time). Home as a person who has a lao jia - most Americans do, but few ever think to visit it, and many have no idea where it might be - home as a person currently dealing with a family illness (fortunately all signs point to it being something we'll get through with a happy ending), and home as both a traveler and expat.

A lot of people write about where they fit in (or how they fit in to a new community), where they're from or how they define "home". I see it a little differently - I feel as though I have many homes, with different connections to all of them. Instead of viewing these connections as a web, I view them as different skeins of yarn with varying thicknesses, textures and colors. I'm connected to all of them, just in different ways and with different feelings attached to each. I'm closer to some than to others, but no matter how pale or thin the thread, there's still some slender attachment.

As many Americans do, I technically have more than one lao jia - I can count Armenia via Turkey, Poland, Switzerland and the UK/Ireland among them, as well as a trickle of Iroquois blood. The reason I tend to be the most attached to my Armenian heritage is not out of any feeling of superiority: simply that it's the one with the closest generational association. My grandfather still speaks Armenian, after a fashion. I have no other living relatives whose native language is Polish, or Swiss, or Iroquois or Gaelic (although on one side, many speak some Polish as a result of growing up in a community of Polish immigrants). We still set out hummus, babaghanoush, lahmajoun, tabbouleh, shish kebab, pilaf, bowls of olives, string cheese and cheorog at family functions. While kielbasa, pierogies and galumpkies have made an appearance on the other side, it's far more rare.

That said, I'm also proud to be Polish (kielbasa! yay! If I ever do go vegetarian, kielbasa along with lamb kebab and lahmajoun may be the last painful threads to cut) and do fully intend to visit Poland one day, in the not-too-distant future.

I've never been to Armenia, Mousa Dagh (where my Armenian ancestors are really from), Poland or Switzerland, but I feel connected to these ancestral homes with slender but vibrantly-colored thread, a connection that seems tenuous but, like a dark dye, has seeped into me in ways that I'm still discovering. The yarn seems thin, but the importance of the tie presents in its brilliant hues. I'm sure that when we do make the journey to Mousa Dagh later this year - this year! We already have tickets to Istanbul! - that I'll discover even more ways in which I'm tied to this place I'd never laid eyes on before.

I've found that many Taiwanese and Chinese people feel similarly: they may have never been to their ancestral home, but making a trip there, if done, is not something to be done lightly. Their family may have lived in Taiwan or a province of China that they're not originally from for hundreds of years and even tens of generations, but they can still tell you, if not the village of their origin, then the region or province. Even Taiwanese who in every other respect do not think themselves Chinese are often able to say "Well, I'm Taiwanese and this is my country, but my great-great-great-great-great-great grandparents came from Quanzhou (in Fujian)."

I have two hometowns - Saugerties, NY and Highland, NY. My thin, white connection to Saugerties is really just in childhood memories: picking all of mom's tiger lilies to make a bouquet. Roller skating in the kitchen. Playing with my friend Peter up the street. Picking some sort of azalea and finding an earwig inside. Listening to Richard Marx (hey, it was the '80s) with friends from school. Winning a school award for art. The time my sister found the little cup of hydrogen peroxide that Mom was soaking earrings in, and drank it (they called poison control. She was fine). The time I filled the house with smoke trying to bake Jiffy Mix cornbread without permission. Mom's screaming and Dad's snapping to action when the cat brought home a still-living black snake.

A slightly stronger, but murkier, connection to Highland: my family still lives there in a lovely old farmhouse with all sorts of annoying quirks. I go home once a year or so to spend a week with them, and I enjoy several aspects of that time: crickets in the evening instead of traffic and neighbors shuffling about. Cooler, less humid weather. Waking up to American morning shows (totally vapid, but I have this thing where I like to watch them when I'm home). Trees and grass right outside.

My parents' beautiful rural backyard at our day-after-wedding brunch.

When I was going through adolescence, though, I can't say I held any warm feelings for the town. I didn't share the town's community values (conservative) or outlook (not inclined to celebrate learning, focused more on sports). School was very much a "why do kids needs all these 'arts' and 'multicultural studies'? When I was young we learned the three R's and if that was good enough for me then it's good enough for my kid!" I had friends, but we were more of a little group apart from others than among them: I just wasn't interested in the things that interested the town. You should have been there to see the shining of my eyes the day I was set to leave for college. I would miss my family but not the town. Highland taught me a lot about who I was by showing me what I didn't want to be, and while I visit home, I really restrict it to visiting my parents and the much cooler town of New Paltz down the road - I don't bother much with Highland. You can say I've never really looked back. I do like some small towns - New Paltz is great, and I find Bangor, ME to be really charming - just not Highland.

In contrast to the itchy woolen yarn in forgettable colors that connects me to Highland, I'm tied in several ways to my home during college - Washington DC and its surrounding area. I didn't like everything about GWU, but I did get a good education there, not to mention the chance to study abroad, live on my own and be exposed to an urban awakening that has kept me a happy monkey in concrete jungles ever since. Could I have gotten a similar education for less than GWU's exorbitant price tag (though I was on a Presidential scholarship so I paid a lot less than many students there)? Yeah, but I met Brendan at GWU which is why I affectionately call him my "very expensive sweetheart"! Gee-dub wasn't perfect by any stretch, but it was cool and urban and without it I wouldn't have such a fantastic husband.

After a year in China, I returned and lived in nearby and just-as-urban Arlington, VA. For most of that time I rented a townhouse with others on Columbia Pike, and the safe-yet-multicultural, not-yet-gentrified, slightly gritty feel of the neighborhood weaseled its way into my heart with its downmarket charm, Ethiopian and Salvadorean restaurants, independent coffee shops and second run theater that serves alcohol. I made a lot of friends in that time and while I didn't care for my job in those years, I do look back on my social life in Arlington with a warm heart.

More distinctive threads connect me to India and China. In her story "The Long Conversation", Deryn P. Verity says, "...but the cliche is true: your first foreign country speaks to you as no subsequent one can. Although you may come to prefer life in other places, first patterns persist, providing insistent, if faded, touchstones for everything to come."

India was like that for me - I can't say whether I do or don't prefer life in other places, because my experience in India was so life-changingly different that "preference" doesn't really come into it. Simply put, India is the touchstone by which I measure everything that has come after. It's not a matter of preference. It's a matter of what is. I got my first taste of children on dusty side streets shouting questions at me just for being foreign: Sister, Sister! Are you liking our idli-dosa? I lived a vegetarian life in which I was woken up by chickens cawing and put to bed by goats bleating. I cooled off on the hottest days by sitting on the floor. I learned to use a squat toilet and got my first taste of true bargaining in a riotous market. You may think you bargain in flea markets in the states - you don't. I learned to enjoy Saturday nights that consisted of watching TV with Amma and Shiva and going to bed at 10, before the current would go out. Do I "prefer" life in Taiwan? I can't honestly say. India was a home to me when I was so desperate to see something of the world, a home to me in that I lived in a family home and, for all intents and purposes, had a family there.

A taste of a different kind of urban life in Madurai, India

China was not as much of a life-changing experience. If India is the touchstone for all future experiences abroad, China is anti-matter. Brown and gray, the frayed threads that connect me to China bring back memories of a Miao wedding in the hills, the best Sichuanese food of my life (although Tianfu in Dingxi comes close), friendly locals, fiery haw-berry brandy, seeing a giant roach while playing canasta with my roommate, watching horrendous state-sponsored TV, and memorable trips to Xinjiang and Xi'an. Drinking beer by the paved-over riverside and hiking in Phoenix Park and taking the bus to Guiyang just to eat pizza and have tea in the pagoda on the river. It reminds me of walking up the hill behind the department store, through the market and to Fragrant Mountain Temple, one of the few truly preserved temples in the country (covering over a temple in bathroom tile and calling it 'restored' does not count), and studying Chinese in the Guanyin shrine while drinking tea with Old Zhang.

Old Zhang at Fragrant Mountain Temple - Zunyi, China

But it also brings back memories of twice-contracted pneumonia, gray chicken feet in viscous soup, picking up my gloves warming on the charcoal heater only to find that they'd melted (I thought they were made of wool!), towels that moved water around but didn't absorb it, being put in a SARS quarantine and not being able to access news easily: I didn't learn that the USS Cole was bombed until I left the country months later. It reminds me of smoggy skies (if India is a touchstone, China is murky quartz) and box-shaped concrete behemoths lurking in the distance. It reminds me of buying jewel boxes topped with shards of priceless porcelain smashed during the Cultural Revolution. It reminds me of people who would overcharge me even after vigorous bargaining and of a blatant disregard for women's rights or respect for women's equality - more so than India. It reminds me of a scarred and saddened country with the worst air and water quality I've ever experienced - a country that I hope, for the sake of its 1.6 billion people, will throw off its sad 20th century inheritance and usher in a new government.

I can't say I loved China, or even particularly liked it, but I do have a lot of stories to tell (like the time I pooped on a pig, or the time I puked on a bus driver, or saw a Muslim cemetery upturned with a new housing development about to be plopped on top) and I can't say it didn't impact me. Was it "home"? Not by a long shot, but it was a kinda-sorta home for the time I was there and for the memories it brought me.

Which brings me to Taiwan. I've stayed here for nearly five years, and so, really, Taiwan is now my home. It will still be my home if we choose to leave, and I can't imagine leaving with no plans to return. I said the same thing about India, and I've been back four times, so I don't take those proclamations lightly. Taxi drivers who have an opinion on everything and ask me questions that would be rude by Western standards, the kids in my neighborhood who practice violin or piano (some are pretty good, others should honestly quit and find something they're more talented at), the pedestrian-unfriendly larger streets with their unrelenting scooter swervings and exhaust fumes and the quieter lanes where a sense of peace rises from the asphalt as I ride my bike through. The great seafood and etiquette-free but friendly demeanor of the people. Four and a half years of friends and experiences. The breathtaking views from the road up Hehuan Mountain and the slower pace of Pingdong life.

Taiwan is my home, in a way that no place has been since India and Washington, DC, and considering the portion of my adult life spent here, now approaching critical "I feel more at home when I get off the plane in Taoyuan than I do when I get off the plane in New York" mass, I feel like there's more than one thread connecting me. A blue-green thread of friends, a bright red thread of daily life and colorful festivals, a heathered thread of friendliness mixed with occasionally rude behavior (OK, not rude, just not polite by Western standards) and a pink fried pork colored thread of food. There are all sorts of tiny but unbreakable bits of fishing line hooking into me from living for years in Jingmei and watching the old folks who sit outside gossiping get older, the kids pushed around by grandmas, housewives or Indonesian nannies get older, stores opening and closing, being on a first-name basis with the 7-11 clerks, and being used to speaking Chinese outside home and work. If I ever moved back to an English-speaking country I swear I'd get jolted back to reality the first time I were to get in a taxi and try to give directions in Mandarin!

I do wish I could say "yes, this is my home". In her post, Kath talked about how Cornwall, New Zealand and Taiwan were all homes to her. In her "lint in my pocket" piece, the writer's home was clearly Guildford, England. My friend Emily talks of England and Australia as her twin homes (although after her latest stint in England she may be more inclined towards Australia).

I feel like I have multiple homes: Mousa Dagh; Poland; Saugerties; Highland; Washington, DC; Arlington, VA; Madurai, India; Zunyi, China; Taipei, Taiwan. I can't name a single one as my true home, and I can't say exactly how to prioritize one over the other. It's like they're all a giant knobby scarf, and I'm woven right in there. Or that they're all ropes for hanging trapezes as well as the colorful net below and I am the acrobat, swinging around to newer places and yet knowing that I am supported and in part defined by the places I've been.

They're all home, and where many people feel the need to be grounded, to have a place of origin or somewhere to come from and go back to, I feel better hurtling through mid-air, far from grounded, knowing that my multiple homes are swinging above me and knitted below me, and that with the experiences and knowledge they've provided I can safely swing to ever newer destinations.