Small Eats

This post has been updated!

A Hungry Girl's Guide to Taipei regularly holds (or maybe it was only once) votes on the best eats in Taipei.

I always enjoy reading these, and keep abreast of that blog as I search for more delicious food in this city, which isn't hard to do anyway as it's a mecca of delicious food.

The thing is, I've always felt that the voting sections and reviews in general focus too much on foreign/Western food and not enough on Taiwanese food, which is far more delicious because the people making it really know what they're doing. I realize that posting on where to find great Taiwanese food in Taipei is like a fish telling some other fish where to find water, but there are times when a glowing recommendation is in order.

Therefore, instead of doing a vote, here's my little run-down of the best food in Taipei as chosen by me, myself, I, moi, mi, yo, je, ziji and wo.

Most of it is Taiwanese food, but some of the below is foreign and I just like it enough to recommend it.

Many of these will seem like rehashes of previous posts, but then if I liked it enough to run home and write about it once, obviously it's good.

The best...

...goose noodles

A-Li Gang Goosemeat

Gongguan, on the same road as Sai Baba but closer to Roosevelt Road, almost at the intersection of Roosevelt and the first road north of the Gongguan Starbucks on the right.

Delicious. Savory broth that requires no added sauces and tender, oily goosemeat in generous portions, as well as lots of other things on the menu.

...lumpia (lun bing)

Shinkong Mitsukoshi B-1 food court

Shinkong Life Tower, Taipei Main Station

I bet you weren't expecting that. But it's true. The lovely laobanniang who makes this lumpia does a fine job of it.

...shrimp pancake

Yangon

Gongguan, near the northern end of Gongguan Night Market by that creepy kids' park

Wonderful chunks of whole shrimp in a lightly fried, not too oily Thai-style shrimp pancake. This place will be mentioned later, for Yunnan/Burmese food...

...beef noodles

That beef noodle joint in Jingmei just up from MRT Exit 2, with the fat chihuahua named "Meimei"

Dark, savory broth packed with flavor, generous cuts of tender meat and homemade chunky noodles make this my favorite among the many beef noodle options in Taipei (though Zhang Mama on Heping E. Road is also good).

...teppanyaki

The teppanyaki joint in Tonghua Night Market with the red decor (near the Keelung Road entrance, on the right)

I was struggling with whether to name this place or the one in Jingmei Night Market where the chefs where spiffy blue uniforms, but the Jingmei one took kimchi pork teppanyaki off the menu so they lose. This place gives free vegetables as they all do, but they include qingcai (the dark green celery-like vegetable so popular here) which is cooked beautifully, rather than the usual cabbages and bean sprouts.

...oyster omelets

Ningxia Night Market

No question. Next!

...onion pancake

Ruiguang Road, near the Barista Coffee, Neihu

I know it seems odd to recommend something so literally pedestrian as onion pancakes, but these are really good. Extra garlicky. Right next to the giant bus stop on Ruiguang Road.

...cup of coffee

Black Bean Coffee

Zhongshan North Road just south of the Zhongshan-Zhongzheng intersection in Shilin (MRT Shilin)

Try their Monsoon Malabar, ignore the odd music ("The Entertainer" on a harp, "I Am The Walrus" nonvocal piano cover).

or...

The coffeeshop in Naruwan Indigenous People's Market, Huanhe/Guangzhou Road intersection, Longshan Temple area. Delicious coffee, all grown in aboriginal areas in Taiwan. Who knew that Taiwanese coffee could be pretty good?

Update! Roger Cafe - Keelung Road just north of Liuzhangli, east side of the street next to George Vocational Technical High School bus stop.

Go here for the ginger latte! The coffee is good but not gourmet, though they're better than Dante and the prices are fantastic. Plus, well, they have ginger lattes...

Update! - Guy in a little coffee stall just east of the Shida campus (the one on the north side of Heping E. Road, not the main campus). He makes a lovely cup of coffee and has several different beans available. Not cheap by coffee-stall standards. The Mom's Pie's guy often sets up next to him on Thursdays.

...seafood

Shengmeng Seafood

In the small night market just south(?) of Bao'an temple, MRT Yuanshan

Quite simply the most delicious seafood I've ever had in a seafood-and-beer joint in Taipei (and not, say, next to the ocean). Try their pineapple shrimp.

...expensive food with a view

Hongmu (Redwood) Tea House, also known as "Mountain Tea House"

Maokong, not too far from the currently nonoperational Maokong Gondola Station

The tea is alright, but the real attraction here is a double-whammy of great food and a fantastic view of Taipei, especially by night. Try their cubed lemon chicken (li-mon ji ding or something), their mountain pig (shan zhu) and top it off with some sweet potato leaves (di gua ye).

...shrimp roll on rice

Dihua Street, the little shrimp roll stall near Xiahai Temple

Hands-down.

...dan zai mian (Tainan-style noodles)

"Tainan Noodle Restaurant"

Songde Road north of Xinyi, south of the Prudential building which is at #171

These guys - a family who lives in the same building as the restaurant - are from Tainan and make their local food extremely well.

...American-style trans fats

Tie: The Diner for typical American restaurant fare, Yuma Southwestern Grill for yummy, fattening Tex-Mex

The Diner is near Dunhua South Road, around the corner from Carnegie's (blech). Yuma is off Zhongxiao and it's easy to find - just Google. They advertise a lot.

Most expats will be aware of these two so no need to say much.

...Hakka Food

I'm sorry. Hakka food is always wonderful. There is no best restaurant because they're all fantastic. Here are the four I enjoy the most:

- Hakka Food - Taipei Main Station, turn towards 2/28 Park at the corner just south of Zhongxiao where there is a restaurant with a 'rainforest' themed-sign, just near Shinkong Life Tower, keep walking, it's on the right - cheap, quick Hakka food with lots of oil

- Hakka Noodles Restaurant - hidden in a lane just in front of the branch of Shida in Wanlong, south of Keelung Road (bus stop is "Shida Branch"). They don't make much but their dry Hakka noodles are fan-tast-tic and the dumplings are also great. Dou pi ("tofu skin") is vinegary and delicious. Also run by a friendly family who lives just behind the restaurant. They're from Xinzhu.

- That hidden Hakka restaurant behind Taipei Main Station - except I can't seem to find it again. I'll ask the person who took us there and post an update. Good for sharing dishes with a large party.

- Hakka Restaurant - in a lane off Yongkang Street, on the righthand side coming from Xinyi Road. Pretty good all-around Hakka food.

...mba wan (rou yuan)

Yuanlin Rou Yuan, Heping E. Road and Fuxing S. Road, next to Shengli Store (the discount 'everything' store on the corner)

Sooooo good. The obasan who work there speak wonderfully expressive Taiwanese and wear hairnets. The mba wan comes in thick brown gravy with bamboo and mushrooms added to the mix.

...tiramisu

Alley Cat.

Branches at Zhishan MRT, Tianmu and on Songren Road far south of Xinyi.

No question. There's a small branch behind Red House Theater in Xinyi but I think they only do pizzas. The pizza is also fantastic, but their tiramisu...wow. It's the real thing, made with real alcohol.

...pizza

Alley Cat - see above

Delicious, thin-crust pizza with high-quality ingredients

...Yilan-style onion pancake with egg

Little stall at MRT Shilin

...in the courtyard in front of Exit 1

They'll make it with a variety of seasonings, including basil. Yumm-o!

...Filipino Food

Zhongshan North Road, eastern side lanes between MRT Minquan W. Road and MRT Yuanshan, go on Sunday

It's all good. A lot of it is made with innards, though. Any restaurant in this area - all are open on Sunday to cater to the crowds returning from church - is wonderful.

...Thai, Yunnan and Myanmar Food

Yangon - Gongguan Night Market (see above) - good for the Myanmar and Yunnan-style dishes as well as shrimp rolls

Thai, Yunnan and Myanmar Food - Ruiguang Road, Neihu (ignore their Gongguan branch - it's not as good) - great for the Thai food on the menu, especially coconut red curry chicken and coconut tofu. Their hot coffee with condensed milk is also fantastic.

Nanshijiao (Zhonghe) - I haven't found it yet, but apparently there is a street in this area with tons of Southeast Asian food stalls that are all fantastic, catering to the local population.

...Vietnamese food

Xindian Night Market stall

the little stall near the chain-link barrier before the suspension bridge

Delicious pho. Absolutely the best I've had outside Southeast Asia.

...Southeast Asian "Small dishes"

The "Thai and Vietnamese" hole-in-the-wall to the west of Keelung Road

In the lanes - just north of Xinyi, enter the lanes across from the World Trade Center/Grand Hyatt.

Run by a friendly Vietnamese guy who speaks English. It's all good - get their cold rice noodles with fried pork roll for NT100. So delicious!

...home-style Taiwanese food

Auntie Xie's

#109 (?) Bo'ai Road, Ximen area - near Hengyang Road intersection, in a tiny walk-down stairwell, across from a giant white horrorshow of a place that I think is intended for tacky weddings.

This is the stuff that the taitai'll cook if you are ever invited to a Taiwanese family's home for dinner. Wonderful. Not to be missed. If you haven't tried this, you haven't tried Taiwanese food.

...hand-roasted tea

Mingcha Yuan

Maokong, Wenshan District, Zhinan Road Section 3 Lane 40 #32-1
A very hard-to-find little spot in Maokong far from the gondola with a nice view (but not as good as the places near the gondola station).

The guy who works there roasts all his own tea and it's all fragrant and delicious. Unlike many places, they don't provide meals but they do have snacks. It's mostly a place for locals to meet and play cards or mahjong.

Wang's Tea, the famous tea store near Dihua Street (Chongqing N. Road Section 2, Lane 64, # 26) is also good.

...chocolate dessert

My kitchen

I make better truffles - which are surprisingly easy to make in Taiwan - than anyone else seems to offer in this city. I can also make a truffle cake (if you ask nicely I'll even e-mail you the recipe) that makes gods cry, but I don't have an oven so I can't make it in Taiwan.

But if you can't come to my kitchen, well, I don't know what to tell you.

Chocoholic (Yongkang Street, first lane on the left) makes a nice dark Venezuelan spice hot cocoa, but it's not as cocoa-y as it could be.

Chocozing (near Zhongshan Sports Center) makes a good dark chocolate cocoa and pretty good truffles but their regular cocoa is too light.

Cafe 85 makes one good chocolate dessert - the Italian chocolate mousse cake. It's actually quite good. But nothing else is spectacular so I dunno.

Starbucks makes one good dessert - the chocolate cake with the goo inside. It is very chocolatey and worth the NT70. But that means you have to go to a Starbucks!

Update! Dean & Deluca - Breeze Center at Zhongxiao Fuxing - these guys do some damn good chocolate cake and other chocolate delectables. Don't buy their chocolate bars though; most are off-date and are white and crumbly.

Update! Salt&Peanuts Cafe - 2nd or 3rd lane on the right of Shida Rd (before the lane with Grandma Nitti's but not too much before, near the guy who sells socks on a blanket) when coming from Roosevelt, near the Korean restaurant. - Get their "hot brownie" which comes with vanilla ice cream. It's very chocolatey and truly wonderful!

...wine

Maison Alexandre

Zhongshan N. Road north of the park/Japanese school, near Whose Books and Mary's Hamburger

Good duck and smoked salmon baguettes (though they use cheap cheese), decent house wine NT 150/glass. Woo!

Near it is a place called "The Wine Closet" that we haven't tried yet.

Vino Vino

The food here is mediocre-to-bad, but they have a huge wooden balcony overlooking Shida park and house wine for NT800/bottle or 200 a glass. It's a fine place to just enjoy some wine with fantastic outdoor seating. Eat elsewhere first.

...Belgian Beer

For selection - Cafe Odeon, lane 86 (?) off Wenzhou Street, Gongguan (turn into the lane away from Xinsheng at the Bastille)

For outdoor seating and a great atmosphere - Red House (Hong Jia) in Shida, next to the park - it's tiny and can only hold maybe 25 people, but if you can get a table it's brilliant. Music varies, but it's in an old-style house that is very narrow.

...south Indian food

Exotic Masala House

#19 Pucheng Street, Shida

Because it's also the only south Indian food. Their idli and dosa are merely "alright" but their curries - especially the Madras chicken cooked in coconut, are fantastic. Also, I recommend the aloo parothas.

...north Indian food

Ali Baba's Indian Kitchen

Nanjing E. Road, not far from Jianguo Road

Not because the food is amazing, but because if you ask them to make it the way they (the waiters who are from the subcontinent) would want it, they do a pretty good job of preparing a decent curry.

...Pakistani food

Alla-Din Indian and Pakistani Kitchen

Raohe Night Market

Fiery hot spiciness, wrapped in more fire. Vegetables cooked in real ghee.

...Night Market

There are three that I recommend, and one that I haven't tried yet but was recommended to me.

Raohe Night Market - I don't care what they say about Shilin and Shida, this one is the best for pure choices of food alone.

Jingmei Night Market - great food, local stuff, friendly people, and more great food. Jingmei has been a town for longer than Taipei has been a cohesive city, and so there are many famous stalls here which have been in continuous operation since the time when the area wasn't called "Scenery Beautiful" but rather "End of the River" in Taiwanese.

Ningxia Night Market - for down-to-earth Taiwanese snacks, it can't be beat.

...and recommended to me was:

Nanjichang Market - it means "South of the Terminal" and I have no idea why (though apparently it's because many of those who settled here worked for the railroad company, and Wanhua Station is not far away, to the north. It's just south of Xizang (Tibet) Street in Wanhua, in the lanes along Zhonghua Road.

...deals on drinks with outdoor seating

The open-air bars behind Red House Theater, Ximen

Ximen MRT Exit 1

A very alternative-lifestyle friendly area. Don't expect to meet and flirt with a member of the opposite sex here, because he/she likely plays for the other team. Not that it matters, but worth mentioning if anyone reading this is looking for gay/lesbian friendly nightspots. Very lively area with scads of outdoor seating - everyone manages to get a seat even on balmy weekend evenings. Being in back of Red House means that the scenery isn't typical Taipei scooters-and-cement, but a lovely old-style courtyard. Plus good food is on offer; there's a branch of Alley Cat here!

...Thai desserts

Raohe Night Market

Most Thai restaurants in Taipei make decent food, but they all fall flat on desserts, which are some variation on tasteless-pink-goo-in-ice. This little stall near the end of Raohe Night Market (the end where you can pick up buses along Nanjing E. Road, not the end near Songshan Station) makes great banana crepes, with your choice of honey, chocolate, condensed milk or a combination.

...Korean

That joint whose business card I lost

In a lane near the Shida Road-Roosevelt Intersection.

Seriously, the only good and basically authentic Korean restaurant in Taipei. The other famous place on Pucheng Street is good (really, it is) but it's not authentic. This place does it fo' reals. Lots of small dishes including kimchi (duh), a real barbecue, not a barbecue-style stir-fry, dolsot bibimbap in a real hot stone bowl, and great gooey rice-gluten thingos in tasty sauce - teokboki.

...shameless plug for my neighborhood 'standard fare' restaurant

Lao Ma (Old Mother)

#230 Jingfu Street, Wenshan District, Jingmei MRT Exit 3 (across from the Hi Life)

I love this place, but not because it's special - seeing as spots like it are open all over the city, in every neighborhood. They make the standard noodles, dumplings, beef rolls, Chengdu dishes, copper hotpot, onion pancakes etc. with a fridge full of small dishes and beer. It's no different than any other spot like it, but it's in my neighborhood so it's my basic spot. If you're in this area and looking for food, and the night market hasn't opened yet and you don't want beef noodles, come here.

...Buns full of curried or spiced meat

nice lady with barrel full of buns

Roosevelt Road Lane 333, Gongguan

Their spicy lamb buns are to die for.

...sweet potatoes

nice Zhanghua Lady

by Jingmei MRT Exit 2

Another barrel of delicious food, this woman's family owns a farm in Zhanghua and once a week they truck their potatoes up to Taipei where she cooks and sells them. Wonderful. In the mornings, next to her you will find a friendly older gentleman or his wife selling a wooden rice bucket full of vegetarian sticky rice (su you fan) with tangy pink sauce. Also delicious.

...stinky tofu

Another plug for my neighborhood, but the lady near the 7-11 on Jingfu Street by MRT Exit 3 who sets up every evening at about 5pm makes a fine fried stinky tofu in a tangy, spicy sauce with pickled cabbage. Her laogong sits with his friends and drinks Gaoliang out of teacups with his buddies while she mans the tofu stand. If he likes you, he'll give you some to warm you up (and burn your intestines) while you wait.

...dumplings

Shanghai Dumplings
Minsheng E. Road, east of Dunhua but not very far, near the Dunkin' Donuts

I like this place more than Dingtaifung, because while Dingtaifung is delicious, it's simply way overpriced. This place has comparable dumplings but, not being famous, they're expensive but not quite so much as Dingtaifung. About NT100 for a steamer.

...shaved ice

Sugar House

Nanshijiao Night Market, in the road that branches to the left after entering the market from Nanshijiao MRT

This place does shaved ice the way foreigners usually like it - with lots of fresh fruit and condensed milk. The ice is available in water and milk snowflake, with a variety of seasonal fruits. You can also get sundaes and old-style sua bing with the toppings that most Taiwanese seem to like (gooey things, goo balls, bright pink goo, peanuts, red bean, corn, tomatoes, taro goo and salty candied goo).

...hot pot / buffet

A specific all-you-can-eat hotpot, seafood and buffet restaurant on Fuxing S. Road between Da'an and Technology Building MRT - but I can't remember the name, on the western side.

It's not cheap - at least $1200/person I think (I was treated so I don't really know) - but it's spectacular. The hotpot is great, as it usually is, with tons of fresh ingredient options to add.

Along with the hotpot, there is a seafood buffet lined with expensive goodies such as octopus sashimi, sea urchins and giant raw oysters with radish, wasabi, ginger and garlic mash to flavor them as you suck 'em down. There's also the usual array of free noodles and other hotpot additions, drinks (including all you can drink beer) and dessert - cake and ice cream (the ice cream is pretty decent).

These restaurants abound in Taipei, but I single this one out for the great selection, especially in the seafood buffet, and the really good hotpot broth.

...update: Sichuanese Food

I bet you all think I'm gonna say "Kiki" across from Zhongxiao Fuxing Breeze Center. But I'm not.

Kiki is good, but it's not the best Sichuanese in town (though they are the only ones who have the pork-stuffed green peppers, which are astounding).

For the real stuff, go to Dingxi MRT in Yonghe. Apparently this area hosts an enclave of Sichuanese waishengren, so the food in the restaurants there is finger-lickin' authentic. And it truly is. Go here:

Tian Fu Jia Chang Cai (Zheng Sichuan Wei)
Yonghe, Renai Road #5, Dingxi MRT

It's a small place near a fruit store with a little wooden screen in front of the door. You would never know it was anything special from the outside; but the inside is packed with people, enough so that this humble establishment has set up benches outside for people to wait.

You'll see young families here, and people with unmistakeable Mainland accents - Sichuan accents, notably - mingling with people speaking Taiwanese. All enjoy the food, which is the real deal. Seriously!

Normally I am not a fan of things imported from China, but there is one major exception - hua jiao (flower pepper). The hua jiao you find in those little containers in other restaurants is nothing. Tasteless. It does. not. compare. This place gets its hua jiao from Sichuan itself, and you can tell by the whole peppercorns and the fact that unlike the junk in containers, it truly numbs your lips and tongue, adding an extra layer of flavor to the scathing red chilis that adorn most dishes.

Get the chili-soaked fish, which is fish more or less boiled in chili oil with water, fish stock, onions, pickled greens, more chopped chilis and handfuls of hua jiao peppercorns. Prepare for initiation by fire.

Also delicious is the Sichuanese restaurant across the street from Emei in Gongguan.

...soy milk and you tiao

No surprises here - Yonghe Soy Milk! They're the best in the city, methinks, and famous for a reason. Get the cold soy milk with "you tiao" (a kind of pastry that my Taiwanese cookbook translates as "deep fried greasy stick") wrapped in a sesame-encrusted pancake. Dip the you tiao in the soy milk as you drink it.

...Taiwanese desserts

Meet Fresh
All over Taipei

Try their Japanese peanut muaji, then you'll see. For a chain establishment, though this chain is really quite new, I have to admit I love their desserts. I'm also a fan of their brown sugar cake ice and several other items on the menu.

Whew. That's all I've got for now. Enjoy!

More Slap-Happy Fun

So I am sure we all know about the unfortunate, childish, and totally hilarious slapping that went on in the Legislative Yuan the other day. I love living in a country where politics is a spectator sport.

And apparently I am not alone in this.

Over beers with a friend last night, she mentioned that Yahoo! Taiwan put the article about Chiu slapping Lee in...hee hee, get this...the sports section. I love it. Apparently someone over at Yahoo! Taiwan has a fine sense of humor. Great minds think alike and all.

It's hard tell, but here's a screen shot:



Yahoo! Taiwan has already corrected the error, so no use heading to their website to see if it's still up.

Commentary

A really good piece today in David's blog at David on Formosa. I'm linking here because I know my blog has several readers who are friends and family of friends who might not know that David's blog exists, as they don't live in Taiwan.

How the KMT Constructs History

For anyone who reads this and wonders why I get all het up when talking about politics, things like this are why.

Only a party who instigated human rights abuses (ahem, the KMT) would be so daft as to try to close down a human rights museum discussing and exhibiting the crimes they perpetrated.

And only a party who seems to think they have a right to re-write history would attempt to excise two important pieces of their own history - the first being their former human rights abuses, the second being to ignore Lee Tung-hui (the first elected President of Taiwan - I am so sick of my Shi-da instructor pretending that Chiang Kai-Shek was a "President" - he was a dictator). Why? His political views are, shall we say, inconvenient. From reading up on things he's said recently and politicians he's supported, you'd think he was a member of the DPP.

It makes you think about why this particular, and entirely unacceptable, belief that they can control the writing of history, seems to be shared between the KMT and the Communist Party of China right across the strait.

Two Questions and a Comment

Thanks to the wonders of modern science, telekinesis is now something that is technologically feasible. We also have robots - sort of, that child robot I saw on the news looked more creepy than useful - and I am sure it is within our technological capability to create cars that fly and jet packs. We have a system called "Teh Internet" that we can connect to literally almost everywhere, plugging into a worldwide grid of people and information. We can position ourselves exactly by satellite and get it downloaded to a telephone.

We're every 1950's-era teenage boy's dream world, except for the thing where we're not on Mars yet.

So how is it that we can't seem to do anything about global warming?

Brendan thinks it's because global warming is about getting people to get their collective acts together, not solving something in a lab or whiz-kid's garage. I agree partially, but also think that some of it can be solved in a lab (chemical that turns all the carbon dioxide in the air into breathable oxygen, solidifying the carbon which we would then collect, anyone?). I mean we've figured out alchemy. It costs several million dollars but we can turn a little lead into gold if we want.

Second question - newspapers have massive readerships online. Huge. People around the world can now read papers that they had no access to just a decade or two ago. Those online papers are chock-full of advertisements. Some of them are quite annoying - they open out and obscure the story and you have to click them away - or they roll down from a banner, or they look like photos that go with the article but are really ads. Sometimes they're in the middle of the article. I accept all that as a necessary evil.

But then, with all those readers and all those ads, how is it that newspapers are not profitable anymore, and so many are in trouble? Are they not charging enough for these ads? Are they not choosing good ads that people may actually click on? Newspapers in ye olden days were profitable because of their advertising, not because of their subscription fees...those barely paid for the paper the paper was printed on. So what's the deal?

I'm sure there'll be some comment with two perfectly logical answers that I, a being of lesser intelligence, didn't think of. But hey. Ya gotta ask.

In Taiwan-related news, the members of the Taiwanese legislature are getting slap-happy. A KMT rep (Li) called a DPP rep (Chiu) a "violent shrew" and Chiu, who may not be a shrew but certainly is a little violent, opened a can of whoop-ass (apologies for sounding like a teenager from the '90s) on him. It would be wonderful if it weren't terrible. Hitting is never OK, but I'm all in favor of metaphorically beating down people who use sexist terms like "shrew" as if they're acceptable. I realize this is one incident - though not an uncommon one - and I probably can't judge a whole party based on the words of one representative but...err...I'm going to do it anyway.

It makes me wonder what other reactionary, old-skool, woman-hating beliefs the KMT holds, if they think it's acceptable to call a woman a 'shrew' in this day and age.

And it makes me wonder how on earth such a violent streak made it into the elected representatives of the DPP, if they think it's OK to go slap slap slappin'. Though anyone who wants to say "see, the DPP is the violent party" needs to take a really close look at history. From, oh, say, 1950-1975 the violent party (the only party) was most definitely the KMT.

Sanxia

My pengyou crew - Sasha and Cara, and Cara's friend, with Brendan in the back.

I've been short on free time these past few weeks - lots of work - so please forgive me for not putting these through GIMP for color and contrast before posting.

A few weeks ago a group of us went to check out Sanxia. The only other time I've been there was as a side trip from Yingge (which was fun, but heavy on shopping and I didn't have a lot of spare cash at the time), it was getting late and the Old Street had really not been developed yet.

It's amazing what two years can do; when the guy who wrote Taipei Day Trips went it was mostly dusty store fronts and a few coffin makers. When I went in 2006 (or was it 2007?) it was three or four gift shops and closed store fronts.



This time around, almost every shop front was open. The stores themselves were nothing special - the usual teacup shop, porcelain shop, glass shop, traditional wooden toy shop, "Everything for 100 Kuai" shop, local delicacy shop...you know, the usual. It was nice, however, to see the place looking spiffy and well-kept, and to see money flowing in.

One lovely tea shop was in a half-collapsed building; only the walls remained so it felt quite reminiscent. I don't recommend them though; the menu says that individual tea is 50NT each; after you finish they charge you 100 NT (50 for "hot water").

The temple in Sanyi is also very well known and I personally feel it's one of the most beautiful temples in Taiwan. It's small, but every inch of it is carved, twirled, decorated, engraved or embossed into a hurricane of styles and patterns.

On rainy days - all too common in Taiwan - the inside exudes a warmth that, while not actually warm, makes you feel a little less chilly. Metaphorically speaking.

And of course, the day we went was a rainy day.


Sanyi is also famous for its fantastic food; tiny shops selling all sorts of delicious things line the streets (even the regular streets, which are the usual gray-ugly of small Asian towns). Besides the ubiquitous bull's horn croissants, which taste of sesame and remind me of my great-grandmothers Armenian cheorog (don't ask how that's pronounced). Like bagels, they're slightly crispy on the outside - just a little - and chewy and thick on the inside.

It's also famous for traditional medicines and herbs, including ginger root. Ginger root tea, dou hua (a dessert made with silken tofu) and other foods are almost as common as the bullhorn croissants.

Many food stalls have been visited by famous people.


...and this one has been visited by more than one famous person:

(The owner's brother told me the autographs are fake. He says the one on the right is "Ma Ying Ba", older brother of Ma Ying Jiu).

And, of course, the many bullhorn croissant shops need to stay competitive in attracting customers, so they employ traditional Taiwanese imagery in order to advertise themselves and their delicacies. You know, traditional Taiwanese imagery like Santa Claus in a Viking hat.

No, really.

Really.



You thought I was kidding, didn't you?

Hidden Gems

"I'll take the strawberry ice cream crepe with chocolate sauce and dog head, please."

Over the past two and a half years, I've come to discover what a hidden gem Taiwan really is. I may complain to friends that this wonderful little island - a rough-cut green emerald in the South China Sea (with a few gray spots, to be sure) - gets so few tourists. That it feels like the entire world, including the traveling world as exemplified by tour buses at one end, and Lonely Planet-totin' kids at the other - has collectively decided to ignore* Taiwan. If someone who has visited, worked or lived there mentions the trip, many back home will initiate the following conversation:

"So, how was Thailand?"
"Thailand? How should I know? I didn't go."
"Yes you did; I could swear you went to Thailand."
"No, I went to Taiwan."
"Oh, so you were in China then."
"No, I was not in China, I was in Taiwan."

It's kind of sad, really. Between having its own rich history, being the repository for a huge chunk of Chinese history now lost to the Mainland, all of the outdoor activities it offers - when the weather cooperates - the friendly people and the magnificent food, Taiwan should be ranking up there with Japan on travelers' itineraries.

That said - yes, I complain about it. But secretly, I like it this way. I like not having to share my mountain peaks with hordes of backpackers. I like that banana pancakes are only on menus insofar as Taiwanese people seem to like them (though you're more likely to find a fruit waffle than a pancake). I like that even the most "touristy" spots aren't touristy at all, and that the locals haven't sold out to travelers' wallets. Well, maybe in Sun Moon Lake to Chinese wallets, but that's about it. I say this hoping that Penghu doesn't become the next Macau, what with allowing casinos and all. One Macau is enough, thankyouverymuch.

So part of me wants to broadcast to the world what Taiwan has to offer; part of me wants to zip my mouth and keep it all as one big, delicious (literally delicious) secret. If hordes of buxiban English teachers can come, stay a year or two and never really discover what Taiwan is about, what's the point of trying to promote such laid-back, subtle beauty to a world of people who've never even been here?

Which brings me to the next point of this post - within the island that is a hidden gem are several other, smaller little treasures, some tiny and some the size of buildings. I'm talking about the little things that make Taiwan beautiful, but aren't significant in and of themselves, and are usually overlooked. Things like a picturesque old brick wall winding its way up the side of a mountain settlement. A fat, friendly cat lounging on a warm scooter seat.



A huge image of Guanyin, Goddess of Mercy, perched atop a tiny Buddhist temple on Shuiyuan Road (#155 I think) just after it leaves Wanhua District and heads into Zhongzheng. Even from the street, you wouldn't know that this massive statue exists - and by the way, such statues are quite common down the west coast, but I rarely see them in or around Taipei. To see this one, you have to head to Zhongzheng Riverside Park and look, well, up.

I met someone in Zhongzheng Park who told me that this temple has been around since the 40s (the current statue is newer than that) and was erected because that site - just north of Guting and south of Machangding Memorial Park - used to be a popular and safe swimming area for local families. The temple was erected to keep swimmers safe. These days, I wouldn't dare jump into the Xindian River, for fear I might dissolve.

You see it on the two or three decrepit shophouses dotting the streets here and there, or the outlines of old brick arcades.

If you wander deep enough into the alleys, you begin to lose sight of the endless concrete and see the curious potted plants and vines, the friendly old lady with her ancient dog, or the lovely little shrines to all manner of gods you never knew existed.

My favorites of these gods, by the way, are the Yin-Yang God and the God of Insomnia (you can find his shrine deep in Wanhua District, not far from Huanhe South Road). The God of Insomnia doesn't cause insomnia; apparently he cures it. The shrine even has two tall god costumes for participating in parades, and seems to see a reasonably steady stream of locals praying for relief from their sleeping troubles.

You might even come across an unusually beautiful temple, full of artwork that's three centuries old, or older. We came across just such a temple in Wanhua recently - can you tell we like Wanhua? - dedicated to Matsu, goddess of the sea.



Matsu temples are fairly common here, but this one was especially lovely. It has only been at its current location for 30 years, but the idols and altars within it are all several centuries old, and were imported from Fujian with some of the first immigrants to Taiwan. Most of the temple is made of stone and wood.



In the back, we discovered two volunteers doing repair work on one of Matsu's companions (I forget if this one is Thousand Mile Eyes or Long-Hearing Ears).



Down Wanda Road, we also came across a relatively new temple whose dragon columns had especially beautiful lines.



...and at the end of this trail of tiny, insignificant-in-themselves, but beautiful-as-a-whole gems, you might just find an incense shrine topped with a beer can...or a tiny food stall autographed by the President of Taiwan (in Simplified Chinese?)...or a vendor whose specialty seems to be "dog's head crepes" (see the first photo).



*although I have noticed more recently that a huge contingent of visitors to touristy areas do in fact come on tour buses; they're just Korean, Japanese and Chinese so they blend in.

A Good Week for Gods

The coming week is a big week for festivals in Taipei, all celebrating the birthdays of various gods.

For Baosheng Dadi (a medicine god, rumored to have been a real person), Bao'an temple usually holds several days of festivities. As far as I know now, the firewalking (devotees allow themselves to become 'possessed' by various gods and walk across hot coals) will take place at Bao'an temple (MRT Yuanshan) this Thursday, April 9th. It usually happens around 2-3pm. Anyone interested in a truly Taiwanese experience ought to make it out there.

On the same day at about 2pm, there will be a god procession for Baosheng Dadi near Longshan Temple. It will start just off Bangka Blvd (from MRT Longshan Temple, head down Xiyuan Road and turn left on Bangka Blvd. Walk down past the 350 block and hang a left at the 7-11) at about 2pm.

On Tuesday (the 7th) there will be another big celebration in southern Wanhua. It will start at about 11:30 am at a temple off the southern end of Wanda Road (south of where it merges with Baoxing Road, not far from the river) and go all around Wanhua. We came across an old Matsu temple in our ramblings around that area today and they told us it was a particularly nice god parade. The Matsu temple was repairing its Thousand Mile Eyes da sen ("big doll" - tall god costume) at the time of our visit.

Ghosts

We all know that Taiwan is huge on ghosts, ghost mythology and general superstition about how to deal with (and escape the clutches of) said supernatural powers. Don't swim during Ghost Month, never stand in the corner of a hospital room, avoid the fourth floor of any building, sweep your ancestors' tombs once a year, if you're male, never pick up a red envelope you find on the street, buy a tiger suit for children of a certain age to scare ghosts away, never look behind you when someone taps you on the shoulder, never say anyone's real name after dark during ghost month, etc. etc..

As a result of this belief in ghosts, there are quite a few places in Taiwan believed by locals to be 'haunted'.

I'm not a big believer in the paranormal - the closest I can say that I've come to really wondering about this stuff is in my own home. I grew up in an old, creaky farmhouse in upstate New York that my mother insists is haunted. She's got a point: if there's any house in that town (no, not Sleepy Hollow, though not too far from it) with ghosts, it's ours. But that's an entirely different blog post.

I've known for awhile about a local belief in the haunting of a certain large hotel in Xinyi District. Apparently the site of this hotel was once a cemetery that was razed before construction began. Typical creepy story, probably not true, right? Well, true or not, from what I hear a lot of business travelers from other parts of Taiwan or even other parts of "Greater China" (pfft) won't stay there. That apparently, if you walk into the lobby you'll see two very large pieces of calligraphy on either side, but the calligraphy itself is not of any discernable Chinese characters - and was written by a fa shi (not sure how to translate this term, but something between a priest and an exorcist) hired by the hotel as a talisman specifically to keep those ghosts at bay. From what I've been told, only fa shi and dangki (self-injuring spirit diviners) can write such talismans.

I intend to take a look for myself inside that very lobby in a few days. Until then, this is really only something I've heard.

I've also heard about the supposed haunting of the old building of a very well-known hospital in Taipei (the new one is big and shiny, the old building is still in use and was built by the Japanese. I've worked inside it. It's beautiful on the outside, not so much on the inside). I can see why stories like this would abound in an old building, and a hospital at that. But being inside, it looked so much like a typical hospital that the place just didn't feel, well, haunted.

Another part of Taipei, however, has always felt quite ghastly to me. Until today, I didn't know why. Not being a believer in ghosts, I'm still not entirely willing to concede that "It's haunted" is the reason. But anyway.

I haven't posted about it on here yet, but I've recently acquired a new bicycle from a friend who moved home. It's a typical city-dweller's gearless bike, red and shiny. Living in Jingmei, I'm literally a one-minute ride from the entrance to Jingmei Riverside Park, a small park with a bike trail, sitting areas and basketball/tennis courts. It connects to the much longer Huazhong Riverside Park, with a bike trail that heads all the way to the coast.

Afraid as I was at first to cycle in Taipei proper, I've spent a lot of time whizzing up and down that narrow little path, which for the most part is well-maintained. At Jingmei, a haven for older folks (many of whom are in their 90s and still fluent in Japanese, more so than they ever were in Mandarin), the path is strewn with old ladies walking and clapping their hands to promote blood circulation, and old men riding equally old bikes while playing their favorite Taiwanese old-skool music on little transistor radios. That park runs past Gongguan and spills into Guting Riverside Park, which at the moment is a-bloom with daisies in various shades of pink.

Sometime after Guting, something happens to the park. The grass begins to look wilted and the expanse seems more desolate than family-oriented. There's a very ominous hill - obviously manmade - away from the river a bit. In the distance to the left are mist-covered mountain peaks. The river before you looks sad and weepy.

This is the part where you enter Machangding Memorial Park.

I'd heard of Machangding before, but not with that Romanization. A long time ago, I began reading Death in a Cornfield, an excellent compilation of short stories in English by Taiwanese writers, critiquing and disassembling the bits and pieces of Taiwanese society in the 1980s (for anyone with even a rough knowledge of the history of Taiwan, you'll recognize that decade as being a turning point both politically and economically). In the first story, Mountain Path, a place called Ma ch'ang ting is mentioned. It was an execution ground under the Japanese and again during the White Terror.

Because I'm obviously not a very keen observer , I didn't really realize until I re-read the story today that Mach'angting and Machangding are the same place, and that this place where thousands of people were executed less than 70 years ago is not some abstract geographic location in the whorls and folds of Taiwan's topography. It's not a disembodied place-name that has nothing to do with my Taiwan experience. It's the place where I've been swinging back and forth on my bike and the place that I've found, until just now, to be inexplicably creepy.

Many people believe that this place - Machangding - is haunted, and deeply so. That the restless ghosts of those executed there, whom many would say have still not had their fair piece heard, still wander the place and that the hill, where the killings took place, is especially saturated with anger. The area is quite open, allowing the gray days of Taipei to settle in unhidden, the moldering expanse of sky to stretch unbroken and the wind to hiss through unobstructed - this minimal topography only enhances one's feeling that something, to be frank, just ain't quite right about the place.

Now, as I said - I'm not a big believer in ghosts. It's possible - even likely - that Machangding Memorial Park is only chill-inducing insofar as the poor planning of some not-so-aesthetically-inclined city councilman got lazy in designing it.

It could be that Taipei weather is really quite gloomy, and the days I've been there have been the sorts of days where any quiet park is going to look, by default, haunted.

In any case, I'm not sure what to make of my initial chill at cycling through that area, and subsequent discovery of what it used to be.

Lehua Night Market

It says "Beer and sausage - definitely good friends". I agree.

Yesterday we headed out to the city of Yonghe, a suburb of Taipei that's just brimming with class and sophistication -

(ahem)

- to check out Lehua Night Market, revered by my students as the best in the Taipei area.

While I disagree that it's the best in the area, I have to admit that as a night market it combines an exuberance of the sacred...

Hey, adorable kids with balloon hats are sacred!

...and the profane...

Look for the new James Bond film, Goldenbum, in a theater near you!

...that I find truly amusing.

And for Yonghe, famous for Yonghe Soy Milk, old waishengren from Sichuan and a fantastic Sichuanese restaurant, at least one organized crime racket known as the Zhu Lian, love hotels and the Museum of World Religion, I have to say it's pretty sizeable and pretty good. Worth a look if you are interested in exploring every nook and cranny that Taipei and surrounds has to offer.

Some photos, for the heck of it:

You know, I've eaten frog. It's not half bad. Rubbery, but flavorful and unique. Does not taste like chicken. This frog, however, looks horrific. Seriously, this is enough to make me go vegetarian. Poor little guy.

Incense burners and lights


Straight from Japan - the world's tiniest hot dog, in gummie form!


My sister, the starving college student, tries on clothes as she contemplates making extra money as a betel nut beauty.


Something about "Grandpa Brand" white pepper powder had me in giggles for...minutes.


Joseph and the amazing deep-fried oyster spinach pie. It was pretty good actually.

The Mountain Dawn

The Taipei Times had an article today reviewing U Theater's The Mountain Dawn, now touring through Taiwan (it was at Taipei's National Theater on Saturday, and is heading south from there).

I'm mentioning this on Lao Ren Cha because I was there on Saturday, and every word of the review is true. I loved it. I realize that Yunmen Wuji (The Cloud Gate Theater) seems to have a monopoly on both international and local fame, but U Theater is almost as good and in some ways - including their percussion skills - better.

Brendan and I bought tickets - a compromise of proximity and price - to celebrate our 2nd anniversary, which we celebrated on March 2nd. Yay us!

If you read the article or the theater program, you'll learn that they began in the 1980s and currently live and rehearse on a mountain outside Taipei. They practice dance, drumming and meditation among other things up there, and their latest show, The Mountain Dawn, showcases the group's feelings about their hilltop home.

The costumes were very minimal - almost monk-like and rather androgynous. The music was also minimal; it reminded me of a cassette I picked up at a secondhand shop years ago, featuring the Washington DC Toho Koto Society, full of traditional Japanese music. The Mountain Dawn shared a lot with this sort of quiet, bare dissonance.

In fact, I saw a very strong Japanese influence in the costumery, the music and the topic: more or less meditations on nature. It only goes to show that art in Taiwan is influenced as much by Japan as it is by China.

The pieces performed included one about bamboo in the wind, one about the cloud sea and one about the power of the sunrise - I can't provide much more detail as that is what I could read of the titles.

More about the show is reviewed in the article, in more lyrical terms than I could ever give it. We contemplated buying the CD, but realized that without the dancing and the atmosphere that the performers created, the music itself might be a let-down. It wouldn't capture quite the mood of the theater that night, stripped bare of its plush red seats, lobby chandeliers and gold-leaf hullaballoo and transformed into a mountain top of cool stones and singing bamboo.

In short, if you have the chance, go see it.

A Country Hike in the City

On Sunday, the clouds cleared up around noon to reveal a warm, sunny day. We set out from Jiantan MRT and hiked via backroads and little-used trails from Shilin to Neihu. The trip is outlined in Taipei Day Trips 1, so if you want to attempt it, pick up a copy.

The hike begins at Jiantan and heads up lots of stairs, around the backside of the Grand Hotel and through a wooded children's park and karaoke spot (for the parents). There are several temples nearby, all with lovely views of Shilin, the Danshui River, Guanyinshan, Beitou and the revolving restaurant tower (at least that's what I think it is.)



This area has a lot of military installations, which means you can't go far off the path. It also means you will pass a lot of unmarked buildings, old guardposts and even older pillboxes, set up in case of a mainland invasion I guess.



Soon you'll reach the peak of the first hill - hardly a mountain - Jiantan Mountain. Heading down, the stairs give way to a proper trail. You'll go down then up again, finding yourself eventually on a very rural road that winds around. You end up with more great views - on one side, Shilin and the Danshui River. On the other, Neihu. There are plenty of great viewing spots, many of which are probably populated with tai chi practitioners early in the morning.


Later, as the road winds around, you begin to get views of Yangmingshan and the National Palace Museum. The glare was quite high at this time of day, when the sun was at its zenith, so I apologize for the washed-out image with the old crater of Yangmingshan in the background. You don't start getting these views where Taipei Day Trips says you do (there's been some forest growth since it was written), but they do come eventually.

Most of these come as you approach and then top Wenjianshan, which is somewhere above Dazhi on the Shilin-Neihu Road (you can stop hiking here and head down to the road at this point if you want - it's about 5kms to get to that point).


One thing we loved about the hike was that it was almost entirely rural, with real trails and forest. Other than the views over urban vistas, you could hardly tell that you were hiking within the Taipei city limits the entire time.

After Wenjianshan, you take some steep stairs down to a road, head left down it for awhile then head straight up a very steep path through the woods. As we approached the leveling-off of the path, several mountain bikers raced down past us. I heard whooping as they hit the steep part, so I don't know if they made it all teh way down on their bikes.

After the trail levels off, you end up at a well-hidden and little-known stone path. It's quite wide and plenty of locals walk it, but you won't see many foreigners and no tourists. There are no views, but it heads through some lovely woods and is an easy walk for a few kilometers.

After awhile, you end up back at the trail up the final peak - Jinmianshan (Gold Face Mountain) which has views over everything.

No, really...


...everything.
The view is not at the true summit; to get there, you have to walk past the summit and wind your way past lots of bumpy boulders. It's easy to find; you can see the view improving as you head forward and that's where all the people 'in the know' will be.

We lingered a bit too long on the summit, watching the sun go down. We had not underestimated the climb back, it' s just that it was a 10 kilometer hike (so says the book; we think it was longer) to get there, the view was astounding, and we didn't want to leave.

The hike down is over a tricky but fun rock scramble...if you linger for sunset, bring a flashlight. Trust me. There is a rope to help, and it eventually reaches some steep stone steps that could cause a sprained ankle during the day; imagine at night when you can't see (I don't have to imagine, I took a spill here).

The trail lets out in an alley along Huanshan Road in Neihu, very close to Neihu Road. Taipei Day Trips 1 gives the exact address, so if you want to hike in reverse or not bother with the long part and just go for the rocky views, you can start from here (be warned; it's a very steep ascent).

Bring lots of water, especially if you do the full 10 kilometers; there is nowhere to buy it along the way despite there being lots of roads to temples, shelters and recreation areas.

Showing in Shanghai as Taiwan, China

An interesting piece in the Taipei Times today:

Care to Join the Party?

...all about Taiwanese artists and how they deal with China's restrictions on their freedom of expression, or how they are labeled, when showing in China - as well as interviews with some Taiwanese artists who refuse to show in China.

What I found interesting about this piece was that so many artists seem apathetic about how they are labeled politically. How many 'don't think about' (or don't allow themselves to think about) whether they are billed as being from "Taiwan" or "Taipei, China", and what that means to their identity, their expression and their art.

I realize that the argument that art and politics shouldn't mix has some credence, and there is certainly a strong case to be made for separating the two in the name of...well of I don't know what, but something.

That said, I'm sorry but art is political. The only art that is not political in some way is found in hotels or in Painting Technique 101 classes. Maybe some civic sculpture put in place by extremely non-controversial town boards. (A good friend of mine once defined public art as "stuff so bad that nobody would pay for it except a committee of people with bad taste" - I wouldn't go that far, and I've seen public art that I've liked).

Even a basic landscape can be political; what is in that landscape, and what does it say about the place it purports to represent? Why did the artist choose this scene, and not that one, and how does that reflect on his feelings toward the place he's painting. Someone who chose to paint a traditional-style scroll of cliffs, waterfalls, cranes and bamboo must have a very different opinion on Taiwan than someone who paints a scene of downtown Sanchong.

A sculpture of a naked woman is political, as well. Why did the artist choose this model and this body, and what does his/her technique say about how he views that body? In turn, what does that say about how he/she perceives women and their place in society? How does that compare with the status of women in this artist's home country?

Art is all about expression - art that is merely about aesthetics and not about both aesthetics and expression is, in my humble opinion, less interesting art.

Some of this expression really is free from politics - ideas about universal things such as death and love, for example, although even those can be politicized. See: Guernica. That was bursting with death and yet was also deeply political. Any photograph of modern poverty is just as tied in with death and politics. Love is affected heavily by culture, and politics is also tied into that. So unless you are merely trying to convey emotions of death, love, frustration, boredom, excitement or what have you, and not trying to tie them to a greater cultural entity, even these have a political underpinning.

As such, a good artist has to be careful about things like political labels. It is very telling that some Taiwanese artists don't care how they are introduced in a show; it makes me wonder if they show the same apathy towards their work. Who you are affects how others see your work, so it is really of the utmost importance that you be as honest as you can about who you are. How can an artist do that, if said artist doesn't care how they are labeled?

My Tornado

I've been wondering recently why we can't seem to keep the apartment looking nice.

Is it because I'm in Chinese class and not pulling my weight in housework? You try working and studying - both "full time" - and see how much free time you have to do things like mop the kitchen floor.

Well, that's true (thank you Brendan, for doing your share and some of mine), but I don't think that can fully explain why the place is looking so worn out these days.

Is it that it's an 'old' apartment - long-term Taiwan residents will understand my meaning - and therefore I'm just noticing now that despite our spiffy decorating job, nothing can hide the ancient tile floor, cheap wood and dingy plastic ceiling?

That's true too, but I always thought we did a good job making our accommodations comfortable and maybe even attractive.

Is it that we're both secretly slobs?

No. I mean I hate housework and I really would hire a maid if I felt like paying for one. I'm sure Brendan doesn't like it either. Some people claim to enjoy it; I think they're lying. But we're not slobs. A little messy, sure, but no worse than your average person.

I think, just maybe, the reason our apartment never looks as nice as we intend it to...

...is....


TA-DA!!

Our very own fortune kitty - we even named him Zhao Cai if you remember - who can be very sweet when he wants to be.

But when he doesn't want to be, it's like living with, and cleaning up after, a small tornado that continually whirls around the house, spinning out whorls of destruction as he whips through.

Nothing is safe, nothing is sacred. We recently found a pile of rubber sushi (the little erasers from Japan that look like food; I LOVE them) under one chair, which he'd collected from the bookshelf.

He got hold of my crystal ring; sure, it's not set with gemstones. But I bought it in Prague, it's Swarovski, and it's designer. He batted it around while we were out and now it's missing a crystal.

...and if anyone's seen a silver and amethyst earring from Thailand, let me know.

...and it would be really nice if we could leave our USB drives on the desk and not worry that they'll be batted under the couch.

Don't get me wrong, I love the fuzzy little Tasmanian devil. He's an absolute gem when he wants to be, all cuddling in laps and touching noses with you.

Note: he chose this position on his own. When he's in a certain mood he likes to be held like a baby. Note the "Boxing Panda: Float like a butterfly, sting like a panda" and "Onion Boy: Makes girls cry but good for their health" stickers on the computer, and the demonic green eyes of kitty-head.

...

But I'd also really like my earring back.