Anyone who's read a guidebook on Taiwan knows where Beipu is and why it's famous. Well, nationally famous anyway. So I'll be short on the commentary (it was a typical fun day trip with the usual suspects) and get right to the pictures.
Beipu is well-known for being a stronghold of Hakka culture. This means Hakka food (yum!), Hakka lei cha or "pounded tea" - apparently not really an 'old' or 'traditional' drink at all, so says Lonely Planet - made with various nuts and green tea, which tastes basically like liquid trail mix to me. Don't get me wrong, I like the stuff.
And, of course, lots of old buildings as well as the usual tourist market and purty temple.
If you want some good food and to otherwise hang out in a teahouse and wander the streets of a quaint old-style town (with lots of newer buildings as well; Beipu is still an active settlement), it makes a lovely day trip for anyone on the northwest coast.
And now, the photos:
A lovely view inside the main temple in Beipu. It looks more or less like almost every other temple in Taiwan, but I love the column, the lighting and the billowing incense smoke in this shot.
Stone carvings with red lips.
One thing we noticed in the temple is that the decorations are rarely just painted on, as with many other temples. This one follows a different style (which I've also seen elsewhere in Taiwan) where the art is done as tiny sculptures. This takes a lot more time, a lot more skill and, of course, a lot more money. Another form of decoration uses bas-relief carvings, sometimes painted.
The old stereotype of the Hakka is that they're a.) exceptionally hard workers and b.) quite stingy with their money, and good at saving it too. That would explain why they could afford such a spiffy temple.
I'm not a big fan of stereotyping based on culture/race (lordy knows Americans get enough of it directed at them - we are not all fat, lazy, undereducated and materialistic, thank you very much), however, so maybe people in this area donate more to temples than elsewhere.
This guy appears to be selling "traditional beautiful food" (can also be read as "American food" but it is quite obviously not that), which seems to be "Zhu Ge Chang" or "Pork Elder Brother Prosperous". Seeing as these are quite clearly glutinous zongzi, the dessert kind most likely...well...anyone better at Chinese than I am care to explain?
Pretty lantern
View through a teahouse window
View through a red-painted fence
Drying herbs on a very low roof (the buildings open out onto a street much lower than the one on the opposite side, so from the road we were on, you could climb quite handily up onto these roofs. Besides, older buildings tended to be far lower. Money was scarcer for building materials and people were shorter.
The one on the right is garlic. The one on the left is some traditional herb used in Hakka cooking. I have a few bundles of them at home . They make a great pork stew but I don't actually know what they are.
It was great, being able to peer through old stone fences and down tiny alleys and come upon pretty scenes of plants and old buildings. We did a lot of that through the course of the day.
Through the main temple entrance.
Window on the old meeting hall, built by the Jiang family, who came to Beipu with the 'mandate' to keep the local aborigines at bay. Hmmm.
Selling dried herbs and bananas.
The area is still a real town, but its main economic bastion seems to be tourism. The area around the temple and square is a huge tourist market, selling toys, balloons, trinkets, souvenirs and lei cha. I kind of like those markets; they're great for gift shopping and I have a soft spot for traditional-style stuff (some of my natural fiber Chinese-style clothes, the tonghua Hakka-style fabric, my flip-flops and my favorite little wooden massage doodad all came from those markets).
Old brick doorway
Some of the heritage homes are kept in good condition, and many still house residents who remain in their ancestral homes. Others, however...
(Disclaimer: the rant below is directed at the Communist Party of China, not the people of China nor Chinese culture. Just in case someone decides to get all wonky on me.)
As if you needed one, here's another reminder of why Taiwan is better than China, and you - whoever you may be - are better off living in Taiwan than China:
China promised an outlet for protesters and free speech during the Olympics. We all remember - we should remember - how that went down when those elderly ladies attempted to bag a permit to do so. They ended up detained, in jail, and unable to protest:
Two women from Beijing in their late 70s, Wu Dianyuan and Wang Xiuying, were sentenced to a year of reeducation in a labor camp for protesting their forced eviction from their homes in 2001; the sentence was reduced and later rescinded, but the women said in an interview that they are being closely monitored by local police and that cameras have been installed outside their homes.
Tang Xuecheng, an entrepreneur in his 40s who had gone to Beijing to protest the government's seizure of his mining company, was detained by local officials and sent to a "mental hospital for mental health assessment," according to a public security official in his home town in Chenzhou city in Hunan province. Tang was released several months later.
ZhongRuihua, 62, and nine others from the industrial city of Liuzhou who tried to petition against property seizures were arrested and have been charged with disturbing the public order. ZhangQiuping, ZhongRuihua's youngest daughter, saw her mother for the first time since August on Feb. 23, during her trial.
And now this...
In the end, official reports show, China never approved a single protest application -- despite its repeated pledges to improve its human rights record when it won the bid to host the Games. Some would-be applicants were taken away by force by security officials and held in hotels to prevent them from filing the paperwork. Others were scared away by warnings that they could face "difficulties" if they went through with their applications.
Why didn't this get more media attention when it was happening? Why isn't it getting more media attention now? It's toward the bottom of the Washington Post website although the page marker is fairly front-and-center in the print edition.
Why did people expect any different from China? The government is made up of liars and fascists. I am so tired of blog posts, commentators and even politicians explaining away China's disdain for human rights. I am nauseous about people who apologize for their horrific, oppressive regime. I am sick at heart that the realpolitik of the day (I'm looking at you, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. I had some faith in you) overrides the freedom, liberty and basic rights of millions - no, billions of people.
It is sick. Tear-running, face-reddening, blood-racing, black-moodening sick.
Ji has spent the past eight months in various states of arrest and detention. In January, he was sentenced to three years in prison, the maximum penalty allowed, on charges of faking official seals on documents he filed on behalf of his clients. Ji is appealing.
We all learned in History class about Mao's "100 Flowers" period where intellectuals were encouraged to speak out; and then were subsequently detained, investigated, interrogated, jailed and at times executed. It doesn't take a genius to see that the charges are faked, and that Ji, like others, is being detained because he dared to admit he'd like to protest against the power-gobblers who run his government. History is again repeating itself.
It's happening again and there just isn't enough rage out there. There isn't enough desire to do good. There aren't enough good people and those that exist are doing nothing in the name of national debt, geopolitical interests and profit margins. It actually makes my fingers shake - literally shake - to see a world so blithe to the national interest and defense of a functioning (if at times eccentric), prosperous, good country like Taiwan - yes, country, you Commie bastards - silently enabling Big Red across the strait to wreak its worst crimes against humanity.
There is a reason why the FalunDafa protests where Chinese tourists are near. There is a reason why the National Democracy Memorial Hall is awash with Tibetan freedom activists. There is a reason why "terrorism" on the part of the Uighurs is seen as such a threat, and Uighurs across Xinjiang deeply despise the Chinese autocracy with a righteous venom. (I don't call it terrorism, by the way. Most "terrorist" claims are false, and those that are real should be considered freedom fighting. My great-grandfather was an Armenian freedom fighter against the wave Turkish genocide in 1915 so my own family lore knows this as a well-trodden story).
There is a reason why I left China a few years ago, after a year of teaching there. Nevermind that the water was so acidic that it rotted my teeth (I now have three crowns). Nevermind that the air was so grey that I could barely breathe, that I got bronchial pneumonia twice from the pollution and dirt (and don't say I'm weak; I've lived in India and I was fine there), that you can't trust the food supply or that the CCP is obviously corrupt and makes only the most superficial of gestures to hide it. Nevermind that despite being equal under the law, women are treated in an infuriatingly sexist manner - even in the cities. I left because I couldn't stand the lack of freedom. I couldn't stand that my boss was worried enough about my many trips to the hilltop temple - only because it was the only attractive and authentically old place in town, not because I was going all Buddhist - that he'd ask me not to go so often lest I attract the attention of the police. It bothered me when I told my local friend that I was disappointed with the lack of civil uprising, she 'shooshed' me. It stuck like a pin in flesh when the boss's brother - a man I didn't even really care for as a person - broke down in tears after drinking a few too many and told us about how he saw his best friend get shot in the face by police at Tiananmen Square, and the police had insisted later that they had done no such thing (if they had done no such thing, why was he dead? They couldn't, and didn't bother to, answer that). It stung that I couldn't access basic websites such as Blogspot, Google, Hotmail (at times), the Washington Post, the New York Times...most of those are available now, although some only are because they censored their content. They aided and abetted evil (Google, I'm looking at you). It bit, knowing that everything on TV and in the newspapers was propaganda trash. You couldn't get your hands on a fact - an honest-to-god fact - to save your life.
Then the government wonders why it faces so much scrutiny? Lee Kuan Yew, the Prime Minister of Singapore, asks why people laud India's development but abhor China's? India is free, or mostly so. China is emphatically not. The Chinese government is not facing nearly enough scrutiny. If that makes them uncomfortable, well, tough.
There is a reason why so many who are wronged by China, or see others being wronged by China, revile their government like a fang stuck in their hearts.
Because - not to put too fine a point on it - the Chinese government sucks and they need to be deposed. NOW. I don't care if that "hurts the feelings of the Chinese people" (which it doesn't). I'm sick of playground diplomacy and bratty tactics. "You want to meet with the Dalai Lama? Waaaah! Nooo! You hurt my feeelings!"
Only 77 applications were officially filed. Even so, all but three were subsequently withdrawn, the state-run New China News Agency said, after authorities "satisfactorily addressed" petitioners' concerns.
Yeah, right. Satisfactorily my lilly-white arse. They were bullied and pushed into withdrawing them. Then the state lied about it the way they lied about TiananmenAnd what about the thousands - hundreds of thousands - who would like to file such a petition but are afraid to do so, for exactly the reasons why the applicants of three non-withdrawn petitions have been harassed.
Why is this OK? Why do we live in a world where this is OK? Why is a situation allowed to exist where a free and functional country like Taiwan- exactly the sort of system the US has lied about trying to foster around the world and exactly the sort of country China should aim to emulate - is pushed aside in the name of "pragmatism"?
Before you get all realistic on me, I submit that it doesn't have to be this way. The USA insisted on having its way in Iraq and it still has enough sway with China - our economic crisis is their economic crisis, after all, and their trade profits are our trade deficits - to tell it to stop. Just...stop.
Panama - Panama, for crying out loud - recognizes Taiwan. Let me repeat that again. Panama. They have a nifty canal, if you recall. That canal is enough of a counterweight against their rebuttal of Chinese governmental deathmongering, and yet the entire might of the USA, as weakened as it might be, isn't? Come on.
Instead, we get the optimists of China, the best and the brightest that that grey, bleak political wasteland has to offer, being stomped down with a fury that the rest of the world should not tolerate:
But at his core, Ji was an optimist and believed that change was possible from within the system. He decided he would learn the letter of the law so that he could help laobaixing, or ordinary people, deal with their grievances. He took on cases for free and lived on 3 yuan, less than 50 cents, a day....
When Ji went to Beijing in August armed with carefully prepared documents about a dozen local cases -- including one about a man who died in detention and others about illegal land seizures -- he was convinced that because China had passed a law allowing him to file a protest application, nothing bad could come of it.
He had recently been evicted from his home office in Fuzhou on suspicion of trying to incite people to petition in Beijing, friends said, but even then he didn't waver from his conviction that China's central government would keep its promises to allow public dissent during the Games, according to his sisters and friends.
If the USA and the EU got together and said "Hey China - stop it. Now. Be nice to Tibet and Xinjiang, let Taiwan decide its own fate, stop stealing the property of the poor for the good of the rich and for goodness sake, stop arresting and killing people"...guess what? China would stop it. They'd have to.
No, I am not wrong.
Yes, we on the 'free', liberal democratic end of the spectrum, the end that Francis Fukuyama once called the final destination of human civilization, do have the power to make it end. We don't even need to fire a bullet.
"Everything is fine here, please don't worry! Please believe that I only have done good rather than brought harm to our people and country. I will win the lawsuit in the end," Ji wrote.
His sister Ji Qiaozhuang said she has been surprised and disappointed by how he has been treated because he has never advocated controversial positions such as the end of one-party rule.
"He's not a revolutionary, a young man with anti-government feelings," she said. "He's an old man who just wants to help others. China needs people like him to progress."
Indeed. It's too bad that the Chinese government refuses to recognize that. They'll need to if they want to become the sort of country they can become and should become. A country like Taiwan.
While evil is allowed to exist, why do good 'men' do nothing?
How many Chiangs can you find? Some of the pictures and statues appear to be Sun Yat-sen so it's a harder game than it seems!
April 5, 2021: This post is an update on an earlier post, with new pictures and clarifying information (such as the temple's actual name and address, and how to get there -- thanks to a friend for that.) I've edited the old information and interspersed it with updates and new photos.
Tianhong Temple 天宏宮
#31 Jiangong First Road, East District, Hsinchu
新竹市東區建功一路31號
(Near Tsinghua University)
Transportation: not a lot, but there are several buses. Bus 182 goes to Hsinchu High Speed Rail Station, and buses 5608 and BL1 will take you downtown. Any bus headed for Tsinghua University will get you within walking distance.
We tried (and failed) to escape the unceasing rain yesterday by heading south. We went to Beipu and Xinzhu. More on Beipu later - I'm going to start by talking about the few wet hours we spent in Xinzhu, exploring the old street, the night market, the old city gate and - the most fascinating by far - the temple dedicated to the worship of the Taiwanese "deity", Chiang Kai-Shek.
If Qingshan Wang, Grandfather Seven and Grandfather Eight, Lin Mo - that's Matsu to you - and Baosheng Dadi were all real people, and most believe that they were - then I see nothing wrong with worshipping someone whom we know to have been a real person. I wouldn't pray to him myself, mind you.)
Beam Me Up, Dr. Sun
On our first visit, we didn't linger long in the temple, partly because we aren't big Chiang fans, and partly because it was pouring outside, and we'd just come from a visit to another part of Hsinchu.
On my second visit, the temple seemed rearranged somewhat. I had had some work at Tsinghua and planned an extra hour before I had to head to the HSR just to see how this temple was getting along as it's only a short walk from the campus entrance. If you take a side alley that cuts across a parking lot to get to Jiangong 1st Road, you'll also come across a beautiful example of an iron window grille bearing the character for "long life" in a random alleyway.
Most of the original statues were there but the shrine itself had a cleaner look.
Either I didn't notice the KMT "white sun on a blue field" and pro-KMT tablet on the alter the first time, or they'd been added in the years between my visits.
The temple isn't very big. It's more of a shrine room, filled with statues and pictures of Chiang Kai-Shek, another general whose name escapes me, and Sun Yat-sen. Apparently, this little temple in Hsinchu, not far from the Tsinghua University campus and night market, has collecteds some of the old busts and statues of Chiang and uses them in this temple as god-idols.
I didn't notice these memorial pictures over the entrance (turn around after you enter, and look up) until my second visit:
These guys are big Ma fans, as we could see from the Ma bobbleheads decorating the temple. The toy cranes are there because the man we spoke with also runs his own construction company and he really likes cranes. (As of 2021 Ma's bobblehead is no longer present).
We only spoke with one person, but it was clear that the people tending the temple are mostly from China. The guy we talked to was born near Shanghai and came over with his family when he was 16 (which would make him about 75 years old). Although he still remembers how to speak Shanghainese, he's picked up a Taiwanese accent in his Mandarin and can speak Taiwanese as well.
I see they got a fancy new chair
And a "Police State Fun Toy" corner for the kids, I guess?
I believe the friendly old man we met on our first visit was the founder; before my second visit someone who knows this temple better than me mentioned that it was founded by someone like this -- an old KMT refugee who started a business in Taiwan. He had been in the construction business (no surprises there) and gave me a copy of his autobiography/memoir in Mandarin, during that first visit in 2009.
I am sure he was a fine fellow in his personal life, even though he sided with and literally built a temple to worship mass murderers. People see the world through lenses they are given and lenses they create. But I have to admit, I never read the memoir. From what I hear, he has since passed away.
Older gentleman from Shanghai. Note all the different flags surrounding the main shrine area.
As we didn't tell them where our true political beliefs lie, they were extremely friendly and happy that we'd stopped by. As important as it is (for me, at least) to own one's own beliefs and moral code and not shrink from admitting them, maybe standing in the temple of Chiang Kai-shek is not the best place to tell people around you that you think he was a murderer and a traitor to Taiwan, especially when those around you are genuinely friendly people.
This is where the updated section ends.
We were given some fruit and made our way, drippingly, to the night market where we had lumpia 輪餅 - those crepe rolls stuffed with meat and vegetables which are a specialty in Hsinchu, and mba wan 肉圓. The lumpia were better than anything I've tried in Taipei, where they skimp on the meat and savory flavors and add lots of veggies or worse, rou song 肉鬆 (which I can't stand). We loved the many-textured innards of these lumpia, replete with lots of richly marinated meat, peanuts, bean sprouts, greens, carrot shavings and other tasty bits and pieces.
The mba wan were very different from Taipei - they're on menus as "Hsinchu Rou Yuan" and are fried rather than steamed, and filled not with regular ground pork but with purple chunks - real chewy chunks - of marinated pork and cubes of young bamboo served in a spicy, flavorful pink sauce that I normally see on vegetarian sticky rice. The bamboo reminded me of Yuanlin Rouyuan, which used to be at the Heping-Fuxing intersection in Taipei, where they served it in brown gravy with cubed bamboo and mushrooms. (The restaurant is still there but the quality has gone downhill.)
Sesame noodles (not the cold kind) and Xinzhu fried mba wan
Then we headed into the city god temple - the most important one of these in Taiwan - where tall god costumes we haven't seen in Taipei were on display.
We've never seen this god before, and don't know who he is.
We also saw all the pinata-like decorations from Chinese New Year - identifiable because most of them involved depictions of cows - hanging from the ceiling of the temple. It was quite a sight; there were hundreds of them.
One of Hundreds of Hanging Cows
Candle in the City God Temple
We then took a quick venture through the old street - which has a few old buildings but not many, but at least one interesting place to have some tea or coffee and one good mashed-taro dessert joint, a pass by the old city gate and a stop at the old moat to feed the fish (but actually ended up feeding the geese). We passed one of the two Matsu temples along the way.
I don't have photos of this part because it was dark - my camera is not up to taking good night shots.
April 2021: Because I never properly explored this area on that first visit long ago, and certainly never got any good photographs, I suppose I'm due to venture that way again soon!
Time Magazine recently did a piece on Taiwan's Modern Toilet Restaurant (for those who don't know, there's one in Shilin not far from the night market and one in Ximending. I don't know where the other branches are).
Nobody who lives in Taiwan doesn't know what the Modern Toilet Restaurant is, so I'll spare the description. It is, more or less, exactly what it sounds like anyway.
No, no, the thing that bothers me about this article is the not-so-tacit assumption that Taiwan and China are one and the same. A few quotes:
Toilet creations aren't new to China. The ancient Chinese may have been the first to use the throne — a flush toilet was found in a tomb of a Western Han Dynasty (206 B.C. to A.D. 24) king — and they invented toilet paper in the 6th century.
That's wonderful but it wasn't invented in Taiwan! I'm pretty sure the Western Han Dynasty - if I remember my history - didn't even control all of what is now actually China, or even what is now all of Han-dominated China - let alone having anything to do with Taiwan.
The Chinese can take this, Finch muses, because they are more nonchalant about bodily functions, such as burping, farting or even going to the bathroom — an act performed squatting sans doors in some places in China.
Yes, yes, all very true although I never heard a lot of burping in China (though the ones I did hear were ginormous gas-leak burps from an ancient lady at the dinner table, with fish scales hanging from her mouth and coat. Long story). And sure, they spit bones, tea leaves and other uneaten food detritus on the floor - hence the fish scales on this one particular matron's outerwear. Her aim just wasn't up to finding the floor. Ah, Guizhou...
But I digress. Neither of these is a Taiwanese custom. Neither is going to the bathroom outside,. Not even in the countryside have I noticed this, and I spend a lot of time in the central mountains. I'm sure a farmer here or there has let one loose in a corner of his field when he couldn't make it back to the house, but that hardly counts.
I've always felt that in the area of bathroom matters, the Taiwanese picked up most of their cultural heritage from Japan (and let's face it, Japan is a much nicer place to wrestle a brown monkey than China. In Japan, airport bathrooms smell of mint chocolate and the toilets warm your bum and sing to you. In China, I once crapped on a pig.)
So yes - this restaurant is suited to Taiwan because the idea was inspired by a Japanese cartoon robot (it says so in the article) and the Taiwanese seem to love Japanese cartoons and Japanese toilets. It is not suited to Taiwan because birthing a choco-log outdoors is common here. It ain't.
Taiwanese opera, the birthday "inspection tour" of Wenchang, the god of education and exams, a party at Citizen Cain, an attempt to hike Huang Di Dian and tofu in Shiding, all squeezed into two days. It's been a whirlwind of excitement.
We arrived back in Taipei mid-week and booked the weekend full of activities with friends. After teaching my first class in 6 weeks this past Saturday, we went to Dihua Street for lunch (there's a famous food stall there that does Tainan-style shrimp rolls over rice and vegetables) and to see at Taiwanese opera with friends. We figured it was a fitting way to celebrate 2/28 even though it didn't involve attending any anti-KMT protests.
Unlike the open-air operas common at festivals, this one cost $100 NT for admission and was held on the 9th floor of the textile market (#21 in the old market building). I didn't realize that there was a stage on the top floor of this place and would have never thought to look for performances there if it hadn't been for my friend Sasha.
We saw 太陽偏與枝無葉 - Tai Yanpian Yu Zhi Wuye - about two students (Tai Yanpian and Zhi Wuye) who both fail the civil service exam and take an oath of brotherhood. Both are quite poor and on the verge of becoming beggars. They part and Zhi Wuye has some good luck early on. However, the woman he brokered a marriage with (Tan Hua - a kind of flower that is also a metaphor for fleeting luck) ran away because she didn't want to marry a "beggar", and his luck left him. Tan Hua then saw a fortune teller who told her that she would become with, but only if she married a beggar - and that she would have to pursue a match with this beggar. Her servant is told that she, too, will become wealthy. She ran into Tai Yanpian who now looks pretty down and out. They both end up spending the night in a 'haunted house' (I didn't really understand this part) where the ghosts of the house get them both to sleepwalk into the same room, where they've hidden a pot of gold and jewels. The two find the treasure and marry, and become very rich. Tai Yanpian searches for his brother, and Tanhua helps find him (a housekeeper - ? - she is acquainted with knows how to locate him, because she is the one who arranged the marriage that didn't work out. Or something.) They meet, but it turns out that Zhi Wuye has also run into the fortune teller who says 'don't expect grand things from life' and that only through his wife can he own wealth. This means that he's not meant to enjoy the finer things in life and can't ingest meat or wine or wear fine clothes. He resolves to leave and make his own way, and Tanhua and Tai Yanpian give him some bread. He gives most of it away to a beggar family who has helped him and only when he has two pieces left does he realize that Tai and Tanhua have hidden gold inside each one. He laments again his fate of being unable to own wealth. Then Tanhua's servant goes around buying up the bread from the beggars and returns it to Zhi Wuye. As she is the woman he is supposed to marry, and she brought the money to him, he is 'allowed' by fate to have it - the two marry and both couples live a happy, prosperous life.
It was a fun opera to watch, and one part was sung by a very well-known performer whose name slips my mind. Two of the cast members were men, which is interesting for Taiwanese opera (as far as I know, it's mostly performed by women). I'm happy I had Sasha next to me to explain the plot as I have only a limited vocabulary in Taiwanese...and I'm not even sure I could have followed this in Mandarin.
I'm not sure that I care for the main themes, however. I liked the idea that the roles were reversed as a part of the story - women who pursue their husbands or who bring the family wealth, something unheard of in really old school Chinese and Taiwanese culture. I'm not sure I liked the fact that these themes were inserted for comedic purposes ("haha, she's a woman but she's pursuing him!") but maybe I should loosen up; times have changed, after all.
There's also a very Western notion that fate doesn't control your wealth - you and your actions do. The most that fate controls is how much natural acumen you have for earning money and being frugal with it. The underlying theme of this otherwise enjoyable opera was that you don't have any control over whether or not you will wind up rich - either the fates decree that you will be prosperous, or they'll say that you won't. If they say you won't, there's not much you can do about that except follow their directives. Maybe it's a huge cultural difference here, but that just doesn't sit well, you know?
When the opera finished, we came out to discover one of those awesome god processionals in full swing. I asked around and it turns out that 2/28 this year is the birthday of Wenchang, the god of education and examinations.
His processional was a long one, starting at least 30 minutes before the opera ended and an hour later, still going strong. It seemed to be looping from Longshan Temple (where there is a shrine to him), past Xiahai City God Temple and then - we think - heading up to Bao'an Temple.
It had everything :
...tall god costumes...
...ba jia jiang (martial defenders of the gods during their processionals)...
...lion and dragon dancers...
...dancing guys...
...flag bearers...
...that ginormous drum that one temple has which you can hear a kilometer away...
...and of course, midgets (actually children) dressed as dolls disco dancing in a line with a baby frog and a cute demon...
...with another disco dancing guy on top of a truck.
After all this excitement, we headed back to my place and got ready to go out. Our friend finished her school contract recently and threw a party to celebrate the horror of buxiban life finally being over and done with.
I completely empathize; Kojen made me want to do the same thing. I wouldn't recommend buxiban teaching for more than a year for anyone, and I don't know how some people manage to keep working at those places without turning into serial killers. I'd have thrown the same sort of party but working there, I had so little free time that I really had no good friends in Taiwan save Roy and my boyfriend. I didn't start to have a social life until I got a better job and more than one day a week off.
No good photos from this though - we were all enjoying ourselves too much to take lots of snaps. Citizen Cain isn't my favorite place but it's perfectly OK - they seem to make all their money from organized group get-togethers because every time I've been there it's either empty, or full with a huge group and almost nobody who is there independently. They do a decent enough hummus and babaghanouj but mine is better!
Then we headed out to Party World, which is heinously overpriced on weekends. I don't think I would go back; at least not to one in a popular area like Zhongxiao Dunhua and not on a weekend night. On the upside, I learned how to sing "Super Star" and "Hey U Mr. Q" and did a pretty hilarious rendition of the opera singer in "Fearless". I also learned "Taibei Bu Shi Wo De Jia" (Taipei Is Not My Home - apparently the singer's jia is Lugang, where there are no traffic lights).
Heading home at 3am, we woke up again at 8am and took Satan's own bus, the 666, to Shiding. It was damp and drizzly, but we still had some horrid notion that we could climb Huang Di Dian in such conditions. We were wrong.
Entrance to the Stupid Stairs That Go On For Something Like 200 Hours
We took the wrong way 'round because nobody bothered to read their Taipei Day Trips before setting out, and the locals among us didn't see anything wrong with climbing stairs for hours. Yay! Stairs! Why so many people in Asia think that a natural trail is a horrible thing and it is much better to replace mountain paths with freaking stairs is beyond me. People normally wake up thinking, "Today is a lovely day. I'd like to go hiking and get some fresh mountain air." They do not wake up thinking "Today is a lovely day. I'd like to go outside and climb some stairs." So why? Why?! Maybe we can start an NGO with the mission of tearing down all those freaking stairs on mountains. Who's with me?
Oh, and it was cloudy so there was no view. At least the air was fresh.
Clouds
After "hiking" up stairs for a few hours, we realized it was too wet and dangerous to actually make it to the ridge near Huang Di Dian and we turned down another fork which took us down some more goddamned stairs to get back to Shiding.
And all this on 4 hours of sleep.
Shiding is a lovely, if small, town that doesn't really have a lot of historic buildings or anything else to recommend it architecturally, though it does have a lovely stream and some mountain views. There are some old houses, though most aren't much to see from the outside. You can explore inside one of them, located in the covered market area.
Candlesticks in an old Shiding House
The food was, of course, delicious and there weren't many tourists, either. A few of them crowded through in the afternoon, but they were all gone by 4 and we had the place to ourselves. Shiding is near several good hikes, including some Pingxi-like ascents and Erge Shan, which we never made it to the last time. (I assume Huang Di Dian is one of these good hikes, but I wouldn't really know as our attempt ended in abject failure).
Shiding
Shiding is famous for tofu, and with good reason. The various kinds of tofu available there are excellent - all with a soft, silky texture and a bit more natural flavor than average tofu. We got red-sauce cooked tofu, fried tofu and a silky tofy in thick broth, all of which were fantastic. The wild chicken and sweet potato leaves were also excellent; the chicken was soft, juicy and flavorful and generously meaty. I'd recommend stopping in Shiding, if anything, to eat a big, tasty meal. Afterwards we retreated to a nearby teahouse to play cards for a few hours and nurse our stair-climbing sore limbs.
...as well as looking around a little bit to soak up the small-town atmosphere.
Some Interesting Things in Shiding
After all this, we headed home and while Emily packed up her overnight things, Brendan surfed online and I crashed on the couch, not to awake until the next morning.
(This is almost a stream-of-consciousness bit of writing - be warned.)
Me and the Boy at Dukem Ethiopian Restaurantin DC. If I look tired in that photo, it's because I was.
Reverse culture shock is a bitch.
Now that I've been in Taiwan for almost 3 years, it's doubly hard because I feel it on both ends of the plane ride. Both are home; I love them and I feel weird pangs for them. It's like having two boyfriends, Taiwan and the USA, and India as a fling on the side.
When we got off the plane in New York, I saw Brendan off to the SkyTrain and I took the bus into New York. It began with hearing familiar New York accents on cell phones and seeing the city skyline peep above the buildings as we left Queens (or did we skirt through Brooklyn?) and realizing that I am in a country where I am not a minority. Then there was the cold wind as I entered Grand Central Station and waited at the big clock to meet my friend (and former guy-I-dated) Matthew. The big clock isn't very big at all, and it sits atop an information kiosk in the center of the main hall. All around me, people were waiting. An Asian girl who chatted in flawless English on her cell phone until her friends arrived and the language shifted to Japanese. A tough-looking blond in a long red coat . She wore dark sunglasses despite the fact that it was evening and quite overcast, not to mention that we were indoors. A tall man in a yarmulke throwing staccato yelps into a phone when his business partner failed to arrive. And me, a chubby redhead, waiting for a tall, lanky guy in a suit. Without the benefit of a cell phone, I looked the most uncomfortable. I couldn't seem to stay out of the snake-lines unfurling from the kiosk. Kept shifting the bags at my feet - jute bag from India between my ankles, black duffel in front, awkwardly held backpack.
Eating Italian food as we chatted and heard the train announcements for the Harlem Line, the Hudson Line, the New Haven line. Happy in the security of my relationship, knowing that Brendan wasn't worried in the least about my meeting up with Matthew, who is now happily engaged.
The sounds and smells were all too familiar (I'd once waited in this station at midnight with a friend, avoiding a puddle of vomit on the stairs, as a late-night train took its sweet time to arrive). I'm not even from New York City and already I felt it.
The sound of my parents' white Honda as they picked me up in Poughkeepsie. The crisp, Hudson-smelling air around the train station.
The next morning I awoke with a fluffy black coon cat on my legs; Cinders wanted food and figured I wouldn't know that mom had already fed the cuddly little beasts. The same drafts from the circa-1910 windows, the same creaks of my parents' old farmhouse. I came downstairs to the smell of expensive coffee and the pontifications of some guy on Today Now! With Annoying Cute Blonde and Generic Handsome Man or Good Morning America or Morning Joe or one of those typical morning programs I always associate with a visit home. Why? Because thanks to jet lag, I am invariably awake at the unacceptable hour of 7am to watch them.
Side note: Indonesia has the same kind of programs. Imagine my double-culture-shock when, over breakfast in Sumatra, something along the lines of Good Morning Indonesia came on - complete with generically attractive hosts, trite guests, and rattan furniture set in a studio with large windows overlooking tropical ferns and hibiscus flowers.
Then, of course, there was Honey Bunches of Oats. Honey! Bunches! Of! Oats! With that unique farmer's market milk that my parents always buy. It snowed a bit - snow! Ice! Cold weather! Things I haven't felt or seen for years.
After I went shopping with my parents at Adam's Fairacre Farms (we got the usual - olives, Wensleydale cheese, White English Stilton with mango and ginger, goat cheese, truffle mousse pate, table water crackers, three other kinds of cheese, olives and a bunch of other food I can't remember), we came back and watched, of all things, Antiques Roadshow. Antiques Roadshow! Rainbow, the oldest and weirdest of our cats, curled up on mom's neck like a dead fox stole the way she always does.
My adorable cousin Nikola with plastic wineglass. He's training early in the family art of drinking like Europeans (his mother is an actual European, at least. The rest of us pretend with our wine and our cheese and our British comedies on PBS).
Then I thought: all these little things remind me of home far more than the big things. It wasn't seeing my parents - we talk on the phone often enough - or driving up to our house. It wasn't hearing spoken English around me or not having to communicate in a second language. It wasn't any of the major stuff; all of my reverse culture shock stems from 1910 windows, Honey Bunches of Oats, that particular shade of filtered light and blow of cold river wind that defines the Hudson Valley winter, Good Morning America, the announcements at Grand Central Station and Antiques Roadshow.
DC was another gauntlet of reverse culture shock. We used to live in a lovely wood-floored townhouse off Columbia Pike. My closest friend in DC, M. (her name is very unique so if I post it, it'd be too easy to identify her in real life) still lives on the Pike, but a little further up. The sound of Spanish, Amharic, Moroccan Arabic and other languages being spoken around me brought back some memories; the Ethiopian breakfast we enjoyed at Dama brought back others with its dark, jammy coffee and selse - spiced eggs with crusty bread. The Lideta Gebeya where we picked up berbere spice to make my famous Ethiopian chicken satay and the "Esoterico" store next door that sells Peruvian spices, plastic saints, old baskets, fifteen million kinds of dried beans, general religious accoutrements for your home shrine, and trinkets galore. The sushi restaurant next to the Cinema and Drafthouse, which shows second-run movies and cold beer. Mrs. Chen's Kitchen of Delicacies, serving horrific and wonderful American Chinese, Altacatl Salvadorean Restaurant, El Pollo Rey, Rappahannock Coffee, Bob&Edith's, Bangkok 54...and the #16 bus that cuts through it all. I love that neighborhood - the fact that it is not rich and nowhere near gentrified, it's cool but not hip (rather like Taiwan), it's honest and working class, and generally safe - you can tell from its age and diversity that it is very, very real. I can only hope it doesn't become chi-chi. Arlington does not need another Crate&Barrel or Wolfgang Puck, and I don't want to see it turned into a fake-funky U Street.
U Street - I love the place but it's gotten a bit gentrified. Lines of white folks at Ben's Chili Bowl! Overpriced Ethiopian food (whaaa?)! U-Sushi and Mocha Hut. Gah.
Brendan and his cousin David, who is showing off his $2.50 can of Coke. Two-fitty? What?!
We held a dinner party our first night there, with Dana and Ernesto as hosts and M. as the organizer. Whenever someone had a question - "what's this?" "Why is Jenna in the kitchen?" "There sure is a lot of wine, isn't there?", "What is that smell?"- the answer was inevitably "It's a Jenna Party!". These are the parties that have become iconic through the years: foreign food, a guest list that starts at 8 and caps at 15 or so, laughter and dirty jokes, horrendous board games for which we should never be judged in the afterlife, slight but becoming drunkenness that is funny, rather than embarrassing, the next morning. We made Ethiopian Chicken Satay served with injera, hummus, Iranian salad, Iranian rice, olives and a vegetable plate, brie and baguettes, and a chocolate truffle cake (triple the cocoa for any basic chocolate cake recipe, and add some liquor and extra cream. Make two. Brush with alcohol reduced with preserves or sugar. Spread the top of the first cake with a thick layer of truffle batter (chocolate, cream, butter, spices and alcohol), place second cake on top. Pour heated pure chocolate flavored with more alcohol on top. Allow to cool and decorate with confectioner's sugar, cinnamon, cocoa and truffles made with leftover batter. Use only dark chocolate. Any alcohol will do - I usually use Godiva chocolate liqueur and flavor with amaretto, Frangelico or Chambord.)
Me, Judy, Brendan and Beth in Crystal City.
I freaked out in a Target while I was home. It's just so...big. Fifty hundred jabillion kinds of moisturizer. An entire rack of different kinds of licorice. Do you want this kind of toilet paper, that kind, or one of the two hundred other kinds? We ran rings around the store looking for some basic items. Clothes that actually fit! Trying to get anywhere was like doing laps across a football field of merchandise through wide, pearly aisles. Whoa. I thought I might be coming down with Target-induced epilepsophrenia, so we finished up our shopping and left.
American airport security - "Why are you going to Taiwan?" "We work there." "So you both live in Taiwan?" "Yes." "Can you prove it?"...as we hand over our ARCs, which we are pretty sure the check-in clerk can't even read.
M., her boyfriend Tom and Beth at Dukem on U Street
The problem with traveling is that I like almost everyplace I go. That means I form attachments easily, and maintain them with several places. I'm describing reverse culture shock from visiting the USA, but the truth is I feel it almost everywhere I go for the second time. I spent a semester in India years ago and still feel a little jolt whenever I return; rickshaws and aluminum tumblers filled with foamy coffee, strings of jasmine and marigolds and masala dosa on flat platters or banana leaves. Milk sweets! Charmingly archaic Indian Newspaper English. Long-distance train trips in 3-tier sleeper cars. Shock when I see how things have changed; fewer people on the streets begging, more people looking as though they enjoy three square meals. More paved roads, more ATMs. You can buy train tickets and reserve mid-range hotels online now. More honesty. A glittering shopping center and a few funky bars off MG Road in Bangalore. At least there still seems to be livestock everywhere. I think I'd cry if that went away.
I felt it in Japan - we only spent 45 minutes in the airport, but in that 45 minutes a lot came back. White-gloved security personnel who maintained a brisk pace through the X-ray and baggage screening, and who had painstakingly memorized questions in English ("Are you carrying any riquids or flammable items?"). Bathrooms that smell of mint chocolate and sinks emit a perfectly warm stream of air and freshly cented foamy soap. Duty-free shops chock full of consumer goods - Chivas Regal for the men, Coach and Dolce for the women, and Japanese fans, jackets, kimonos, soaps, tea, shoes, dolls, paper, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. for the foreigners - all staffed by perfectly attentive sales clerks in pristine uniforms who beckon you inside. Signs that say "Welcome to Japan" in English, but "Welcome Home" in Japanese.
And I felt it again in Taiwan - Huanying Guanyiiiiiin! from the duty-free shops. The damp, cool air of midnight as we left the airport. Guo-Guang airport bus. That particular sound of traffic as it burbles around Taipei Main Station at all hours of day or night. The little beepy sounds that the taxis make, and the beaded seatcovers that drivers favor. Roosevelt Road late at night, light wind and the threat of rain. Even at night, you can tell its cloudy. Two quick dinners from 7-11, which is glittering and bright, unlike its ghetto brethren in the USA. Speaking Chinese at the cash register. The particularly whiny meow of Zhao-Zhao and the chicken coop down the street as its doomed inhabitants settle in for the night. The red-and-yellow glow of a Wellcome sign on the wet streets. Waking up to Coughing Old Man, Roosevelt Road traffic, chirping birds and Zhao-Zhao, who wants to catch them. The particular smell of apartments and cement that wafts in our window on the soft dawn breeze. I have jet lag again, and I can't sleep. This time, there is no Today Now! show to wake up to, and only one cat to feed.
It was a great trip, but I'm happy to be back...home? Is it home? I love all of these places and I'd like to call them all home. Is that even allowed? If I spend a month in Vietnam getting my CELTA certificate and love that too, does it qualify as 'cheating'? If we realize our dream (well, my dream but Brendan likes the idea) of volunteering for a few years in an Indian village as teachers, is that a betrayal of Taiwan? If I stay in Taiwan forever and don't move back to the USA, is that a betrayal of my native country? Is geographical polyamory acceptable?
This guy appears to be selling "traditional beautiful food" (can also be read as "American food" but it is quite obviously not that), which seems to be "Zhu Ge Chang" or "Pork Elder Brother Prosperous". Seeing as these are quite clearly glutinous zongzi, the dessert kind most likely...well...anyone better at Chinese than I am care to explain?
View through a teahouse window
View through a teahouse window
Drying herbs on a very low roof (the buildings open out onto a street much lower than the one on the opposite side, so from the road we were on, you could climb quite handily up onto these roofs. Besides, older buildings tended to be far lower. Money was scarcer for building materials and people were shorter.
Drying herbs on a very low roof (the buildings open out onto a street much lower than the one on the opposite side, so from the road we were on, you could climb quite handily up onto these roofs. Besides, older buildings tended to be far lower. Money was scarcer for building materials and people were shorter.
Through the main temple entrance.
