Indian Dance in Taipei

Anyone looking to take an Indian dance class in Taipei need look no further than Shiva. Assuming, of course, that you speak Chinese.

Shiva is the first group I've come across who offer classes in Indian dance; mostly Bollywood-style hip jiggling, but the head teacher also knows Kathak and a few other dance forms.

I've been a fan of Zhongshan Sports Center's classes for awhile - though their bellydancing classes seem to teach moves more akin to traditional Chinese dances, they're not bellylicious at all - but they don't offer Indian dance. Shiva fills that void.

My friend Sasha has just taken one of their classes and performed in the recital. I did her mehndi (henna) the night before, and while I was on a roll I did my own as well. We went to see her and had a lovely time, as many of the dancers are quite skilled and the instructor is the most talented Kathak dancer I've seen outside India.

Too bad his silver lame and purple trim dancing costume made him look like a flamboyant spaceman. Ahem.

Another highlight of the evening was hearing the director of the Taipei-India Association speak. He talked about how great it was that these beautiful Taiwanese girls were learning about Indian dance and Indian culture (Sasha assured me that if I wanted to take a class, a foreigner would also be welcome), and how the India-Taipei Association works to promote person-to-person relations between the two areas. Person-to-person. Ah, the talk of a diplomat. Gotta love it.

Some photos:




End note: if you want to buy the henna in tubes with pointed applicator ends, you can get it at Rana Fashion for around 30 kuai a tube. They also sell Indian fashions like the ones worn above. Rana Fashion is in Ximending near The Body Shop and accessible by Ximen Exit 6. I don't know the exact address.

Reason #1 to love Taiwan

Taiwanese Opera.








...much more palatable than Chinese (or rather, Beijing) Opera, it's cousin. Less caterwauling, less beating-a-stray-cat-against-a-pole screeching.

More singing and music.

Needless to say, I prefer Ge Tzai Xi (not sure of that second word should be a "c" or "z" so I made up my own Romanization. Hey, everyone's doin' it!). I can't understand what's going on most of the time unless local spectators fill me in, as it's sung mostly in Taiwanese. That doesn't matter, though. I don't speak German and I love The Ring of the Nibelung, Die Meistersinger and Rienzi. I don't speak Italian and I love Aida.

In a way, it's almost better not to understand. Understanding the chanter at the Confucius Temple took all of the mystique out of it.

I'm especially a fan of a local troupe made up entirely of women who perform regularly at Bao'an and Dihua Street - their productions are entirely in Taiwanese. I think this was the same group but I'm not sure.



After watching the rehearsal for Confucius's birthday and before going to Dalong Street Night Market for dinner to have the best octopus of my life, we found this performance going on across the street from Bao'an Temple, in the property owned by Bao'an where the firewalking usually takes place.

I'm hoping to inspire more travelers to come and explore Taiwan and take advantage of the confluence of cultural heritage, friendliness, delicious food and stunning natural beauty here. With that in mind, here are some photos and a video, for those who aren't familiar with it:



And some videos...

Typhoon Jangmi

Here's a really boring video for you, taken when we went to buy provisions to ride out Typhoon Jangmi (currently causing our living room to leak).

I know it's not this exciting thing where I'm grabbing onto trees as cars are carried by the wind and floods...but I'm not inclined to go back out.

Though apparently just that is happening on the east coast now, and I wouldn't wish that on Taipei (or those affected on the east coast who have to go through it).



The storm is getting worse in Taipei as evening rolls in, marking 2 alternating weekends of being stuck at home in the middle of a typhoon. Our kitchen is a pond, our living room (which has no outside walls or windows - it looks out onto the kitchen) is leaking, and for once we're actually worried about losing power. Wellcome is sandbagged and they're taping up the windows. Water is in the aisles as well as some nasty brown stuff that I presume is from a broken soy sauce container. The customers looked shell-shocked, the checkout guy weary, and the doors are sandbagged as is normal during a typhoon.

ICRT's typhoon alert says that motorcyclists can't ride around in downtown Taipei anymore, but, ahh...they were definitely out in the lanes of Jingmei.

...and to think, I was promised free post-Ramadan Punjabi food tonight! Damn!

Seafood on Big Dragon Street

After our Confucian Birthday Extravaganza we puttered around Bao'an Temple and found some Taiwanese opera nearby. Afterwards we decided to seek out food on Dalong Street (Big Dragon Street), which starts across the street from the square with the temple entrances. It has a very small night market that the city is obviously trying to develop.

We started with what appears to be the local specialty - stir-fried mutton with noodles. It was good but needed some spice.

Then we moved on to what I can only say was some of the best seafood I've had in a long time - Shengmeng Haixian (生猛海鮮) at #251.

We had deep fried spicy octopus, which marks one of the very few times that I have truly enjoyed deep fried seafood...I generally prefer it to be cooked more gently to let the lighter flavors come through. This frying, though, brought out a savoriness that I didn't know octopus could possess, and got rid of the rubber-chicken feel that many octopus dishes possess.

We also had a Taipei seafood restaurant stalwart - basil clams. Clams cooked in a basil-heavy broth. Always delicious.

Just a few of the things on offer at Shengmeng Seafood (seriously, this is only a tiny portion of the entire menu)

Finally, we got shrimp seared in a sweet black pepper concoction that was positively delicious. I didn't realize that caramelized something and black pepper could go so well together.

The restaurant itself is unassuming but a bit more upscale than the other joints on the block. It has a Japanese-style seafood restaurant feel to it, with fish on ice, tanks of shellfish outside, dark lacquer wood tables and little stools, the blue and white "curtains" the back and lots of beer and noise.

It seemed to be a restaurant for everyone - there was a group of 20-somethings celebrating an unknown event loudly and in Taiwanese. There were three middle aged drinking mates smoking and getting plastered together, and next to them was a family including a 3-year old and a grandmother who looked as though she remembered a time before the Japanese arrived in Taiwan.

My lovely boyfriend with his new short hair blocks the view at Shengmeng Seafood.

Definitely delicious, and definitely a place to return to.

I was also curious about the much smaller, homier A-Qiu Seafood closer to the beginning of the night market and will return at a later date.


Shengmeng Seafood - #251 Dalong Street, near Bao'an Temple (head to Bao'an but before entering the area with entrances to the temple annexes, turn left at "Milk Houses"bakery), MRT Yuanshan.

Naruwan Indigenous People's Market

Wondering where you can get some hornet liquor?

Curious about the taste of deer meat or wild boar? Ever wanted to try snails or "virility soup", rice in a bamboo stick, cold millet wine, white pine plum jelly?

Ever wanted to see how coffee grown in Taiwan tastes?

Then go around lunchtime to Naruwan Indigenous People's Market (or dinnertime on Fridays and Saturdays, if you want live aboriginal music) and go wild.

I have to admit, we were expecting something homier - "just ten stalls" made me think of a tiny covered market or a few stalls along the street, not an entire building given over to those stalls with a huge sign on the front, and a sign near Longshan Temple MRT pointing to it.

It didn't look good at first - we walked inside and were greeted by a tacky plaster statue of a cartoon aborigine.



The place quickly redeemed itself, though, through its delicious food. We sampled millet wine (they wouldn't let us sample the hornet wine, as it was $900 NT a bottle and they didn't have an open sampling bottle) and tried some snacks from Hualien, then went over to another stand for deer and wild boar. We did get the bamboo rice, despite the fact that it's a recent addition to the aboriginal diet (rice was not an aboriginal staple before being influenced by the Chinese) and finished it off with Heliwan Mountain Coffee from Taidong.



The pig was delicious and garlicky, cooked with just the right amount of spice. The fatty parts weren't rubbery or gooey - I normally don't like fatty pig but this was quite good, it had an almost buttery flavor.

The deer reminded me of Sichuan cooking - hot and savory. The meat itself was exceedingly tender, and apparently is domestically raised (we didn't realize there were still deer in Taiwan - we go to the countryside often and only once do I think I might have seen a deer in the distance.)

The coffee was delicious, though a little strong and a overpowering. I did need a little sugar to get it down - I measure good coffee by whether or not I need to add sugar. To be fair, I needed to add a lot less than to Starbucks drip coffee.



Throughout the meal, a local aboriginal family (most of the people hanging around - not really being purposeful, just eating and hanging around - looked like they came from aboriginal communities) was sitting near us and one woman was either very enthusiastic or had imbibed a little too much millet wine.

"You have to order the soup!" she said (in Chinese). "Is that your boyfriend?"
"No, this one is. Isn't he handsome?"
"YES! He should order the soup. Then, when you go home, WOOOOOOOOOO YAAAA!"

Very Energetic Woman...very, very energetic.

Ahem.

We're heading back soon - I want to go to the handicrafts stall to buy gifts for people back home - behind the cell phone charms of bobblehead aborigines, they had some genuine handmade leatherwork and other interesting things. And, of course, we have to try the custard apple ice cream at another stall as well as hearing the live music.

On the same trip we visited Xuehai Academy, though we couldn't enter. Xuehai is one of the oldest buildings in Taipei and was once the most prestigious academic academy in Taiwan. It's beautiful, though it is crumbling a bit at the edges and covered with an ugly protective plastic roof. It is now the Gao family temple, so not accessible to the public. We're thinking we need to make friends with some Gao family members and get let in one day.

Xuehai Academy

Also nearby you can stop at the Mangka Gate over Guangzhou Street Lane 223, which is not impressive at all...but inside there are several tiny hole-in-the-wall Taiwanese restaurants that look as though they're positively delicious. We're planning to go back and try some. You can also see Kenny. KENNY!

Mangka Gate

KENNY!

To get to Naruwan Indigenous People's Market, go to Longshan Temple MRT station and walk to the Guangzhou Street intersection (Longshan Temple will be on the right). Turn left and walk down the stone-paved street to the end. The market is at the intersection of Guangzhou and Huanhe Roads. Xuehai Academy is across the street. Mangka Gate is on Guangzhou Street over Lane 223 on the righthand side.

Confucius Says...

...NO FUN FOR YOU!



OK, I can't say that the dress rehearsal for his birthday on September 28th (happy b-day, bro) wasn't eye-catching. It was - it was stately, dignified, sedate...all the things you expect in a ceremony to honor Confucius.

It's just that the real thing is happening tomorrow at 6am and the ceremony was so stately and dignified that I have no idea how anyone could stay awake for it at that ungodly* hour. If I were Lord of the Universe, 6am on a Sunday would be banished from Time.

Not only that, but only a few hundred passes will be given out, so hardcore Confucius fans line up as early as 3am to get them. In what is shaping up to be a drenching typhoon.

We got there as the rain for the latest and greatest typhoon started up - and found that only people with a special ID ("can li zheng" or "ceremony attendee ID") could enter to watch the rehearsal. I knew my sister was inside - Zheng-da brings its foreign students there - so I tried that angle to get an ID, figuring I could get Joseph and Brendan in later. No luck.

Then two students who were not impressed came out and gave us their IDs. Their loss, our gain. The gatekeeper shooed the three of us in before anyone noticed that there were only two IDs.

"Feather dancers" in yellow robes stood in front of the main shrine, occasionally doing a decorous dance lacking completely in flash. Red-robed musicians played instruments "from the Zhou Dynasty" (obviously meaning that they were invented and used in that time, not that the actual instruments in use date from that time)...though I'm not sure I'd call it "playing" so much as striking the same four notes, each held for at least one measure, over and over.



A Master of Ceremonies sang a long, spiraling tune detailing all of the witnesses and groups present. I guess those chants are more mysterious and haunting when you don't know what the guy is singing. When you do know that he's belting out "Reeeeeeeepublic of Chiiiiiiinnnnnaaaaaa in the yeeeeeeear niiiinnneetttyyy seeevvveeeennnnn....wiiittnnessedd byyy stttuuuddeenntss frrooomm Naationaaaaal Taaaaiwaaaan Zheeeeengzhiiiii Universityyyyyy", it loses that sacred touch, you know?



There were more feather dances as people in the various small shrines around the main building gave offerings - or rather rehearsed giving offerings - and they practiced how things will go when Ma Ying-jiu comes to make an offering to Confucius in person.



It was quite fascinating to compare this example of austerity and reserve with the wild pageants that take place at the Bao'an Temple next door. At Baosheng Dadi and Sengnung Dadi's birthdays you can be assured of several giant (ten to fifteen feet high) costumes of various folk deities coming out, some martial artists with painted faces, lion dancers, pole balancers, and other costumes...and the occasional firewalking. I've grown fond of the large porcelain floats depicting mythical beasts and creatures with lit-up eyes and steam blowing out of their mouths. Take all that riotous color and noise and place it next to - literally next door to - the quiet dignity of this ceremony and you end up with a very good metaphor for Taiwan.



When all was said and done, the feather dancers (mostly teenagers) looked relieved and we retired to "Confucius Coffee", located in the temple behind the gift shop. Or tried to - it was closed.

For anyone interested in watching the ceremony next year or sweet-talking your way into an attendee pass for the rehearsal, The Con-Meister's birthday is not on the lunar calendar (or so I'm told); word has it that it's fixed on September 28th every year (ceremony 6-11am), with the rehearsal on the 27th around 3pm at the Confucius Temple near Yuanshan MRT station.




*pun intended

The New York Times takes notice of Taiwan

...except they have this bad habit of calling it "The Other China", or "another side of China" or some such, which annoys many of us to no end.

This article is particularly fun to read - all about food in Taipei and why it's, not to mince words, better than food in Beijing.

Which, of course, it is!

It's long so I'll just post a link: Feasting at the Table of the Other China

But hey, I bet some NY Times editor somewhere realized that it would be big trouble to write about Taiwan without implying a kinship to China (it might "seriously hurt the feelings of the Chinese people" or some other such bullcrap), so they have to put it in there somewhere.

Or maybe they figure "Taiwan" won't grab readers - and therefore sell ads - as a headline, but "China" will. I dunno.


This follows up on several other NY Times articles, including the good - but not fantastic - 36 Hours in Taipei where they have great suggestions but hit the tourist points mostly, leaving out some of my favorite spots. With limited print space I guess that's what one has to do, though.

Both of these articles use the adjective "Taiwanese" later on in the piece, but not after a top heavy spiel about China, its influence and its pull. Why not be neutral on the issue, or better yet, call it what it is - Taiwan? I realize I'm starting to sound like Johnny Neihu on a bender here, but there's no way to avoid that.

There is, of course, the extremely well-written but also very long "Last Days of Taipei" in their magazine a few months ago.

This last one is the only one that seems to really get to the heart of life in the quiet lanes that lie just off the busy thoroughfares of Taipei city. It's worth a read, or at least a skim.