it is 6:25am in California and I cannot sleep due to the trials of jetlag. So I'm going to post about my trip.
Firstly, it was delicious. Taiwan boasts some of the most ridiculous food in the entire world, and some of the most ridiculous jadeite rocks meticulously carved to resemble food. In fact, the two most famous pieces in Taipei's National Palace Museum are these:
Cabbage and pork .... rocks. Every keychain in the gift shop either has cabbage or meat hanging off of it. Other delicious specialties include oyster omelettes, bell apples and sugar apples, neither of which remotely resemble apples. One is like a pink, heart-shaped pear, and the other is a bubbly green artichoke-type thing oozing with delicious creamy white goo (yeah, i said it). This goo is so sweet that I can only have about 1oz before I have to stop. And I'm a sugar fiend.Mochi in Taiwan is called Muaji and they think they invented it. It is also delcious and comes in ridiculous flavors. Many vegetables are mysterious pickled and many fruits and flowers dried and marinated in weird liquids that give everything a sweet rum taste. There are exotic potatoes.
Okay. As for the actual sites that I saw, mom and I traveled to four cities, not counting the city with the airport (Taoyuan), which is not that interesting.
Tainan- southwesterly city, with a temple on every street corner, mostly buddhist, one confucian. The buddhist temples are all foggy from the incense and filled with people bobbing up and down at the alter asking for shit. Each temple has a specialty like love, education (students pray here for good test scores), family, shock and awe, etc etc. tainan is also famous for danzi mian, a noodle soup dish with little bits of animal floating in it. also ran into some of the new year's day festival, complete with firecrackers, giant gods on stilts, dragon dances, and masked instrumentalists.
Taitung- southwesterly city framed by tropical forest. We took a bus out to the Jhihben forest park and hiked our asses off. We also dipped our feet into some medicinally healing hot spring water. I didn't experience any spritual revelations, but it was nice and warm and all of the other hikers had for some reason decided to bring adorable puppies and gerbils. Seriously there were like eight dogs and two gerbils ROAMING FREE.
Hualien- flower city. edible specialty is a red flower marinated in sugar. also home to taroko gorge, a really big-ass gorge that also has one of the world's tallest buddhas and some little temples with names like "eternal buddha sunshine spring temple".
Taipei- hit all the big museums here: National Palace, a museum about the formosan aborigines that would probably piss off my anthro people, and a van gogh exhibit. did a bit of shopping in the ximending district as per jenny's recommendation. one of mom's friends took us out for one of those acupressure foot and calf massage from a bunch of sadists who kept offering me tea and telling me that the pain is cleansing. the pain was not especially cleansing. but the tea was delicious. when i see the color purple, i think of taro.
All in all I had a completely awesome time with my mum and took a zillion pictures that I'll try to make a postable album of soon. Until then, love the earth, love each other, and swear profusely.
-mei gui
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