Yam Wielding Grannies, Plastic Bugs, and Cilantro Ice Cream

Magnificent scenery, yam wielding grannies, and cilantro ice cream
March 16, 2009
Taipei, Taiwan
A trip to Yangmingshan National Park

(all images should enlarge when clicked--if not, see all the full size photos of Yangmingshan Park trip click here to go to my Yangmingshan Flickr set)

I describe Taiwan to American friends as a place the size of New Jersey, with the population of Canada, divided into a about a dozen ethnic groups (depends on who's counting), speaking about the same number of languages (or more). Did I mention about 80% of the island is uninhabitable because of steep mountains and jungle?

Yangminshan National Park is more like the majority of Taiwan's terrain than the crowded cities along the western coastal plain. The forest cloaked mountains rising above the city to the north, was once the cool, scenic preserve of the elite. Now, with the island's political and economic development, the park is open to the public. City buses (the #260) run to it and, in fact, the National Park is part of the city.

But you would never know it.

The park is actually larger in land area than Taipei proper. Like American national parks, roads and small towns dot the interior. Camp grounds, nature study sites, trails laid out to see butterflys (best hiked in May and June) and trails to see the cherry blossoms and azaleas (best hiked now), areas of interest to geologists, and areas of interest to people just going out for the views, areas of interest for artists, and for those just looking to relax in some of the many hot springs doting the old volcanos.

A friend attending a business meeting at the park offices in Yangmingshan took me along several hours before the meeting to a local restaurant with a fantastic view of one of the valleys and, incidentally, one of Generalissimo Chang Kai Shek's villas.

The villa is the low green building, barely visible, on the ridge.

The proprietress, Ms Lee, was a bundle of energy and good will. Her mother, reknown as one of the best cooks in the area, is the core of the family restaurant which Ms Lee manages. When not puzzling out the thoughts and actions of the odd waigeren (pronounced wye guhrun=foreigner), Ms Lee devotes her formidable energy and talents to nature photography, making natural dyes and paints, making terrifically engaging little sculptures of bugs from scrap plastic, and just in general being a force of nature which she so carefully observes and documents in her native mountainside village.

Ms Lee gets some coffee brewing for customers by using an alcohol lamp

I noticed a bowl of what looked like paper hats on the table. But that couldn't be right, I thought, not even baby heads are that small. All was made clear to me in a moment. It seems in many traditional restaurants, these are little disposable bowls for bones, seed pits, and gristle. Children or the grannies make these little folding bowls out of scrap paper. Nothing to wash and just throw it away. A great recycling use of old magazines and fliers.

Our folding paper bones plate (note red sweet potato in the vase)

My friend left for her meeting and I was in the capable hands of Ms Lee. Between her 100 words of English and my 100 words of Mandarin we did just fine. I figured out she had said I should wait ten minutes while she finished cleaning up the restaurant and we would go wander the mountainside and village to take photos. In the meantime, I took photos of Ms Lee's handicrafts, her garden, and of her mother preparing taro to mix with plums and brandy. Ms Lee's progress was slowed as she would periodically dash out into her garden to name plants for me in Chinese which she uses to make her paints and dyes. I don't remember the names of the plants, but I did learn my colors in Chinese.

“Ahmah” (Grandmother) Lee prepares taro

Progress came to a complete halt as a couple walked in with what appeared to be a quivering mass of library paste in a brownie pan. Nothing would do now but that everybody sit down and have some
mwahdjee topped with ground peanuts and caramel (more on the peanuts and caramel later.)
We had to eat it right now, an elderly gentleman explained, while the mwahdjee was warm and still soft. I poked at it tentatively with my desert fork—I could see his point. It was already gluey enough we could have pasted tiles to NASA's Space Shuttle with the stuff. Like all traditional Chinese deserts, it possessed only a hint of sweet as we would define it in the West. Sugar is not a major component of cooking here.

my serving of mwahdjee and ground peanuts

Ms Lee kindly gave me a bug she'd made from plastic box strapping. She's made dozens of animals and bugs from a variety of colors and textures of box strapping.


I love the ant!


Ms Lee got her camera, grabbed a few oranges off a tree for us, and we headed down into the village. When I say we headed down, I mean we headed down. The village is on a mountainside. There are no up-down roads as such, only narrow stairways and paths steep as a ladder. I was grateful for all the leg exercises my trainer at the gym had put me through. Roads along the mountainside are recent, the older ones being more like level paths with the odd handrail or wall to keep you from tumbling down onto a neighbor's roof or field.

We had not gone far before we meet four “ahmahs” sitting in their traditional place along the mountain path into the village.

Of course we had to stop and make our manners here. I was photographed with the eldest (she's 85.)

Modernization means cast off office furniture to sit on and corrugated piece of tin over the wide spot they sit in on the mountain trail.

A hundred yards past the ahmahs, we came to an old traditional house dating to before the Second World War.

An old woman trudges up the lane behind the old house. As you can see, she's not afraid of color.


Plunging down another lane ourselves...

and on past a water tank set in sturdy tree...

which, it turned out, provided water for part of a local village market in a wide spot in the road above the fields in the valley.

Cala flowers, sunflowers, dried squid, umbrellas, etc. What do you want?

Despite having been served waaaaay more food than humanly possible to consume at Ms Lee's restaurant—and with the mwahdjee still making my insides sticky, there was nothing for it but to be polite and try everything offered by the local vendors. As a guest of Ms Lee and as a foreigner (I did not see any other Westerners on my trip that day) everybody insisted I try their specialty. Nobody would accept payment—in fact, when Ms Lee left some coins on a vendor's platter while she was away, the lady returned shortly and ran us down to physically force the money back into Ms Lee's pocket!
I started taking lots of photos so I would appear too busy to try more food.

Looking out over the valley from the market area


An old pagoda at the market area

There's always room for ice cream—especially ice cream wrapped in soy tacos and stuffed with fresh cilantro!
Bear with me. This is one of the most delicious treats I have had here. Follow the photos below. We were making our way out of the market area when I spied a block of peanut brittle (it's not, but for lack of a better word...) I started to take a photo as I saw another little lady sneaking up on my flank armed with breaded fried sweet yam slices on a stick. Taking several photos to ward off the yam lady, only set up a hue and cry for the vendor at the peanut block to reappear and make his or her manners to the foreign guest. I had no idea ice cream was involved.

A lady shortly appeared and pulled out what looked like a carpenter's hand planer. She industriously set to planing off a half cup or so of grated peanut brittle, plopped out an ultra thin taco made of soy flour, and dumped the grated peanut brittle in the middle. Next, she reached into an ice chest, plopped two scoops of home made vanilla cream onto the peanuts gratings in the middle of the taco and proceeded to chop up a handful of fresh cilantro. I had no idea what she'd do with the cilantro until she dumped it onto the ice cream. Then, in less time than it takes to tell about it, she wrapped the taco up tightly and presented it to me.

There was no getting out of this.
Unlike a lot of the other food offered me, you can't simply drop ice cream into a bag with a promise to have it for supper. Ice cream is now.

Ice cream in a taco with cilantro is thinking outside the box.

With all eyes on me, I bit into it.

Thank God, it is DELICIOUS!

You can bet when I get back to Raleigh, I am going to start running some home experiments with filo dough, crushed peanuts, vanilla ice cream and cilantro. Or try it yourself before I get back to the States and write me what you think.

We finally got past the food vendors and into the area with National Geographic quality scenery. (see my Flickr photo sets)

Passing a waterfall fed by a mountain spring, we came upon a garden landscaped with pagodas, pines, cherry trees, azaleas, and more. From here, we could look out over the valley.

(I love how the setting sun brushed pink where it hit the water further up the mountainside!)

At the garden—a young woman stands on the bridge over the mountain stream surrounded by azaleas

from the bridge—stream and azaleas at sunset

cherry blossoms -- the main reason crowds come out to Yangmingshan this time of year

On the way back down the mountainside we came across the vendors closing up shop. Before you think “Oh my God, how unsanitary!” please consider these ladies are washing their dishes in pure mountain spring water piped down from the same source as the waterfall; it is pure, and the water they use is then drained along the roadside canal you see into the village vegetable and flower gardens.
Can't say the same for your kitchen drain and dishwasher now can you?

My coach turned into a pumpkin and it was time to leave. Ms Lee took me to a place only 50 yards above her house to have a perfect position to take photos of the sunset over Yangmingshan.
(to download computer desktop sized photos of the sunset below or the azaleas on a rock at the top of this email, click on the images)

Red Bean Filled Hockey Pucks and Mind Control

The National Palace Museum

March 11, 2009 Wednesday -- Taipei, Taiwan

Hockey pucks full of red bean paste and mind control practiced on swarms of tourists, all in an attempt to see the dowager empress' jade and gold fingernail coverings—a trip to the National Palace Museum.

Single adult admission is NT$ 160 (about $US 4.65) They take credit cards in the restaurant, museum shop and for tickets. Not many places in Taiwan take credit cards, that's why I mention it. web site www.npm.gov.tw

Since it rained again today and photography is forbidden in the museum, I have decorated this travelogue with photos from Long Shan Temple which I visited Tuesday.

When the last emperor left Beijing's Forbidden City in November 1924, the Nationalist government moved in to catalogue the millenias' worth of treasures stored there and set up a museum from this incomparable store of Chinese art and historical artifacts (many items were both.) With the eruption of war with Japan, the collection was crated up and moved to Nanjing in the south. Later, the collection was hauled around China as the war ebbed and flowed. It was hardly installed again in Nanjing in 1946 when the Chinese Civil War saw it crated and on the move again, this time to Taiwan in late 1949 as the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai Shek retreated to the island. In the 1960s a program of building a home worthy of the treasure was undertaken and a fraction of the tens of thousands of crates of treasure put on display. To this day, it is considered the definitive collection of Chinese art. My writing is not a review of the art--it needs no reviewing--but of the visitor experience, at least, as compared to my previous visits in 2004 and 2005 when there was massive renovation of the museum underway.

A lantern outside one of the minor side shrines at Long Shan Temple

The National Palace Museum has always been one of the world's great museums and now it finally looks like it. The National Palace Museum is a very different than the one I saw in 2004 and early 2005. That museum had been built in the 1960s on exhibit design and theory developed in about 1910.
There was a certain charm to that. The floors creaked so you knew you were in a museum. There were old glass cases in some rooms that let you get really close to the exhibits and take a fantastic photo. A lot of objects had been put on display in small areas and two or three groups of Japanese tourists or local 6th graders on a field trip could close off a gallery to nearly anybody else by sheer force of bodies and noise.

There are downsides, though.

Embroidery in progress on a street near the temple. The embroidered gold dragon at the top of this travelogue was on sale here, too.

Now the National Palace Museum is a world class museum showing few objects VERY dimly lit, while VERY efficiently moving massive tour groups of Japanese, Mainland Chinese, and local 6th graders through.
While I clearly understand cloth and ink will fade under strong light, the light levels are so low it is difficult to even read some of the labels, let along actually see the paintings or objects.
While I clearly understand cloth and ink will fade under strong light, I am at a loss as to why jade, bronze or ceramics need to be as dimly lit as paintings. I defy any museum curator in the world to produce evidence of even one metal or stone sculpture being damaged by normal lighting.
I applaud the National Palace Museum (NPM) for instituting a no photography rule. While I seriously doubt the deleterious effects of photo flashes on the exhibits, there is no doubt the movement of crowds would come to a crawl or a halt as galleries erupted in photo flashes so constant it would look like a 1970s disco.
BUT. If you're going to forbid photography, then the gift store should be well stocked with comprehensive catalogs of the collections AND a high quality series of CDs with digital photos available.
Laughably bad DVDs on the NPM collection are available; copies of catalogs for two dozen or so past special exhibitions; stacks of three year old museum magazines; some fantastic full size copies of hanging scrolls are on sale in one corner of the 3000+ sq ft gift store. Sadly, the NPM's gift shop yields nothing to other great museums of the world in primarily selling overpriced, logo stamped gimcrackery in classy and elegant setting for several times what you'd pay at WalMart. (and about 10 times what you'll pay one subway stop south at Shilin Night Market.)

Leave your ducks and chickens at home if you're taking the metro

As mentioned before, the building's overall design promotes the ebb and flow of great shoals of tour groups.
One of the innovations helping the independent visitor (though I am sure that was not on anybody's mind) is the requirement tour groups have to all buy head sets, each tuned to a their guide's unique radio frequency. The guide has only to speak softly into his broadcast microphone to talk about an exhibit and then quietly direct his group to move right or left or forward down a hall, etc. to the next item. There is far less noise of talking or confusion and no hubbub as tour leaders try to speak loudly to be heard (in several different languages) and then direct their group off in one direction without accidentally picking up several confused members from another group.
To an outsider, it is rather eerie to watch large groups of people being choreographed in different directions by a seemingly invisible hand.
I have to comment on the view outside.
There are several museum restaurants; a cloak room check service, wheelchairs, elevators, plenty of benches in the galleries, bathrooms and staff in the museum. If you are not sure about our ability to navigate Taipei's public transport there are swarms of taxis at the museum.
While the National Palace Museum grounds themselves are imposing, beautifully laid out and maintained as befits its status as a world class museum, its surroundings can only be described as a Chinese Rush Limbaugh's wet dream. No regulation and utter lack of zoning or city planning has resulted in scabrous apartment buildings directly across from the museum, dominating the terrace and balcony views, and transmission lines built directly across the back of the museum. Urban planning is still a new concept here.

stone dragon winding around a temple column at Long Shan Temple

I got to the NPM by taking the red line metro north six stops to Shilin Station; a half dozen or more bus routes passing the Shilin station go to the NPM. That fact notwithstanding, your correspondent managed to get turned around (with a compass!) and tried to board a school bus heading the wrong direction. An attractive and well spoken young woman took a few moments off from hurrying to class to walk me to the right bus stand, spoke with the bus driver and got me settled in the right direction. Don't know what she said, but the bus driver refused payment for the trip as well.

Nuns having their heads shaved outside Long Shan Temple

I would have gone into the Chih Shan gardens surrounding the NPM and then on down the road 250 yards to the new Museum of Taiwanese Aboriginals if it hadn't been a) raining again, and b) after hours in the NPM, I was dog tired and wouldn't have had more than 45 minutes in the Aboriginal Museum. Plenty remains for a return trip another day. Not only will I know where the right bus stand is, but I tried out a few of the small shops around the metro station for food.

Riding the #255 bus I saw my favorite Engrish for the day. A woman on a scooter stopped at a light; on her jacket was elegantly emblazoned “Candy Oiler.” Oh well, it doesn't have to make sense to be stylish, just has to be some sort of English.

One of the simple innovations I saw here was on the bus ride. We passed several road crews and each had set out a used, bald mannequin from a clothing store. A yellow rain slicker was draped over him and a red flag taped to his arm. Larger and more startling than a traffic cone and lot cheaper than the cheapest live labor!

Near the Shilin metro station I stumbled across a “German bakery.” Mr Mark, German bakery even has dual language signage Chinese/German in the store. It appears to be a chain, as I would bet in this part of Taipei the number of Germans is only slightly greater than the number of woolly mammoths. Bakeries and baked goods have become quite a craze here. Chinese cooking doesn't use an oven or baking; no wheat; no dairy; no sugar; little or no salt. Over the past five years, bakeries have sprung up all over. There will even be an international baking exposition late this month in the venue normally reserved for electronics shows. I bought a loaf of Mr Mark's bread for NT$ 115 ($US 3). Back in my room, I tried it. Let's just say it would struggle to find its market in the States, and would be laughed at with pity in Germany, but it is a vast improvement over what has been offered here in Taiwan in the past.

One of two lanterns at the Long Shan Temple entrance

The other two shops I tried had tastier and more rewarding food for far less. For NT$ 30 (95 cents US)
I had a sort of pancake wrapped around scramble eggs and cilantro, the whole smeared with spicy sauce and served n a paper wrapper.
Red bean paste is commonly sold as a sweet here, though it is barely sweet at all by Western standards. A street vendor filled one inch deep cupcake shaped moulds with a sort of fortune cookie batter (fortune cookies are unknown here—they were invented in California). When the batter has cooked, he stuffs the miniature pie shell with red bean paste until it's about an inch over the top. It's flipped over into a second pie shell and cooked so the customer is presented for about 35 cents US a hockey puck full of red bean paste to munch (or a Skoal's tin of chewing tobacco for those of us who grew up in North Carolina before we imported Yankees and hockey teams.)
As always, I am interested to hear from my readers with comments, suggestions, and corrections.

Taiwan Travel--Far More Tubas Than Needed

Tubas, fried squid, and teapots
March 7, 2009 Saturday Taipei, Taiwan (still rainy, windy and about 56 degrees F)

Trudging for teapots, the National Taiwan Museum, street demonstrations with way more tubas than needed, and the Chinese calligraphy store. Hard rain—has not let up since I arrived; the temperature about 60 F with gusty winds.

Originally, I just went out to buy a teapot.


I refused to pay $US150 for a teapot I was just going to use for everyday tea and leave here. People take their tea and tea pots VERY seriously here—Taiwan is the Napa and Sonoma Valleys of tea for many Japanese collectors—and fine tea shops in this area of town will not disgrace their teas by selling inferior teapots. Teapots here are no bigger than a Christmas ornament, often smaller, and the jasmine brewing teapot I needed is no bigger than an American coffee cup. Brewing tea here is nothing like an English method.

I couldn't just keep brewing tea in a old cereal bowl.

There are whole books written on the proper methods to brew tea, so it's not going to be the subject of this newsletter.

April 2005 my previous teapot vendor

Last time I was here, I just walked up Zhong Shan Rd, ducked into the alleyways and finally found a vendor selling used teapots for about $US 15. The weather's been so bad, I am not going to go walking that far and I doubt there are any little old men selling teapots out of crates lashed to the back of their scooter in this weather.


Layered in tee shirt, shirt, vest, and windbreaker and umbrella, I took the camera out, heading to Hua Shan market. It was almost 9 AM and not many people on the streets or shops open. I seriously wondered if my favorite eatery would even be open.

I should not have worried. At 8:50 AM there were TWO lines stretched out the door!
Saying the heck with it, I wandered east along Zhong Xiao Rd.
I took photos of sidewalks for a short article on Taiwanese sidewalks. (Everybody here is responsible for the sidewalk in front of their building, so there is a variation in the concrete and other materials that would drive an American—certainly Cary, NC's—city planners mad.) See the photo at the top of this letter.

Along the way, I stopped at a street stall, plopping out NT$ 39 ($US 1.12) for three sausage and cabbage dumplings. That was breakfast. Trudged the alleys all the way back, winding up behind the Sheraton. Passed several tea shops—all selling teapots for far more than I wanted to spend.

I passed two “barber shops.” Here barber shops are often a front for sexual services. One was shut up tight, but I could see clearly into the other. “Barber chairs” made up like beds reclined in an oddly lit atmosphere. Women in smocks beckoned to me, waving hair dryers suggesting it was not my hair they were going to blow dry.

The rain was not letting up, so I wandered on back to the TAV, had some hot jasmine tea (brewed in a cereal bowl), called Joy and read the news on line. I had a pear-apple and small bowl of muesli, then decided to walk on down to Shin Kong department store to see if they had an inexpensive teapot on the 9th floor in housewares. I spent a while first walking the shops in the Taipei Main Railway Station. (Despite much ballyhoo, zero progress has been made in making the main station more tourist friendly in the past four years.)
I walked the new underground shopping mall. No tea ware there either.

So. I finally arrived at Shin Kong Department store.
There were no inexpensive teapots on the 9th floor. What did I expect? They were selling them in the area next to Hummel figurines.

I did ride the elevators a few times just to ogle the elevator operators. If you ever wondered whether the rubber dolls from the movie LARS AND THE REAL GIRL found steady work and happiness, relax. They're all dressed now as Pan Am stewardesses from 1962 and working department stores in Taiwan.

I resolved to walk through the alleys behind Shin Kong and take a chance finding some little store selling teapots.

On a rainy day in Chinese alleys, you want to bring along a compass. You can't see the sun; you can't read the signs, and it is more than easy to get turned around. I hadn't brought along my compass or camera.

Luckily, after a half hour's walk, I emerged suddenly onto a main road right in front of a French Belle Epoque style building. Banners flying in front announced it to be the National Taiwan Museum.
www.ntm.gov.tw

I'n a sucker for museums, so in I went. The Taiwanese are fighting unemployment by having four people with three computers in the front selling 60 cent (US) admission tickets. You get a colorful ticket big enough to use as a bookmark and a handsome color guide in English to the museum included in the ticket price.

Built in 1908 under Japanese rule, the building was designed to be a museum from the beginning and has been well updated to keep up its mission. I toured exhibits of aboriginal tribes' clothing and tools; a large exhibit on Taiwan's six national parks; enjoyed a photo exhibition of sculpture made by Czech artists from plastic drink bottles and toured the top floor show on museum conservation techniques.

In a stairwell to the third floor, I stumbled across a young woman dressed in a ultra frilly thong, frilly miniskirt, frilly cap and jacket (all in red and white) and wearing high heel lace up boots. She was provocatively draped on the 1908 era window sills.
She was having her wedding photos made.
Soft porn wedding photos are a HUGE business here. People may snap a few photos at the actual ceremony, but ranking just behind the wedding banquet in complexity and cost, are the 6 to 12 weeks worth of fashion magazine/Maxim like photo albums created of the bride to be and her groom to be. Often, they're exhibited at the wedding banquet.

This is a subject worth a separate article, but I imagine it is pretty startling to Westerner with no advance knowledge. Her circa 1900 “French maid” outfit went perfectly with the building and her hired photographer and crew knew that; had probably used the location and costume before.

I perused the museum shop's books on early Taiwanese history, noting titles to come back to buy (when I didn't have to lug them around in the rain.)

The weather let up just enough to allow me a half hour stroll through 2-28 Memorial Peace Park behind the museum.

2-28 refers to Feb 28, 1947 when riots against Chiang kai Shek's corrupt government and the Chinese army's behavior erupted in Taiwan. Reacting with ferocious brutality, rather than address the problem, the newly installed Chinese government killed thousands of people, arrested and imprisoned thousands more. A “White Terror,” suppressing any dissent on the pretext of “fighting Godless Communism” commenced for months. (Chiang nominally converted to Christianity since his father in law was a Presbyterian missionary and it strengthened ties and good publicity with Western powers.) For years, if the matter were even referred to at all, it was referred to as the 2-28 Incident. Calling it an “incident” in terms of political impact and casualties is rather like referring to the First Battle of Bull Run as an “an incident at Manassas.”

(A newspaper article just published this week in the Taipei Times with a more detailed account of “the incident” in the town of Keelung north of Taipei.
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2009/03/09/2003437977

As a first step towards modern reconciliation between Chinese and other Taiwanese groups, the 2-28 Memorial Peace Park was established.

I entered it by crossing a small bridge over a lotus pond behind the National Taiwan Museum. A quarter of the park is taken up with a large amphitheater for music and stage performances. A pond with a small pagoda or temple covers part and there are quiet walkways lined with unnaturally square trimmed azaleas forming unnaturally box shaped blooms.

The large monument in the middle to the victims is surrounded by a small reflecting pool. You reach the center of the memorial itself by walking on carefully placed stone pavers to reach the center. Under the memorial sculpture, one looks up into a large Chinese style bronze bell. Unlike most of Taiwan's public places, there is no English signage. That's as it should be. This is their monument, not somebody else's.

(To learn more about the park and its back ground, I refer you to a very succinct article in Wikipedia at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/228_Memorial_Park )

Almost on cue, as I finished walking around the 2-28 Park, the sky opened up again. I unfurled my yusan (umbrella) and fled back into the alleyways. It was long past lunch so I was happy to find a small street stall selling breaded fried squid. “Just the thing!” I thought, and soon I was on my way with a large paper sack of fried squid doused with cayenne pepper and ginger sauce. A bamboo skewer is thoughtfully provided so you can stroll, munch and not get too greasy.

Halfway through my bag of squid, I came upon a tea shop with just the teapot I was looking for! Looking beyond the window display I saw racks of fine teas and a glass counter with large cakes of tea, tea trays, etc. Well dressed staff worked behind the counter and in the very narrow aisle. They even wore neckties.
I felt too awkward with an umbrella, wet clothes, and clutching a bag of smelly fried squid, to go in.
I really wanted that teapot, though. It was the kind for jasmine tea, of which I have more than a pound, and I was getting tired of brewing it in a cereal bowl.
The elegant family in the store must have wondered at the gray haired “waigeren” (pro. wye guh run) munching squid in their alley and standing in the rain so long looking into their window.

You have to understand, buying a teapot in this store would not be a short and simple transaction as in America.

I would have to have several cups of tea with the family; make complimentary and semi intelligent comments on the tea; make small talk and answer questions about America; tell them how much I like Taiwan; then—and only then—express an interest in a teapot. God forbid it be the one I am actually interested in. Then I shall have to argue with the owner, convince him he really does have teapots worthy of even showing to a foreigner, and then, reluctantly being offered 3 other teapots at five to ten times the price I ever intend paying before I finally suggest the most moderately priced teapot in the window (about $US 12) Out of politeness, a price will have to be negotiated on that, even though it may be just a nickel or less off, so that all sides are seen to save face.
The merchant will be visibly disappointed to have spent so much time with “a rich foreigner” only to sell him a $US 12 teapot, so I shall be on the hook to save face all around by buying $US 25-50 worth of tea I do not need and do not have a developed palate to appreciate.

Just going back to Shin Kong Department Store, ogling the blow up dolls working the elevators and forking over $US 50 for a teapot is beginning to look better and better.

By the time I got back up to Shin Kong, though, there is some sort of street demonstration going on. As a matter of policy—I have learned this on previous trips—it makes me nervous to be around political demonstrations about which I do not have a clue and people waving signs I cannot read. Last time I stumbled onto one of these back in April 2005, there were three groups of demonstrators and a dozen busloads of National Police in riot gear involved.

Before I could move on, from down the street and leading the signs and marchers, comes the largest marching band I have ever seen parading by in blue and white uniforms (colors of the KMT Nationalists party). I note as I try to put space between me and them, the band has more than 50 tubas!!!
What sort of marching band or political demonstration needs more than 50 tubas????

Some blocks down the street, I finally went into the Royal Chinese Art company, a store I had always wanted to go in, but had somehow missed doing so on three previous trips. Frankly, I thought it might be a safe haven if the tubas broke bad and riot police were called in.

This is THE place for high end Chinese calligraphy and brush painting supplies. These people are to Chinese calligraphy brushes what Montblanc are to pens.

I gazed at exquisitely carved ink stones costing only a few thousand bucks (US!) Some are designed so the true beauty and detail of carving does not reveal itself until wetted with certain inks.
The carved jade brush rests, arm rests, seals (called chops), water bowls, and brush hangers are of a quality to make your jaw drop. Even more astonishingly, I know from other exhibitions of ink stones I have seen that, while these are high quality, they only run-of-the-mill high quality. I have not worked my way up to seeing the really expensive stuff yet.

Dressed as I was—and still smelling of fried squid, I am sure—I did not even dare to ask to be taken down stairs where they probably keep items that would fit in the National Palace Museum collection.
There were brush paintings for sale, too. At least two of them approached Hokusai's wish that when he was 100 years old he would be able to paint a dot perfect in its ability to convey everything he wanted to say.

As a sculptor and writer, I think a high end Chinese calligraphy store is the perfect combo.
Just wish I could afford it.
Good thing I brought a nice suit and tie. I plan to dress up and go over there a few times, eventually working around to asking about bringing a camera in.

Back at the Taipei Artist Village, it was supper time. I went up to room 401, studio of a young Japanese wood sculptor I had met the day before, Abe Nyubo. Abe's been working the past two months preparing large wood sculptures for an exhibition opening here at the TAV March 27. His wonderful wood carvings are made all the more appealing because he works in Taiwan's native camphor wood. The weather has been awful the past week, so he's moved all the work into his room and keeps on carving. The room is ankle deep in wood chips and smells overwhelmingly of camphor. We rousted his fellow countryman from next door, Kohske Kawasi, a music composer. Both these young men are mega talented artists and I will write more on their work in the future.
I suggested supper and they quickly agreed.

Abe (pronounced AH BEH) took us on a hike four or five blocks down the street to a hole-in-the-wall Taiwanese place he knew. Both Abe and Kawahsi are crazy about Taiwanese food. Tastier and cheaper than what they get in Tokyo according to them. There were no menus in English--or Japanese--we just pointed to stuff and relied on Abe's previous visits to let us know what was good.

We had pickled string beans with red peppers, tofu slices with 6 spices, beef tongue slices with three spices, and a plate of four translucent green, hard boiled duck eggs topped with several unidentifiable but delicious spices.

And that was just appetizers.

Our bowls of beef, cabbage, and soy noodles arrived.

Kawahsi got the double size bowl of beef extra spicy, while Abe and I got the cabbage and beef with noodles. We washed it all down with endless cups of iced tea, talked about art, Kawahsi's obsession with Taiwanese food and romantic music, and laughed about Abe's many girlfriends calling on his cell phone. Abe's girlfriends don't speak Japanese and he doesn't speak Chinese, so they communicate in broken English. Abe finally got fed up with the girls, turned off his cell phone and we turned our attention to the big screen TV at the back of the restaurant to watch Japan beat the tar out of Korea in the World Baseball Classic. The Taiwanese, like the Japanese are huge baseball fans.

(I took the photos below when I went there by myself the following night)

the kitchen is out on the street--you see a little of it to the right

Here is one of the cooks--facing the sidewalk

seaweed, tofu, sausage, hard boiled eggs, etc. ready to be chopped and served as appetizers

I picked up the bill—for all of us it came to just under $US 18 tip included—despite our gluttony. The young men protested, but not more than polite. I told them they could buy the beer for the evening.
A block later they ducked into a 7-11, emerging with four 20 oz bottles of local beer and a bag of potato chips. Well provisioned, we went back to Abe's room where we looked over his drawings and listened to some of Kawahsi's compositions.

Then Kawasi and I watched as Abe went into a panic realizing he had promised to meet a girl in the bar downstairs in a few minutes—an art dealer interested in his work, he claimed.

The panic passed when Abe realized his watch was still set to Japanese time and he had an hour yet. As Abe finally went off downstairs, I made my way to my room—it was not even 9 PM—and Kawahsi set out to see if the 7-11 had some candy he'd forgotten to buy.

And I, to quote Samuel Peyps, muttered, “...and so, to bed!”

Joel's Travels-Musical Garbage Trucks and Waist Band Amplifiers

Part the first--In which Beethoven's Ode to Joy does not play from my bellybutton--and never will March 6, 2009

(Your fearless sculptor is traveling in Taiwan through April. I am staying in the Taipei Artists' Village in central Taipei. This is my fourth trip to “The Beautiful Isle” of Formosa. One American dollar is worth about 35 NT$.)

In the end, I decided I did not need a wireless waistband amplifier. There are a lot of people in Taiwan who do, but I am not one of them.

I didn't buy a chocolate Moon Pie shaped Scotch tape dispenser either, though I was sorely tempted.

What broke me was the option of Japanese heavy bombers or German fighter planes of the First World war, or a model electric guitar on offer a few aisles over from the brightly packaged high end seaweed, Swiss Muesli cereal and Italian wines.

I was in the grocery store located on the second of four basement levels and food courts in Shin Kong Department Store on Zhong Xiao Rd. in downtown Taipei.

I stared at the pile of boxes, most marked down to NT$99 ($US 3). Vivaldi's trumpet concertos blared overhead; Taiwanese shoppers pushed past me, their shopping carts piled with frozen squid balls; yam and red bean soup; powdered goat's milk. They were oblivious to both Vivaldi and the Red Baron, not to mention the collectable card and small piece of bubble gum inside (I found out about the card and gum later. All the writing on the boxes was in Japanese—come to think of it, maybe that's why the Taiwanese shoppers didn't bite—they couldn't read the boxes.)

Illiteracy didn't stop me.

I bought a biplane; a battleship; and a Fender guitar.

They would go well with my Swiss Muesli cereal, I thought.
When was the last time you could buy these things in your grocery store? Okay. Well, I'll bet not with best quality seaweed.

I know.

You don't care about the little biplanes and guitars. You don't even care about my Virgil descending into this circle of consumer Hell. She was a young woman wearing huge, blue anime contacts in her eyes, dressed in a 1950s airline stewardess costume and waving hands gloved in translucent white lace. She was a Shin Kong Department store elevator operator.

I know.
You want to know why so many people here need a wireless waistband amplifier/speaker.

The short answer is underwear.

There an innumerable number of street vendors. The ones selling underwear, bustiers, tee shirts, panty hose, often stand dressed in several layers in the night markets along the streets, hawking their wares. You can see for yourself how the underwear fits, on a live model--even if she is wearing several layers of hose and tank tops. The hawkers have headset microphones that would do a Madonna concert proud, but until technology came to the rescue with wireless waistband amplifiers, the speakers were a weak point. They had to be set up to one side and the wires complicated getting the underwear on and off.

Fascinating sociology, you may say. But you have to agree, the prospect of Joel Haas standing on a street corner wearing three sets of Fruit of the Looms while gyrating to Asian techno rock and offering you a terrific deal on tank tops, is both remote, and more than the imagination of mortal man can endure.

I don't need a wireless waistband amplifier.


Note the battleship even comes with its own little strip of blue water to dominate. The chiclet size piece of gum is in the wrapper in the foreground.
Below, a fully strung guitar model only 3 inches long. Your hamster can rock out on one this size.


As for the Moon Pie shaped Scotch tape dispenser:

It seems I was wandering in an area of town full of “cram schools.” For parents who can afford it, children are sent to after school schools for tutoring or cramming to pass certain subjects (often English). Until I found this out, I was puzzled by the large number of stores in the area specializing in school supplies. Add to this the fact that pastries, or any sort of sweet beyond fresh fruits, are foreign to Chinese cooking. Over the past few years, though, wheat and sugar based cooking has swept the country. There is an international baking and bakers expo being held here later this month in the same area the Taiwanese consumer electronics manufacturers use; Dunkin' Donuts and Cold Stone Creamery are making inroads here.
Thus:
3M is marketing the “Dessert Plate” line of Scotch tape dispensers to schoolgirls, brightly colored plastic models of doughnuts, cakes, etc. Collect them all and fool your friends, I suppose. (Well, doughnuts are 'double sided sticky' sometimes.)

I did buy were some “cartridge pen” calligraphy brushes. Cram schools teach calligraphy, too. “Penmanship” as we called it in schools in the US, is still an important subject here. Practicing with a brush you don't keep re dipping in ink is probably more efficient.
Just as in America where you could buy lined paper with dotted lines showing your child just how far below the line a “j” goes, you can buy lined, or, rather, squared off, calligraphy practice paper in the cram school stationery stores.


Note the beige handle brush pen has a small bottle of ink and wick like material to soak it up and replace the old wick full of ink the pen handle; an unusual "cartridge pen" by Western standards.
The type of ball point pen used must be a matter of fashion, too. I saw literally thousands of colors and styles of pens on offer. The other money makers for these stores are the types of pencil holders, phone covers, etc. school girls love. You have never seen so much Hello Kitty stuff in your life.

For the geek or techno nerd, NOVA, is the store which must circulate on a cloud near the right hand of God. A 12 story high building filled with nearly a 100 vendors of every imaginable electronic, computer, photography gadget on the market, it was here I saw the wireless waistband amplifier. It was here I bought a set of speakers for my Mac laptop for $US 7 (I should have shopped some of the other floors—I found them for about $US 5 there).

This is, I would like to emphasize, a legitimate market. This is not pirated stuff or stolen stuff. For computers, the prices are about what you'd pay at Best Buys in the US. There are no mega market companies like Best Buys or the recently defunct Circuit City, so the small stores here have to buy at a lesser discount, but make up the loss by saving on nearly zero shipping costs. Since there are so many small sellers and they are all together, they have to slash their profit margins to nearly nothing, so the effective price comes about the same as you'd pay in the States.

So many other things that happened to me and there are so many other things to write about—the sidewalks; the garbage trucks playing classical music as they move about the streets at night; “stinky” tofu; my favorite down home Chinese breakfast joint (nearly unchanged since I was last there in July 2005); the embarrassment of having saved $NT 3700 from my 2005 trip only to find the currency design has changed and the clerk's reaction when offered “old money;” how easy it is to buy a new SIM card for a cell phone in country that doesn't sell “locked” cell phones like in the States; and my tour of a gym—California Fitness—strategically placed between Cold Stone Creamery and Dunkin' Donuts on one side and Starbucks on the other. It is amazingly like the Seaboard Fitness Center I use at home. The manager gave me, my wife, and brother a free VIP pass for the next two months. I suppose if you call yourself California Fitness, it helps to have a few Caucasians working out in the showroom windows on the treadmills and ellipticals.

The first night here, I found myself running back to the Taipei Artist Village in the rain because I was too cheap to spend $US 3 on an umbrella until it was too late and all the umbrellas were sold. Then there was the almost risque comedy of a Japanese Buddhist nun in a grocery store helping me buy an umbrella the next day.

Which leads me to a final bit of explaining I have to do. It's why there are only a few photos of brush pens and model guitars with this travel report. It has been raining hard most of the time and the wind's been gusting louder and harder than me on my fourth beer in the middle of a good story, so I have not been able to get any good outdoor photos yet.

For those who just can't stand it, my write up with photos about my favorite down home Chinese breakfast joint can be downloaded at
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/151983/The%20Bread%20Maker-photos.doc

and a number of photos from my previous trips on Flickr at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/joelhaas/sets/