The Taiwan Adventure

The Chateau Beach Besort: Traveling with Mr. Budget

2012-01-29T17:33:00.000+08:00

The Chateau Beach Resort

I’m not what you would call a seasoned traveler. I read these travel blogs sometimes, and I’m amazed at how people can travel all over the world; not just once but multiple times. They have all these tips about making the trip more comfortable, dealing with security, getting upgraded and the like, I know nothing about those things. When you drive your own car on most of your trips and you sit in the front seat your upgrade choices are somewhat limited. Besides, I never really left the United States all that much to go traveling. I went to Canada, and I spent a quite a few vacations in Mexico. But outside of Taiwan I pretty much stayed on my own Continent.

If I tell the truth I’m not into traveling. I like being places better than getting there. I don’t mind driving to a place, but I hate going through all the trouble it takes to fly anywhere on a plane; from being at the airport early, to going through all that security, to sitting on the tarmac in crowded airplane. It’s really bad when my butt starts to hurt and the plane hasn’t even left yet. I know somewhere along the line I’m going to regret getting on the plane.

The thing I do love, though, is actually being someplace other than my own house. I like to experience things that are unavailable in my own country or culture. I’m pretty sure that’s one of the reasons I love living in Taiwan. It’s not Southern California, and it isn’t likely to be…ever! Its not that I hate Southern California, I don’t. I lived there a long time; it’s just that…I lived there a long time.

When we decided to go to Kenting, I really didn’t think I wanted to drive. I really wanted to try out the High Speed Rail, but after the trip I’m glad I drove. It was nice to have the car while we were there and the trip turned out to be part of the fun. The reason for taking the car was our usual concern, the budget.

The beach was right outside our door.

Mr. Budget, who has been our houseguest for more years than I care to remember, often guides our decisions. I laugh when my children talk about how they’re going to buy this mansion or that super car. After living with him all those years you’d think they know Mr. Budget. But one day they’ll have him in their own family and then they’ll end up doing things his way, too. In fact, I’m looking forward to the day they meet their own Mr. Budget. They’ll be surprised when he moves in with them and controls their lives. They think I’m controlling, no I’m just a dad, Mr. Budget will show them what control is really all about.

Anyway, so now you know the reasoning behind driving to Kenting. When we got there we stayed at a place called The Chateau Beach Resort. I mentioned in my last post that this was our first real family vacation. This was also the first time any of us stayed in a five star resort. The place was fabulous.

Our room had an ocean view; in fact, we had a patio that opened to the beach less than fifty meters away. The resort had water sports, beach volleyball, on their private beach, sailing, croquet, pool, a video arcade and lots of restaurants. The staff was friendly, and willing to do whatever they needed to do to make your stay more pleasant. The people at the front desk were fluent in English, which is helpful.

You’re probably thinking, “All that talk about Mr. Budget and driving and then you stay at a place like that? What is that all about?” Its funny that you ask that, well not really, since you’re not here with me and I just wrote that you’d be asking that if you were here, but… Anyway, the cost of the hotel room ($562 USD/night) for our four-day stay, during the peak-operating season would be substantially more than I would (could) pay for a hotel room. It’s closer to what I paid for our car. The price for dinner alone, at one of the restaurants, would have paid for the air conditioner repair on our car; the price of lunch four new tires.

Look crowded, huh? This is the sports staff.

But we went during their off season and because of the timing we got about a sixty percent discount. The beach was secluded as if, it was there just for us. There was little reduction in services, although I didn’t see the croquet lawn set up for croquet.

Croquet is pretty close to the level of excitement with which I’m most comfortable. It’s a little scary sometimes when balls are flying off the field. But I can handle it, for real bone-chilling excitement I listen to the playlists on my kid’s iPods. Now that frightens me.

Lots and lots of food choices.

The restaurants operate at their usual level of service. The sports organizers are out there in the morning looking fit and ready to go. The housekeeping staff is working hard and cheerfully helping you. It all seems to work. The only mishap of the week was when Mr. Budget wiped out on the boogie board. Oh well, it wasn’t the first time Mr. Budget crashed in our lives; I don’t expect it’ll be the last either.

Watermelon Art

Clams

Sea Snails

Mussels, they also had Oysters and Shrimp, or a full Western meal with Beef and Lamb if you wanted.

Apple Art.

Other posts you may be interested in:

Taiwan Travelogue: Driving to Hawaii
Local Color: The Colors of Kenting

Photos: Chris and Brenda Banducci

Taiwan Travelogue: Driving To Hawaii

2012-01-20T17:14:00.000+08:00

Right now I’m sitting at my computer in Taoyuan City. The temperature is 16C. (61F) I would say this is cool, but not cold weather. I can function pretty well at this temperature. Because of my health issues when it gets cold, I hurt a lot, I can’t grab a hold of things, I have more difficulty standing. But 16C I can handle all that. The week before last it was a lot colder.

That was the week we had chosen for our first ever, family vacation. We’ve traveled to visit family, and we’ve gone together to weeklong conferences, but this is the first time we just took some time off and just hung out together. So we decided to drive down the coast to Hawaii.

Well, we didn’t actually go to Hawaii, but it felt like it. When we left, at about 10:30 am the temperature in Taoyuan City was 9C (48F), when we arrived at our destination the Chateau Beach Resort in Kenting at 5:47 pm, the temperature was 21C (70F). Ahhhhh!

We decided to drive our car. I had wanted to take the High Speed Rail but thought it a bit pricey. It’s $1330 NTD ($45 USD) one-way for one person, from Taoyuan to Zouying Station in Gaoxiong City. Then it’s another 480 NTD for the shuttle from Gaoxing to the Chateau, for my family of four that’s $14,480 NTD (about $482 USD) Round Trip. The car took about half tank of gas ($1100 NTD or $36.67 USD) and about $360 NTD ($12 USD) in tolls. That’s about $97.00 USD round trip. I guess I don’t need to point out that I’m not a jet setter. I don’t run into Paris Hilton when I’m traveling.

Garmin: A Good GPS system

It’s about a five-hour drive from Taoyuan to Kenting. The drive is easy and fairly relaxing as you drive the tollway almost the entire route. A good GPS system that warns you in advance of speed cameras, tollbooths and exits is helpful; especially the speed cameras which are hidden all over the freeway. Most vehicles here don’t have cruise control. Well, most of the vehicles I’ve driven didn’t have cruise control and you can find yourself zipping along at about 130 km/hr on a 110 km/hr road. I don’t know the settings of the speed cameras and I don’t want to find out the hard way. I never speed…honest…really.

We stopped at one of Taiwan’s excellent rest stops on the way. If you travel by road a lot in California, then you may then you may have trouble believing that rest stops can be great, but in Taiwan they’re great. Our rest stop had all the comforts: Gasoline station, mechanic shop, several restaurants arranged in a food court, a store and a huge parking area. We decided to have lunch right there in the rest stop. I had a variety of foods, my wife had steamed pork buns (Bao zi) and small steamed dumplings (Xiao Long Bao). The kids chose not to eat real food but got containers of Caramel popcorn. We spent about an hour and slipped back onto the road again.

The only part that was inconvenient, I thought, was having to stop at so many toll booths. They’re spaced about thirty kilometers (18.75 miles) apart. So about every half-hour you’re stopping to pay toll. Toll is $40.00 NTD (or $1.30 USD). Taiwan also has an electronic toll paying system so that you can just drive through, without having to stop. You pay into an account in advance and they deduct the toll every time your car passes underneath the electronic reader. I don't drive the tollways enough to bother with it so I just stop and fork out the cash.

Near Gaoxiong you exit the toll road and drive on surface streets about another thirty or forty kilometers until you reach Kenting. Kenting is right at the southern tip of the island. I thought the scenery looked a lot like the area area surrounding Mazatlan, Mexico. That makes sense since Mazatlan is at 23 degrees N in latitude while Kenting is at 21 degrees N. Honolulu is 19 degrees N. Taoyuan City is 24 degrees N. but feels like it’s a lot closer to the Arctic Circle in January. Next Post I’ll finish off the kenting adventure with a bit about the Chateau Beach Resort.

Brenda's Lunch at the Rest Stop

Exercise Facilities at Another Rest Stop: I don't think this is their intended use.

Rest Stop Ice Cream

Some Random Scenery on the Road to Hawaii:

I don't know what these are for, but they're cool!

A Hotel in Taizhong

Bridge Superstructure

Photo Credits: High Speed Rail: http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/p/m/1ac6a5/

All other photo's Chris, Brenda and Emily Banducci

Local Color: The Colors of Kenting

2012-01-13T21:20:00.000+08:00

Local Color: Taiwan Welcomes 2012

2012-01-04T14:58:00.003+08:00

The Fireworks welcoming the New Year at the Taipei 101, the second tallest building in the world.

Footage by davidcandlelight: http://www.youtube.com/user/davidcandlelight

Pathetical Analyticals 2011

2011-12-31T20:51:00.000+08:00

Am I the Only One Who Cares? Probably

Local Color: The Colors of Yingge: May 2, 2011

Well, it’s time for the Pathetical Analyticals for 2011. I call it “Pathetical Analyticals” because I think it’s kind of pathetic that I have to take this blog apart and analyze every aspect of what happened in it for the year. It’s not so much that I feel a need to understand why I posted one thing or another. I posted what I posted because it was interesting to me and I figured, if it was interesting to me, it might also be interesting to some other people who don’t know that much about Taiwan. But what is pathetic is my need to break everything down into some kind of statistic: To try to gain some meaning for the blog by examining the minutiae. I wish that I was above that, but, once again I have fallen victim to my baser nature and did it anyway, so what follows is Pathetical Analyticals 2011 or by the alternate title: Am I the Only One Who Cares? Probably

What’s it all about?

First a bit about the Taiwan Adventure Blog: In the beginning it was written purely as an informational tool for my family and friends. I was leaving my home country and didn’t want to be writing separate emails all the time to dozens of people who might possibly be interested. It was intended to chronicle our life in Taiwan as well as the church we came here to build. But after a while, I separated the church website from the Taiwan Adventure. I needed a website for the church and I felt after a while I was duplicating my efforts, so I split them. The church website is at www.pottershousetaoyuan.blogspot.com. The Taiwan Adventure, became a stand alone culture, history, travel, and food blog. It has evolved into what it is, and probably there is more of the evolutionary process that will still take place.

Taiwanese Traditions: The Planting and Growing of Rice: April 4, 2011

I think the blog has improved this year. It has a better look for one thing and readership has increased dramatically. I have also included a weekly feature, Photo Glimpses of Taiwan, which features photos that have been used or supplement the photos in the blog. The really great part is that my posts have been picked up by We Blog the World and Go! Overseas. These two websites have enormous readership and I believe they have really helped to increase traffic to the Taiwan Adventure. In addition to these we have been featured a number of times in the feed aggregation, The Best of Taiwanderful and iTainan and a number of others.

Eating My Way Through Taiwan: The Stink of Adventure: July 11, 2011

The Taiwan Adventure is based in Taoyuan City, Taiwan. Taoyuan is a city of about 380,000 people in Northeastern Taiwan. During the winter it’s cold and during the summer it’s hot. The other two seasons are superfluous because it’s either hot or its cold, there are only a few days in between. Taoyuan is not a beautiful place. But the people are warm and friendly and if I have to live somewhere I’m glad I live here. I can drive to a pretty place, but as I’ve always said, people are where it’s at. The Taiwan Adventure is really my look at Taiwan. Everything is examined through the filter of an expat American. I really try to understand the culture, and the things that cross my eyes, but sometimes I’m wrong because I look at through the filter of my life. I can’t escape that. So it is what it is. So far no hate mail, so I guess I’m on the right path most of the time, but who knows, there’s not a lot of love mail or comments, either.

Statistically Speaking

The rest of the post will be made up of numbers and stats; some of them may even be meaningful.

Readership

Total views of the blog this year: 26,167

Average Views per month: 2365.4
The Taiwan Adventure has readers in 129 countries.

Taiwanese History: Sun Yat Sen: Sept. 13, 2011

Over the course of the year the readership increased from 1,150 readers in January to 2,897 readers in December resulting in an average monthly increase in readers of 158. This is a net gain of 151% for the year. Of course there were peaks ad valleys, some months readership went down only to rebound the next month. One of the biggest affects on readership was the number of posts. An increase in the number of posts resulted in an increase in the number of readers; correspondingly a decrease in posts meant a decrease in readership. Lesson for bloggers: Consistency results in higher readership. If you post regularly readership will always increase. Inconsistent posting results in lower readership.

The RSS feed did well as well. We added the site to Feedburner in February and in 10 months there were 2,433 views on the feed with 917 clicks back to blog. That means that about 38% of the views resulted in readers being driven to the blogsite. This is the main purpose of a feed so that people will see your posts and want to go back to the original to see others.

Posts

This year I posted 42 different posts under 8 category headings. I don’t usually break them into categories in the way a wordpress blog does. Actually I categorize them through the use of a “header” in the title. I use eight headers

Uncategorized

Taiwanese History

Taiwanese Traditions

Cultural Unawareness

Traveling with M13

Taiwan Travelogue

Random Asianess

Eating My Way Through Taiwan

Local Color: Taoyuan City Ghost Festival Parade: August 23, 2011

Something new this year is the use of a header titled Local Color. The Local Color posts are photo essays of some place or topic I find visually interesting. Rather than describe them, I just take a series of photos and include them.

Most are self-explanatory. Cultural Unawareness are my mistakes at the culture that resulted in funny or embarrassing moments. I’m hoping to phase this out this year; that it will become obsolete. Traveling with M13. Mordeth13 is a friend of mine, and I have done a few things with him and his family. These posts are the result of some interaction with him. I hope to do more of these in the nest year.

Top Five Posts

1. Taiwanese History: Sun Yat Sen

Total views since September 1,059 or 353 per month.

2. Taiwanese Traditions: The Dragon Boat Festival

Total Views since June 2010 3,112 or 172 per month.

3. Traveling with M13: Custom Scooters of Taiwan

Total views since February 501 or 50 per month

4. Taiwan Travelogue: The National Palace Museum

Total views since March 437 or 49 per month

5. Taiwanese History: Double Tenth day

Total views since October 2010 468 or 33 per month.

Sun Yat Sen is considered to be the Father of Modern China. This post has been the single most popular post I have written on this blog. It will be interesting to see if it has the kind of staying power that the Dragon Boat Festival has had. The Dragon Boat Festival is still popular after 18 months.

Taiwan Travelogue: The North Coast: September 20, 2011

My Personal Favorite Posts

For various reasons I like the following posts the best. I think they are the best written and I’ve had the most fun talking about them with other people. They’re listed in order according to how well I liked them.

1. Eating My Way Through Taiwan: The Stink of Adventure

A very funny post on Stinky Tofu, that also appeared in Zite magazine for iPads.

2. Taiwanese Traditions: The Planting and Growing of Rice

A post on Rice Planting in Taiwan, contains my favorite picture of Taiwan ever.

3. Local Color: The Colors of Yingge

Photo essay: I think Yingge is a cool place…It’s also very colorful

4. Random Asianess: Oh Sure, Now We Decorate

Talks about decorating for Chinese new Year. It is the next post after my complaining about not decorating for Christmas.

5. Taiwanese Traditions: The Dragon Boat Festival

I’m only including this because everyone else reads it.

Taiwanese Innovation: Magic Click Shoes: December 13, 2011

Top Traffic Sources

Of course some people, just go straight to the blog. I know it sounds hard to believe but there are a few faithful readers. In fact, 11% of the readers on the blog have visited more than 101 times. So, I guess some people are regulars.

Google 7,764 referrals

Expat Blogs 299 referrals

Taiwan Bloggers 188 referrals

The Google referrals breakdown like this:

Google.com 5,225

Google.com.ca 603 Canada

Google.co.uk 579 United Kingdom

Google.com.ph 578 Philippines

Google.com.au 292 Australia

Google.com.tw 250 Taiwan

Google.com.sg 237 Singapore

Top Keywords

Taiwan Flag 416

Dragon Boats 182

Taiwanese Traditions 121

Mordeth 13 99

Sun Yat Sen 54

Other Places where the Taiwan Adventure can be found (or at least a link):

There are some other places but some of them are really temporary.

Announcements

www.taiwangongfutea.com

The Taiwan Adventure is now an integral part of Taiwan Gongfu Tea. This company is a startup website to sell Taiwanese Teas over the internet. The plan for the future includes franchises in America where Taiwanese Tea can be distributed to fine tea sellers as well as offering the Gongfu Tea experience in a comfortable, Taiwanese styled Tea Room. In addition to the Taiwan Adventure there will be a blog about the types of tea grown in Taiwan, the methods of brewing, how tea is grown and harvested and other information about tea; specifically Taiwanese tea. This blog will be appropriately titled The Tea Blog.

Finally, The Taiwan Adventure won first place in the category of General blog in the popular vote at taiwanderful.net’s 2011 Top Taiwan Blog Awards. We appreciate the support of our readers and would like to welcome new readers as a result of the competition. Thank you for your votes. We also want to congratulate the other winners. It always amazes me how many excellent English language blogs there are in Taiwan.

Here is a link so you can see the results first hand. Taiwanderful

Taiwanese Music: Mandarin Pop

2011-12-24T00:24:00.000+08:00

The Ugliest Band in the World: Rolling Stones 2011

I was born a long time ago. I grew up in the sixties and ran with a slightly older crowd. So I was hip to the music of my generation. I was a fan of the "British Invasion" bands. I was into the Stones, Who couldn’t like songs like “Brown Sugar” or “Can’t you hear me knocking.” Then there was Cream and “Sunshine of your Love,” or “White Room.” Man, I thought Ginger Baker was the greatest drummer alive. I dug the Who, “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” “Who are You,” and “We’re not Gonna Take It, (from Tommie),” among others. Pete Townsend just wailing on the guitar, windmill arms, the whole thing. I even liked some of the Beatles stuff. But interestingly enough, as I examined the songs that I liked by the Beatles, they turned out to be songs by John Lennon: “Revolution,” “Back in the USSR.” Then there was Traffic, “Low Spark of the High-Heeled Boys,” “Shootout at the Fantasy Factory,” “John Barleycorn Must Die.” Stevie Winwood was awesome, so was Dave Mason, with his excellent version of “Are You Feeling Alright,” at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Don’t forget American/Canadian Musicians like Neil Young, “Rust Never Sleeps” was an inspired album, but the really unforgettable stuff was “Cinnamon Girl,” and “Cowgirl in the Sand. And Van Morrison, “Moondance,” “Brown-Eyed Girl,” and my personal favorite “Tupelo Honey.” His vocal quality on those songs was excellent. What about Leon Russell with his version of “Mad Dogs and Englishmen.” Then there was the obvious hero of the sixties, Bob Dylan, anything with his name on it is worth hearing, from “Like a Rolling Stone” to “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” I also liked the Christian Songs he did like, “Slow Train Coming,” and “Saved!”

But those are days gone by. It just isn’t the same to see old men strutting around on stage with their shirts off. When did the Rolling Stones become the ugliest band in the world? I’m sorry, but these guys are looking a little worse for wear, if you ask me, although I will say that I’m not so hot anymore, either. We all age, after all, some more gracefully than others, I guess. But this isn’t what I sat down to write about. I was just just thinking about some of the old songs as I was sitting here and got caught up in the moment; reliving my golden youth.

Rick Braun

My tastes have sort of mellowed these days. I listen to smooth jazz if I listen to anything at all. Rick Braun, Norman Brown, Peter White and David Benoit are among my favorites. I guess my taste in music has always been pretty eclectic: Everything from Mozart to Michael Jackson. I’ve never really been much of a pop music fan, though. I’m still not much of a pop music fan. The songs all sound sort of the same. Geez, that’s the same thing my dad said about Rock and Roll.

Maybe I just haven’t really put any energy into listening to them. That’s really the issue. That’s the same thing my dad was guilty of; he never really listened. So I guess, I’m my dad; I could think of worse things to be. In fact, my dad was a pretty great man. My kids seem to enjoy the current pop music, so hey, it’s probably me.

There’s pop music in Taiwan. It has it’s own style and some of it isn’t bad. The thing that’s nice about it is that it’s pretty positive for the most part. Good looking kids singing songs about life and love, that’s what all pop is about anyway isn’t it?

Taiwanese young people listen to pop music from around the world. There’s K-pop, J-pop, and American Pop. Just think I traveled halfway around the world and I still hear Justin Bieber’s “Baby,” everywhere I go. I have to admit that I guess I kind of like the Biebs. I think he’s a pretty talented kid. He’s also a good-looking kid, although he needs to bulk up a bit. I think it’s amusing that everyone talks about how much they hate him and then his shows sell out in about seventeen minutes. All of his fans can’t be under ten can they?

Is he or isn't he? You decide

Anyway, I digress, some of the popular pop singers here are also, “idol drama” stars. What’s an idol drama? Basically it's a drama or soap opera designed for teenage girls that star pop idols, like Rainie Yang, Hebe Tian, Ella Chen, Jiro Wang or any of theose guys from Farenheit. All of them are in successful music groups or have successful music careers on their own. The idol dramas are career builders for the idols and also sell a lot of advertising space for the TV network. So everybody wins. For more info on Idol Dramas see Speaking Chinese: learning to Listen.

The T-pop is usually upbeat Kind of happy music. I find myself humming some of it from time to time. I’m sure that’ll send Keith Richards spinning in his grave. Oh yeah, Keith Richards is still allegedly alive. But there is Taiwanese Rock and roll of a sort as well. Like Huang Yi Da, his music has an edge and is really pretty good. So I’ll leave you with some samples of Taiwanese pop and Huang Yi Da. These are some pretty typical mandoPop songs. As a special bonus I included Dave Mason’s “Feeling Alright,” at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

This is Rainie Yang with her song Ren Yi Men which translates to Free Gate. I have no idea what this song means but it is a strange story I can see that. believe it or not this woman is 26 years old. This is from her album Ren Yi Men (2010)

This is S.H.E. the initials stand for Selina, Hebe and Ella. All three of them have appeared in idol dramas. In the video Ella Chen sings first, then Hebe Tian, and finally Selina Ren. Selina was badly burned while filming an explosion scene in 2010. She is recovering and recently married.

This is Fahrenheit.

Huang Yi Da - Chou Nan Ren (The Jerk) This was the theme song to Devil Beside You. This guy has a lot of pretty cool music. It's a little harder then the MandoPop stuff.

Dave Mason at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He's still got it. I'm sorry about Kid Rock's interference, nothing is perfect, as you know. Look who else is there. Steve Winwood, Tom Petty, Van Morrison, that bald guy from David Letterman, the ghost of Keith Richards, and Jim Capaldi, among others.

The next post will be "Pathetical Analyticals for 2011." Then I'll write mostly about Taiwan again after that, I promise, sorry for this week's digression. I couldn't help myself.

Photo credits: Keith Richards: http://morporc.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/keith-richards11.jpg

Rolling Stones: http://load.kovideo.net/s/raw/n/Rolling_Stones_deciding_50th_annniversary_concerts.jpg

Rick Braun: http://berksjazzfest.com/mediapics2009/RickBraun.jpg

Random Asianess: Christmas Comes to Taiwan

2011-12-19T15:13:00.000+08:00

It's hard to get a picture downtown without a taxi

Hey something’s happening in Taiwan this year. Last year Christmas was a background noise in Taiwan. Christians, mostly foreigner Christians, celebrated it, but other than that it was unseen. Houses weren’t decorated and retailers acted like it didn’t exist for the most part. My kids were bumming out, “This isn’t like Christmas at home.” I said, “Oh really? Do you live here? Then this must be home.” They call me the great comforter and now you can see why.

But this year, it’s a whole new ballgame. Christmas cheer has sprung up all over. There are light displays, huge plastic reindeer, snowmen, Santa Claus and even Christmas music (albeit all in English).

See what I mean. There only hard to find when you need one!

Of course, it isn’t a holiday here and everyone still has to work. The only reason people are off for Christmas this year is that it’s Sunday. Sunday is the day most people are off anyway. People don’t exchange gifts; they think that’s just a part of American Culture. No one you meet on the street says Merry Christmas. It just hasn’t become a popular holiday here.

One interesting thing is that I’ve seen Christmas presented in a teenage drama as a romantic day: A day for romance. Why is that? It’s because from a Christian perspective Christmas is about the love of God toward mankind. This is the celebration of God’s sending a redeemer to redeem mankind back into a relationship with God, from the destruction of that relationship through sin. But in Taiwan the Christian perspective is a minority perspective. Only two percent of the population is involved in “western” religions and that includes non-Christian religions. They only know it as a day of love and have made it a kind of romantic day.

When I say Christmas has come to Taiwan, what I mean is that Xmas has come to Taiwan’s retailers. It’s retail businesses that have really begun to decorate for Christmas. I have this cynical idea that maybe; just maybe they’re looking to make a profit off Christmas. Hmmm, does this sound familiar? But you know, if the retail advertisers do their job, who knows in a couple of short years Christmas might be a big seller for them. That’s what happened with Valentines Day in the U.S., card companies sold it big time and now just try and ignore it. I double dog dare you.

Following are jpg images of Taiwanese Christmas cards I’ve received:

Oh yeah I forgot…I haven’t received any Taiwanese Christmas Cards. I don’t know if it’s because Taiwanese people don’t send them or I’m just not popular. My money’s on the latter, though. How sad is that? Anyway from the Taiwan Adventure 聖誕快樂 (sheng Dan Kuai le) Merry Christmas.

I Guess Santa's Elves Don't Like Germs

Taiwanese Innovation: Magic Click Shoes

2011-12-13T14:27:00.000+08:00

The other day a friend of mine showed me a shoe that she designed and created herself. I was amazed because I’ve never been the artistic type. I can’t draw. I don’t even try to sculpt, and the only thing I’ve ever painted has been the occasional wall. So when she brought out this great pair of “kicks” and told me she designed them and made them herself, needless to say I was impressed. (The only things I’ve ever made that were beautiful were my daughters, and even at that my wife did most of the work.) She said, “You can make shoes, too.” Then she whipped off her shoe and took it apart and made another one…in about 30 seconds.

It turns out that her father had an idea a while back and that idea has now blossomed full-grown into Magic Click Shoes. He’s an inventor and apparently is interested in shoes. So he created and developed a shoe sole, on which you can change the uppers and have other designs. Let me give you a scenario.

Say you’re at work, and you’re wearing a comfortable pair of sandals, but that night you have plans to go somewhere. You’ve brought a change of clothes, but rather than a different pair of shoes, you just reach into your purse pull out a new design and change the upper part of the shoe…it’s magic. For men they can change from a comfortable beach sandals to a pair of dress shoes with only a few clicks. What a cool idea. The shoes aren’t just open toe sandals, they’re also fully enclosed dress shoes. They make shoes for kids, too.

The way they work is this: You pull out the insole, through the back of the shoe. Then you click off the upper, by pushing it in toward the center of the shoe. Then click on the new upper by pushing outward toward the outside of the shoe. Put the insole back in and like magic you have a new shoe. The design is so simple that you’re children will have fun redesigning their own shoes.

The shoes are re-usable and can be changed hundreds of times. They are also comfortable and attractive. And best of all because of their unique design it makes owning a lot of different styles of shoes economical and space saving, they take up a lot less space than would be required for the same number of pairs of regular shoes.

Finally, this is a great green design. The amount of material necessary to make two pairs of these shoes is substantially less than would be required to make two pairs of regular shoes.

If you are interested in the shoes you can contact Jing Yang at aliceaykimo@hotmail.com or telephone at Taiwan country code 04-2656-1115 or through me at cbanducci@gmail.com.

Here's a video so you can watch how quickly the changes can be made, and you can have a new pair of shoes.

And finally, there's this:

Merry Christmas from the Taiwan Adventure

2011-12-12T23:04:00.003+08:00

Merry Christmas from Emily, Brenda, Elizabeth and Chris

Taiwanderful - Taiwan Best Blogs 2011

2011-12-02T14:49:00.001+08:00

Local Color: The Colors of Yingge

Ah, the month of December. December is a good month for me, usually. It’s Christmas month. The weather is starting to get colder. The rain is starting to fall a little more often. During December I’m glad I’m in Taiwan and not some frozen white place in North America.

But not only is this Christmas time and wintertime, it is also time for the Annual Taiwanderful.net Taiwan Best Blog contest and once again the Taiwan Adventure is participating.

Last year, we finished eighth in the popular vote for our category, but I think our performance has been enhanced this year. The blog seems a little more professional and has a lot more readership. I’ll start crunching numbers for the Pathetical Analyticals post for 2011, pretty soon. That’s the way to really tell if we’ve improved. Of course, after last year efforts we can only get better.

Eating My Way Through Taiwan: The Stink of Adventure

One of the many good things that have happened to us this year is that we have become a "Featured Blogger," for We Blog the World. This is a fantastic opportunity for us. Readership has skyrocketed to about 3,000 readers a month. Many of the other blogs may think this is a small amount but we actually improved from an average of 1,090 readers/month to 3,000 readers per month. From 1,764 unique visitors to 10,463.

The nice thing about the Taiwan Adventure is the diversity of posts. They range from Taiwanese Traditions to Traveling with M13 to Eating My Way Through Taiwan.

Some posts you may want to check out:

Eating My WayThrough Taiwan: The Stink of Adventure

Taiwanese Traditions: the Dragon Boat Festival

CulturalUnawareness: You Scratch My back I’llScratch Yours

Local Color: The Colors of Yingge

Traveling withM13: Custom Scooters of Taiwan

RandomAsianess: Oh Sure, Now We Decorate

Taiwan Travelogue: The Cross Island Highway

So how do you vote? Here’s a link: Taiwanderful.net Taiwan's Best Blogs Contest just put an 'x' in the square next to The Taiwan Adventure Blog.

Traveling with M13: Custom Scooters of Taiwan

Voting begins on December 11th and runs through the 30th. You can vote once a day for as many blogs as you like. There are a number of excellent, informative and fun blogs and I would encourage you to browse around a little and vote for some of the others that you like as well.

Some of the other excellent blogs featured on Taiwanderful:

Random Asianess: Oh Sure, Now We Decorate

Taiwanese Traditions: The Dragon Boat Festival

The Daily Bubble Tea

David On Formosa

Bamboo Butterfly

The Wild East

My Kafkaesque life

Vote as often as you like. Thanks for stopping by the

The Taiwan Adventure. Please Vote!! Chris

Taiwanese Tea: Union Tea Company

2011-11-23T16:50:00.001+08:00

The weather is finally starting to turn towards winter. In Taiwan, it’s hot from April until about the beginning of December, sometimes even longer. But here we are in the last week of November and the weather is starting to become like winter weather. That means it’s time to start brewing hot tea again.

Cha Li Wang the Tea of Kings

I don’t like to drink hot tea in the summer. I want something cold and refreshing, so I usually drink Cha Li Wang brand tea. (Cha Li Wang means Tea Inside King). It’s not like the tea that you find in stores in the U.S. I like to get unsweetened oolong tea, but you can hardly find that in the States. All the bottled teas have fake lemon flavor or too much sugar or Aspartame in them. They have a sweet after taste. But here you can get unsweetened bottled tea that contains nothing but that delicious Oolong goodness. I love to drink that in the summer. Think of it; a cold sweating bottle of clear crisp Oolong Tea without the additives and sugar. It’s delicious.

But when the weather starts to turn cooler and wetter, I want hot tea. That’s the way I started to feel last week, so I took a trip to Union Tea Company in Bade, Taiwan. Bade (pronounced Bah Duh) is right next to Taoyuan City and it is the location of the Home Office of Union Tea.

Taiwan grows some of the finest tea in the world. Conditions in the mountains are perfect for growing tea. A good oolong tea is grown above 2800 meters (9100 feet) and the air temperature must fluctuate ten degrees Celsius between afternoon and night.

Buying tea in the U.S. is nothing special. You walk into Walmart or your local grocery store and pick up a pack right off the shelf. The tea is usually blended and in bags. It’s also fairly low quality. I have never liked tea bag tea. But in Taiwan buying tea is special. You walk into the shop tell the shopkeeper whether you want green, black or oolong tea and they brew a number of teas for you to try so you can select the tea you prefer. A trip to the tea dealer is a fun and interesting time.

The process of tasting tea is interesting. First the shopkeeper pours hot water over all of the evaluation cups and spoons. An evaluation cup is a shallow white cup. It is important to be able to see the color of the tea. Warming the cups up allows the flavor of the tea to be quickly released.

Front: Black Tea leaves: Rear: Notice the way the Green Tea is rolled

The she will pour the tea leaves to be evaluated into a brewing cup. Green and oolong tea are usually rolled into tight balls, while black tea is in the leaf shape. When the vacuum seal bag of tea is opened sometimes the dealer will offer it to you to smell. Finally one hundred degree Celsius water is poured into the evaluation cup. And the tea is allowed to brew for a short time. While it is brewing the dealer will take a ceramic spoon and dip it into the tea and offer it to you to sniff and smell the fragrance of the brewed tea. As it finishes brewing she will spoon some of the tea into the evaluation cup and then use the spoon to hold the leaves out and pour in the rest. The color may be evaluated at this point. Black tea, which is called Hong Cha, in Chinese, (red tea), should be a red color in the evaluation cup. Green and oolong tea will be yellow in the evaluation cup but can be more of a honey color depending on the oven temperature during the curing process: The higher the oven temperature the deeper the color.

Notice the beautiful red color of the tea on the left.

Then you taste the tea and decide which you would like to purchase. The process usually lasts around an hour and is very enjoyable.

I don’t think a company like Union tea can survive just on customers like my wife and I. They sell tea in large quantities to exporters and the like. In fact, on our last visit we met a man who is the biggest exporter of Taiwanese tea to the nation of Brazil, as well as Malaysia and other Asian countries. If you’re in the market for high-quality tea, Union Tea has a wide variety of types and prices. Good quality tea sells for about $30.00 USD for six hundred grams. High quality tea can be brewed about four times.

"The Best in the World" $90,000 USD for 600 grams

Union Tea does have a tea that was voted, “Best in the World” in a competition involving tea from sixty-five countries. That tea is available to be purchased for about Three Million NTD or $90,000 USD for 600 grams. I love to drink tea, but I think I'm going to have to pass on the $90,000 tea.

Keep Watching the Taiwan Adventure for an exciting announcement.

Michell Lu with the tools of her trade: Union Tea Company

Other posts you may be interested in:

Taiwanese Traditions: Selling and Brewing Tea
The Union Tea Company Website

Random Asianess: Steak in Taiwan

2011-10-21T16:30:00.000+08:00

I've written before, about American Fast Food in Taiwan. But there’s something else that I haven’t written about and that’s Taiwanese restaurants that serve American Style food. This is different than American food being served in an American restaurant in Taiwan.

In the US beef is by far the most popular meat that we eat. But in Taiwan, Pork seems to be the most popular. Why you may ask? Almost all the beef that’s sold in stores here is imported from the US, New Zealand or Australia. There are some dairy farms here, and I would suppose that they have some beef steers, although, I have to admit that I’ve never seen one in Taiwan.

So the reason it is difficult to find an American style steak in Taiwan is that people just don’t eat it all that much. You can find a steak in American restaurants like TGI Fridays or Outback but rarely will you find steak like that in a Taiwanese restaurant.

My wife grew up on a farm in Ohio and they raised their own steers for food. In fact, my wife would raise a steer for the county fair and she could be seen taking her steer for a walk through downtown Ridgeville Corners. I don’t know how much weight they gained or if they won prizes at the fair, but they were happy steers, treated like the family pet. Well, except we don’t usually eat the family pet. But that’s another story.

There are a number of restaurants that serve steak in Taiwan. But it is prepared differently and isn’t what we Americans are really referring to when we talk about steak. As an American the definition of steak is a flat cut of beef. New York, Sirloin, Tenderloin, Rib eye, Filet Mignon, you get the drift. If you’re in the US you can ask your butcher, he knows all about steak and the different cuts. But if you go to the butcher here and ask for a Ribeye, with the exception of Costco, or Carrefour they will have no idea what you’re talking about. Because in Taiwan they just don’t cut meat like that.

One restaurant that is famous for serving steak is called Tasty. Tasty has a reputation for fantastic customer service, and the reputation is well deserved. The service is impeccable, polite, responsive, attentive (without being obnoxiously attentive), and the prices are reasonable. We had a 7 course set meal for $450.00 NTD (about $15.00 USD). Salad, appetizers, antipasto, dessert, it was wonderful but the Steak just didn't look or feel like a steak. It was cooked in what is called a speed cooker. A speed cooker is basically a steamer. So the steak was steamed. It was also a different cut than the steaks we are used to in the US. But it was delicious served with a nice pepper sauce. There is a Tasty restaurant in Taoyuan City near the corner of Junghua Rd and Nanhua St, on Nanhua. (No.66 Nanhua Street, Taoyuan City) It is well worth trying, but not if you’re looking for a good ol’ American Steak.

There is a Taiwanese restaurant called My Home Steak at Chunri Rd near Chengong Rd.that serves steaks in cuts that Americans are used to, sort of. The restaurant has an all you can eat Salad bar that comes with the meal. And the meat is served with pasta and two eggs Sunny Side Up. The salad bar serves a nice green salad, with Thousand Islands dressing or you can load up on Taiwanese foods like shrimp, fish balls, and other things like that. A Sirloin Steak at this restaurant sells for about $280.00 NTD ($10.00 USD) which isn’t a bad price. After your meal you can get a dish of frozen yogurt or ice cream.

That same pepper sauce is available to put on your steak if you want. All in all it’s a decent meal and it looks familiar. But if you’re a real steak person, like you grew up on a farm and had a pet steer, that you eventually had to eat, you probably won’t be entirely satisfied.

Steak and other courses at Tasty

Sirloin Steak at My Home Steak

My Home Steak Chunri Road, Taoyuan City

Cultural Unawareness: Just Love Hug Rally 2011

2011-10-01T16:33:00.000+08:00

"Just Love Hug" rally September 24, 2001

Last week, for reasons that lie completely outside of my area of control, I found myself propelled into an extremely unlikely set of circumstances. By unlikely, I don’t mean that the circumstances themselves were unlikely. These things happen all the time. By unlikely, I’m referring to my actual presence in the place where these circumstances existed. My being in the same zip code with an event like I attended last week are about as likely as the spontaneous generation of cold fusion in my kitchen sink. In fact, Evolutionary Biology playing itself out in my refrigerator is one hundred times more probable than me willingly attending something like this. But I had no choice, well, in all actuality I guess that I could have refused to even go near the place, but it really came down to making a choice between offending people who have made it possible for me to remain in Taiwan, and me being a little uncomfortable for a few minutes. So after hours of serious deliberation, I decided that I would prefer a little discomfort to actually being on a plane headed back to California.

The Premier of Taiwan, Wu Den Yi exhorts the crowd.

Where, you might ask, did I find myself? At the Zhongli “Just Love Hug” rally. I have to tell you, I like people, I love to talk to them, I like to spend time with them, I even look forward to spending time with people, I’m just not a big hugger. I can’t help it. It’s probably some psychological flaw, some hang-up left over from some moment of embarrassment or discomfort I experienced as a child. Some Freudian interpreter might blame it my mother, although my mom is one of the few people that I actually don’t mind hugging. It’s odd because I’m not a distant, cool, unapproachable type, but in reality, I only hug my immediate family and maybe my sisters, and a few close friends who expect it because of our Hippie days. But that’s really about it. I have always felt that hello, goodbye and a nice handshake were perfectly adequate forms of greeting and farewell. In the late eighties I took a class where, at then end of the three day seminar, I was required to hug each of the seventy other participants in the class and about halfway through I was ready to run screaming for the door. I was sweaty, rumpled and smelling like a combination of aftershaves, perfumes, colognes and body odor. I was pretty well done with mass hug-a-thons at that point. The idea of a mass hug with ten thousand strangers was more than I could bear. But there I was with nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine others listening to them countdown from fifty to the great hug moment.

Counting down to the big moment

I was frantically trying to figure out how I could gracefully avoid embracing some well meaning person, intent on increasing the good feelings of mankind, bringing us all a little closer and demonstrating the love of humanity. I mean really, I don’t want to hurt someone like that. I really feel those are lofty and worthwhile goals, but how about looking into each other’s eyes and affirming our value as human beings, or a group smile, or maybe a little affectionate punch on the shoulder... but come on, not a hug! Meanwhile, as I’m working all of this out in my mind, the countdown was plummeting toward the moment. It was too late to excuse myself and go to the bathroom. It was too late to pretend to be intent on tying my shoes. It was too late feign a heart attack. The count had reached zero.

Nothing happened. Even those on stage, who were exhorting us toward this moment, were kind of shifting around uncomfortably until the moment passed. Then it was over, I didn’t see a single hug exchanged except between lovers in the entire place.

The Hug-a-thon

Taiwanese people are warm, friendly and loving people, but they’re not real big on hugging strangers, either. It was a little bit easier for me to identify with them, and relate to them after that moment. I felt closer to the Taiwanese people after that then I ever had before. In fact, I had good feelings toward mankind in general, I felt closer as a human being to others than I had before. I even felt a deeper love of humanity. Hey, maybe this stuff works.

Taiwan Travelogue: The North Coast

2011-09-20T13:55:00.001+08:00

For the last several weeks, my wife and I have been trying to schedule a family trip to The North Coast of Taiwan, but we had encountered a number of obstacles. The first obstacle was a typhoon that was scheduled to impact the Northern Area of Taiwan. The second was that we are the parents of teenage girls, who have actual lives; they were involved in a number of little trips and adventures on their own. We've lived on the island for two years and have done very little in the way of seeing the island because we've been busy with work and all that we do.

But finally, our schedules came together and we loaded up our daughters, our little dog and our two charges, (my wife baby-sits) and took a road trip to the northern beach cities. Our intended destination was Fu Long Beach, the famous site of the Hohaiyan Rock Festival in the Gongliao District. But unfortunately, I couldn’t handle the arching bridge that connects the beach to the landmass. Almost 30 years of Muscular Dystrophy makes some things difficult, but undaunted we changed direction and headed back towards Taipei, where we landed At Yen Liao Beach Park.

Yen Liao Beach Park is a beautiful Sandy beach about three and a half kilometers west of Fulong beach. But it’s not all about sand and beach. Located on the site is an ancient building, a coffee shop, pool, children’s water park, and a second floor patio over the coffee shop to see the ocean, without getting sand in your shoes. There is an admission into the park, but off-season, it’s only $60 NTD (about $2.00 USD). We picked an interesting time to visit, as Typhoon Roke churned, north of Taiwan on its way to Japan. The result was some of the biggest surf I’ve seen in a while.

A typically nice Taiwanese woman ran the coffee shop. We were really the only people there at the time and she was kind and gracious, the only problem being that she added ten years to my age and gave me the senior discount, so much for my idea that I still look young and dashing. In my mind, I’m still in my twenties but apparently I look a bit older than that.

The drive from Taoyuan City took about an hour, but we went on a Monday after the rush hour traffic to Taipei had dwindled away. So we traveled smoothly and quickly, north on the #1 National Freeway, north on 62 and east along the coast on Scenic Highway 2. The scenery on the 2 was breathtaking at some points. Huge surf smashing on the rocks and surf breaks; Shear cliffs right down to the road and in some cases to the Sea itself. There were small fishing villages along the road with fishing boats tied up in the harbor and a number of scenic overlooks that looked over the more impressive, and beautiful parts of the coastline.

We thoroughly enjoyed the day’s outing, my daughter declaring, “This is the best day I’ve had since we’ve been in Taiwan.” My wife and I vowed that we would embark on other Monday trips, now that we’ve seen it’s possible and even delightful to take the little ones and teenagers with us. If you're planning to drive around in the scenic areas of Taiwan and can do it, I would recommend going on a weekday, while everyone is at school or work. This same drive would have taken probably two, possibly three hours each way on Saturday or Sunday. Fulong Beach can easily be reached on Taiwan's excellent rail system, it's about an hour and a half from Taoyuan City to Fulong on the train, even on a weekend day.

Gratuitous Cute Puppy Picture to boost readership. Charlie Wang, named after the tea "Cha Li Wang"

Note the glass floats across the top of the boat.

Yen Liao Beach Park

Photos by Chris, Brenda, Elizabeth and Emily Banducci

Taiwanese History: Sun Yat Sen

2011-09-13T22:19:00.000+08:00

Taiwanese Flag

I live in Taoyuan City and travel through the downtown area frequently on my scooter. There are a number of streets there that I have been curious about. Very near my home is San Min Lu, 三民路. There are three other streets that have this same character Min (民)　Minzu Lu 民族路, Minquan Lu 民權路 and Min Sheng Lu民生路. Recently I came to understand the meaning of these street names. The san min (the people’s principles) are the principles by which Sun Yat Sen planned the government of the Republic of China. As we move toward Double Tenth day, or Taiwan National Day, October 10, I want to discuss the “Father of Modern China,” Sun Yat Sen and his legacy The San Min Doctrine.

Chinese-Taiwanese history really began during the Qing Dynasty, actually toward the end of the dynasty. After about 1850 the Qing Dynasty had begun to lose power and influence, because the military power of the dynasty had begun to wane. In 1900, the emperor tried to revive his power through the modernization of the army. It was called the “New Army” and the weapons of war were upgraded to the present time. But it was a case of too little too late. The New Army was full of radical leaders, officers who saw the writing on the wall and had begun to work for a new China and an end to the empire.

Sun Yat Sen

Sun Yat Sen had begun to rise in prominence in the minds of these men. His bold new ideas, his new philosophies had begun to take hold of the imaginations of these generals and they began to secretly follow his lead. His philosophies gave power to the people and took power from the emperor.

As you might guess the emperor saw this as treason and Sun Yat Sen spent years in exile, physically, but his words and philosophies gained traction, especially among the military leaders. The thing that sparked their imagination was the San-Min三民 doctrine. In English, it has been translated as the three people’s principles. Interestingly, these three principles had taken root in Sun’s thinking through a speech by Abraham Lincoln where he spoke the phrase, “Government of the people, by the people and for the people.”

Mínzú Zhǔyì民族主義 is sometimes called nationalism, but it would be far more accurate to call it, “Government of the people.” Sun wanted to move away from imperial or ethnic nationalism to the broader idea of civic nationalism, uniting the five ethnicities into one people.

Mínquán Zhǔyì 民權主義, or democracy is, “Government by the people.” He viewed this as a western-style constitutional government. He longed for the power of the people to express their political wishes over the tyranny of imperial rule.

Mínshēng Zhǔyì 民生主義, was called by Sun as the people’s livelihood or “Government for the people.” By livelihood Sun was thinking of the people’s right to food, clothing, housing and transportation. He planned how an ideal government would care for it’s people. There has been much debate over the years as to Sun’s thoughts. He died before fully explaining this principle. The People’s Republic of China as a socialist government believes that they best fulfill this principle; of course the Republic of China, believes they have the handle on this ideology. It’s the classic argument of socialism vs. capitalism and it plays out in geopolitical saber rattling and cold war.

These principles grabbed the imaginations of the men tasked with the protection of the empire form the outside forces. Many of the generals and others were a part of the “Literary Society,” a radical organization supporting Sun’s philosophies. The Literary Society met secretly and kept secret membership lists until Russian revolutionaries accidentally detonated a bomb the city of Wuhan in Hubei province in central China. The district of Wuchang was rocked by the explosion and as authorities gathered and began to investigate the Literary Society membership lists were uncovered. Those generals and leaders understood well what discovery meant. They knew the empire would systematically track them down, arrest and execute them. They had no choice so they rose up and took over the government of the city. Telegraph notices began to go out and within six weeks sixteen provinces declared independence from the dynasty.

The Sun Yat Sen Memorial, seen from the observation deck of the Taipei 101

The Wuchang uprising gave way to the Xinhai Revolution. Sun Yat Sen returned to China after looking for support in the west and another man, Chiang Kai Shek returned from Japan, where he was a part of the Imperial Army of Japan, to assume leadership of the Artillery Forces of the R.O.C. By February twelfth, the revolution was over, the Emperor had abdicated and the Republic of China became the legal government of China.

At this time Sun Yat Sen is thought of, both in the People’s Republic and the Republic of China, as the Father of Modern China, he is revered in both places. But that’s where the consensus ends. Both governments see themselves as the embodiment of the San Min Doctrine. Both jealously cling to the idea that they are the ones who best represent the people and desire of the Chinese and Taiwanese populations. In 1992 they gave voice to this idea, in an agreement known as the, “1992 Consensus,” the main idea of which is that there is one China, of which Taiwan is a part, but two different interpretations of the who best exemplifies the principles of the San Min Doctrine, which of course leads to the question of which system is the legal government of China.

This isn't a political blog, there are others much more capable than I, in that realm. I'm not intending to debate the merits of the 1992 Consensus or even whether or not there is a consensus. There are those who don't agree there was a consensus. I am a believer in freedom and the rights of people to govern themselves free from tyranny and oppression and I leave the way to achieve that to the Taiwanese people.

Taiwanese Traditions: Holidays and the Lunar Calendar

2011-08-29T23:49:00.000+08:00

The Lunar Calendar

Living in Taiwan, as a foreigner, means that I have to pay attention to the Lunar Calendar. I’m a pastor and I have to be careful of church events planned throughout the year, because if they fall on one of Taiwan’s major holidays, I will be the only one attending the event. As a result I have become interested in the Lunar Calendar.
The very first renderings of a lunar calendar go all the way back to the Shang Dynasty. This is the 2nd Chinese Dynasty, which existed in 1600 BC until 1046 BC. But the calendar has gone through a number of revisions since that time. As science progressed and the true and actual cycles of the moon and the earth were understood the calendar was changed t reflect this information. These revisions are tedious and boring, so I will not include all of that stuff in this post but I will tell you that the current lunar calendar has been in use since 104 BC.

There are a number of rules that govern the calendar:

1. Each Month begins at midnight on the day of the new Moon.
2. There are 12 regular months.
3. The sun must pass through winter solstice in month 11

In order to make that happen there must be an intercalary month inserted into the calendar. An intercalary month is like a leap month The intercalary month can take place after any month and is the same number of days as the month it follows. Because of the use of intercalary months of the Lunar calendar the corresponding days of the holidays in the Solar Calendar Change each year. For example in 2011, Chinese new Year took place on February 3, in 2012 it will be on January 23.

Most of Taiwan’s traditional holidays are marked through the use of the Lunar Calendar. modern Holidays are marked through the Solar Calendar. Let’s take a look at the Taiwanese Holidays:

Shin Kong Mitsukoshi decorated for the Year of the Rabbit

Chinese New Year: 春節Lunar Date is January 1. (January 23, 2012) This is the most important holiday of the year. It is celebrated much the same way that Christmas is celebrated in the west. Families gather for 3-15 days. Traditional meals are served on Chinese New Year’s Eve. People are given gifts of Hong Bao 紅包.　These are gifts of money that are a wish of prosperity for the recipient.

The Lantern Festival: 元宵節　Lunar date is January 15. (February 6, 2012) This is the first day a full moon can be seen in the New Year. People celebrate by lighting and launching sky lanterns. There are also huge venues where people go to see artistically made lanterns and watch them launched. People often write prayers and wishes on the side of the lanterns before they are released. The traditional food for the Lantern festival is the tangyuan 湯圓 (soup circle) These are balls of gooey, sweet rice gluten.

A Replica of an actual Lantern at the 2011 lantern Festival

Qingming Festival: 清明節 Solar Holiday: April 4,2012. During the Qingming Festival familes gather to sweep the tombs of departed ancestors. It is a day to honor the dead. Many people use this day to burn incense and worship their ancestors.

Dragon Boat Festival: 端午節　Lunar date is May 5. (June 23, 2012) his festival honors Chinese Poet Qu Yuan. It is celebrated with the racing of the dragon boats. People eat a special sticky rice pyramid called a zongzi.

Night of Sevens: 七夕 Lunar date is July 7. (August 23, 2012) This holiday celebrates the legendary love of Niulang and Zhinu. According to legend they are forever separated, but are allowed to unite on July 7. The Taiwanese view this as a romantic night celebrated much like Valentine’s Day in the west.

Zongzi, the traditional food of the Dragon Boat Festival.

Ghost Festival: 中元節　Lunar date is July 15. (August 31, 2012) The festival honors the departed ancestors. People commemorate this day by placing offerings of incense, food and beverages outside their homes and the burning of spirit money for the family members who have departed the world. This is the most important date of Ghost Month (The whole month of July on the lunar calendar.)

Mid-Autumn Moon Festival: 中秋節　Lunar date is August 15. (September 12, 2011/ September 30, 2012) This is the day when most people get together with friends and family and barbeque. Look for an in-depth post on the Moon Festival in September. A gift is given to friends and family of moon cakes. Circular cakes made with egg yolks and other things inside. The shape represents the moon and the cakes themselves are good wishes for the recipient.

Double Ninth Festival: 重陽節　Lunar Date is September 9. (Oct. 5, 2011/Oct.23, 2012) People usually celebrate this holiday by climbing mountains or visiting flower shows.

Traditional Moon Cakes for the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival.

Xia Yuan Festival: 下元節　Lunar date is October 15. (Nov. 10, 2011/Nov. 28,2012) During this festival people pray to the water god for a peaceful year.

Winter Solstice: 冬至　Solar Holiday (Dec. 22, 2011/Dec. 21, 2012) This corresponds to the Winter Solstice in western Countries. Families gather to celebrate on this day.

Kitchen God Festival: 謝灶 Lunar date is December 23. (Jan. 27, 2011/ Jan 17, 2012) This is the day to thank the kitchen god. It is believed that on the twenty third day of the twelfth lunar month, just before Chinese New Year he returns to Heaven to report the activities of every household over the past year to the Jade Emperor (Yu Huang). The Jade Emperor, emperor of the heavens, either rewards or punishes a family based on Zao Jun's yearly report.

One final note is that the Chinese Zodiac is broken down into 12 years. Each year corresponds to a particular animal. It is believed that people born in a particular year will share the traits of the animal mentioned. The following is a breakdown of the Zodiac and the corresponding years from 1924 through 2031.

Rat         1924 1936 1948 1960 1972 1984 1996 2008 2020
Ox         1925 1937 1949 1961 1973 1985 1997 2009 2021
Tiger      1926 1938 1950 1962 1974 1986 1998 2010 2022
Rabbit    1927 1939 1951 1963 1975 1987 1999 2011 2023
Dragon   1928 1940 1952 1964 1976 1988 2000 2012 2024
Snake     1929 1941 1953 1965 1977 1989 2001 2013 2025
Horse     1930 1942 1954 1966 1978 1990 2002 2014 2026
Sheep     1931 1943 1955 1967 1979 1991 2003 2015 2027
Monkey 1932 1944 1956 1968 1980 1992 2004 2016 2028
Rooster   1933 1945 1957 1969 1981 1993 2005 2017 2029
Dog        1934 1946 1958 1970 1982 1994 2006 2018 2030
Boar       1935 1947 1959 1971 1983 1995 2007 2019 2031

Photo Credits:
Lunar Calendar: http://henrikchoi.blogspot.com/2010/07/year-of-earth-ox.html
Moon Cakes: http://lsj.zhuxi.gov.cn/E_ReadNews.asp?NewsID=634
All other photos: Brenda and Elizabeth Banducci

Local Color: Taoyuan City Ghost Festival Parade 2011

2011-08-23T14:20:00.001+08:00

All Photos by Brenda Banducci

Other posts you may be interested in:

Local Color: The Temples of Taoyuan City
Local Color: The Colors of Yingge

Taiwanese Traditions: The Traditions of Ghost Month

2011-08-23T13:48:00.002+08:00

A woman with her Ghost Month offering to her ancestors.

Once again, Taiwan is in the midst of Ghost Month, sometimes called Hungry Ghost Month. The Ghost Month takes place throughout the entire month of July (Lunar).

All of the religiously themed festivals in Taiwan are held according to the lunar calendar. So this year (2011) Ghost Month is taking place from July 31 until August 28. There are a number of traditions associated with Ghost Month.

Ghost Month Traditions:

Lanterns light the way for the deceased to find their way.

During the seventh month, the Gates of Heaven and Hell are opened and the Ghosts of departed ancestors return to earth. On the first day of the month, the gates of the temple are opened symbolizing the opening of the gates of hell.

On the first, fifteenth and the thirtieth day of the month people set up offerings in front of their homes for returning Ghosts. They offer incense and food and beverages for the Ghosts. Alcoholic drinks are often offered. The people also burn spirit money. They believe that the smoke carries the essence of the money to their ancestors who use that money to supply their needs while waiting to be reincarnated.

People in Taiwan are afraid of ghosts and are careful not to allow the Ghosts inside their homes and do not allow their address to be seen. All offerings are done on the porch or in front of the home. They are never done inside the house.

One of the singers drawing a crowd.

On the thirteenth day of the festival a parade of lanterns is held. The lanterns are supposed to help the ghosts to find their way home.

On the fourteenth day of Ghost Month a parade is held. The parade includes Dragon Dancers, and drummers. One modern twist to the Ghost parade is the use of current music. As I stood and watched the parade the sounds of the Far East Movement song, “Like a G-6” blared through the streets of downtown Taoyuan City. There are also singers who ride in elaborate trucks singing a mix of Chinese Folk Music and popular Taiwanese pop songs. The women singing the songs are scantily clad. From a western perspective we have trouble associating religion and scantily clad women, so I asked a man standing and watching why the women were dressed that way his reply with a shrug was, “To draw a crowd to watch the parade, I think.” It seems to have been a fairly effective strategy considering the size of the crowd.

Each Dragon Dancer is one young man standing on another's shoulders

The fifteenth day of the month is the official Ghost Festival. Buddhist and Taoist priests both perform elaborate rituals to absolve the suffering of the deceased. Often on this day families gather for feasts, leaving a few empty chairs for deceased ancestors treating them as if they are still living.

A large part of Ghost Month is the worship of ancestors as seen in the offerings of food, incense and money. Filial piety is extended to the ancestors even after their death as the family burns paper money, paper mache representations of homes and material possessions and clothing to provide for their ancestors as they await reincarnation.

Other posts you may be interested in:

Taiwanese Traditions: Ghost Month 2: Ghost Day
Taiwanese Traditions: Chinese New Year: The Legend of Nian
Taiwanese Traditions: The Dragon Boat Festival

Taiwanese Weather: Monsoons and Typhoons

2011-08-13T19:26:00.001+08:00

Plum Rains 2011

Taiwan is an interesting place weather-wise. I come from Southern California, a place noted for warm, mild weather. In fact, the area in which I lived received about twelve inches of rain a year. Taiwan gets more than that on the average for the month of June.

Monsoons

Eastern Asia, Taiwan, Japan, eastern China, Korea and Vietnam all have two monsoon periods each year. It is actually, according to some websites, one monsoon period broken into two sections: The Winter Monsoon and the Plum Rains.

The Winter Monsoon usually starts in Late December or Early January and continues until March. Because of the Winter Monsoon, Chinese New Year in Taiwan is usually cold and wet. It is amazingly cold. I’m always surprised that it gets as cold as it does during the winter. Considering that Taipei is on the same latitude with the tip of Florida, you would expect temperatures to be similar to Southern Florida’s temperatures, but in fact, the temperature can get to between 6C and 9C (43F and 48F). When you couple that with high humidity you come out with bone chillingly cold weather. Add to that the fact that homes in Taiwan are concrete with tile floors and no furnaces, you have the makings of a cold winter. Fortunately winter here lasts only about six to eight weeks.

The Plum Rains start in May and usually last through June, although the periods of heavy rainfall continue until September. The Plum Rains are created through a stationary front that hangs over Japan, Taiwan, Eastern China and South Korea. It lasts until the sub-tropical ridge becomes strong enough to push this front to the north. That’s meteorologist speak for the weather is rainy until it isn’t. This year the Plum Rains started a little late closer to late June and continue to this day. (I’m writing this on August 13, 2011).

The Plum Rains bring quite a bit more rainfall than the Winter Monsoons as you can see from this average rainfall chart:

December      77mm – 3.0”            June          322mm – 12.7”
January          91mm – 3.6”            July           269mm – 10.6”
February      146mm – 5.8”            August      266mm – 10.5”

I think it is interesting that the average rainfall for June is a little higher than the average annual rainfall in the area where I lived in Southern California. There was one day this last June where we received 200mm (7.9”) in a twelve-hour period; more than half of the monthly average in twelve hours. That’s a lot of rain; a lot of rain.

Typhoons

The paths of typhoons in 2010, Taiwan is right in the middle of it.

Taiwan gets its share of typhoons, too. A typhoon is actually a hurricane but it happens in the Pacific Ocean instead of the Atlantic Ocean. They start near the island of Chuuk and move northward into the South China Sea. The places most affected by typhoons are Taiwan, the Philippines, Japan and Eastern China. It is a complicated set of circumstances that cause typhoons. I explained it in detail in a post titled, “Typhoon Conson: Here It Comes.” There are on average, in the Northwestern Pacific, where Taiwan is, 11 typhoons, annually. Of course they don’t all hit Taiwan directly and many just pass close to the island. But we feel the effects of them as wind and torrential rains.

Just before I moved to Taiwan in September 2009, a typhoon called Typhoon Morakot, which landed on the island on August 8, 2009 devastated Southern Taiwan. It caused landslides and flooding, costing billions of dollars. The Binlang (Betel Nut) industry was hit very hard as Betel Nut trees, which have a shallow root system and grow on the sides of mountains, were unable to hold back mudslides. One small town, was completely buried, killing 439 people. The government received a lot of criticism for poor response and rescue operations.

Typhoon Fanapi 2010 - Each circle represents 70% probability of direction

Taiwan’s Central Weather Bureau website forecasts rain and typhoons for up to ten days in advance. You can track a typhoon’s progress by checking the website hourly. The website contains typhoon direction predictions as well as hourly weather satellite photos of typhoons and their proximity to Taiwan.

One thing you can’t say about Taiwan is that the weather’s boring. It seems meteorologically something is happening here all the time. Whether it’s monsoons or typhoons or just plain raining. Somebody gets wet almost every day.

Satellite Photo of Typhoon fanapi on Central Weather Bureau site.

Thanks to our companion blog Glimpses of Taiwan for the Typhoon Rain video.

Other Posts you may be interested in:

Here It Comes: Typhoon Conson
Typhoon Conson: How Did We Cope?

East Meets West: Where am I, Anyway?

2011-08-08T17:21:00.001+08:00

My daughter, Emily at TGI Friday's in Taoyuan City, Taiwan

Taiwan is starting to look a lot like the United States; at least it’s looking that way in certain areas. There has always been a certain amount of foreign food in Taiwan, but it seems that lately things are really beginning to take off for American food restaurants.

I took my daughter to lunch the other day, and she is my culinary opposite. She likes to eat the familiar things, I'm more of, "what did you say I just ate?" kind of guy. I prefer to eat Chinese food and usually at the food carts, but my daughter’s tastes run to American food. She’s a beef and potatoes type of person. She likes good old-fashioned steak and French fries. So I thought I would take her to a restaurant where a friend had taken me, recently. Rebel Burger.

Rebel Burger's Bacon Cheeseburger, fries and a Sprite

Rebel Burger, that’s about as American as you can get. Big beef patties, avocado, mushrooms, bacon, all the decadent, fattening stuff you can put on a burger and more. It was pretty good. One thing I have discovered, though, is that if you go to dinner with a American in Taiwan, I don’t care how long they’ve been here; they want American food. To me it’s like going to Nebraska and ordering sushi. There isn’t an ocean for thousands of miles, why would you eat fish? Or going to Mexico and eating Italian. I don’t get it.

When I first came here, a friend, knowing I liked Mexican food, wanted to take me out for a treat and took me to a Mexican restaurant in Taipei. “The best Mexican food in Taiwan. Bro!” But the flour tortillas were raw, and they only had Tabasco sauce when I asked for hot sauce. I’m not complaining, I could see that they really wanted to make the best Mexican food they could, but this isn’t Mexico.

This is Taiwan and the best food in Taiwan is Taiwanese. That’s what I want. When in Rome, eat what Romans eat. When I’m in Mexico, I’m going eat Mexican. When I’m in America, I’m going to eat…probably Mexican. But that’s another story. This isn’t about me, this about Taiwan looking a lot like America restaurant-wise.

Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taoyuan City, Taiwan

American food has become pretty popular for the younger generation here. American fast food has been here for years. Kids have grown up on it. Young people like it and are starting to open their own restaurants and serving it up to other young people. That brings me back to Rebel Burger. This place is for young people. They have pictures of famous rebels all over the place: James Dean is there. So is Che Guevara, although I’m not sure what he has to do with America, but he is a famous (actually, infamous) rebel.

Because of American food’s newfound popularity, American restaurants have sprung up everywhere. They have Outback Steak Houses, Chili’s Restaurants, Bangles, TGI Fridays, McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut. I’m sure there are probably others that I’ve missed. Hopefully, my children won’t find out about them and I can continue to miss them.

The thing is, though, they have the same menu as their American counterparts for the most part, but they all seem to have a Taiwanese twist. For example, Pizza hut has a fixed menu. In the U.S. you go to the restaurant and you can pick the toppings you want on the Pizza. But in Taiwan they have only a few choices, and sometimes don’t know how to react if you want to change something. My wife has stood in the restaurant while they called the boss to ask him what to do when she wanted something different than their menu showed.

TGI Friday's, just like in the good ol' USA

McDonald’s has Fried Chicken, rice and other Taiwanese favorites, along with the Big Macs and milk shakes. They know what sells, where and they serve that. McDonald’s also doesn’t have my personal favorite, (it takes a very secure man to admit he likes McDonald’s), the Quarter Pounder with Cheese. Taiwanese people aren’t really all that fond of cheese and one-quarter pound of red meat seems unhealthy to them.

At KFC you don’t specify whether you want original, crispy or spicy chicken…you get what they have on hand at that moment. If you say, “I don’t want biscuits,” you’re likely to get them anyway, because that’s what goes in that package.

Bigger restaurants, like Chili’s or TGI Fridays, or Outback Steak House just serve exactly what they serve in the U.S. I guess they figure that’s the drawing card; eating like you’re in America. If you’re inside the restaurant, it’s just like being in the U.S. In fact, that’s why my kids like to go to those places, it reminds them of home. It reminds me of America, too, but to me this is where I live, so this is home.

Sometimes I just forget where I am, "Sure are a lot of Asian kids working here. Oh yeah, this is Taiwan."

Other posts you may be interested in:

An American Presence: What I Don't Miss in Taiwan
Eating My Way Through Taiwan: The Stink of Adventure

Speaking Chinese: Learning to Listen

2011-08-01T16:30:00.004+08:00

Rainie Yang and Mike He in Devil Beside You

I began to learn to speak mandarin in the United States. But as you may guess there wasn’t a lot of opportunity to practice speaking the language. I was limited in my ability to practice. There are a number of tools to learn to speak. For instance, Rosetta Stone software has a neat feature that records and processes your voice and displays it digitally so that you can see if you pronounced the tones correctly. You can also go to the local Chinese restaurant and try to speak to the servers. This was a favorite past time for me but there was a problem. Some of them were so amazed that I was trying to speak Chinese that all they would say was, “Ah, You speak Chinese?” Unfortunately I had an extremely limited vocabulary, and if they spoke much Chinese back to me beyond greetings I was lost and my tones were so bad that most of them would just laugh.

In fact at one point, I asked a friend, the owner of this particular restaurant, “Why does everyone laugh when I speak to them in Chinese?” Her reply, “You don’t speak Chinese.” Aha, I realized at that moment that learning to speak Chinese was going to be harder than I had previously thought.

Mike He, Rainie Yang and Kingone Wang in Why, Why Love?

You know it’s kind of annoying when you see ads for software that say, “Learn Chinese in six weeks!” because it really takes a while to master Chinese. When I first started to learn my teacher spent the first three months drilling me on consonant and vowels sounds, “Bu, pu, mu, fu,” on and on over and over. Then we started to work on the tones. It wasn’t until we had done all that that we began to actually work on vocabulary. I think it really helped because my pronunciation is very good. I still struggle with tones, though. Because we don’t use them in English and I had been speaking English for 50 years before I started to learn Chinese.

But, without a doubt, the most difficult thing for me has been to learn to listen. Now that I live in Taiwan, I have many opportunities to practice speaking. I have become more confident and actually speak to strangers in Chinese. But when they answer I find myself struggling to understand what they’re saying. I think part of it stems from the fact that I have been taught with Beijing pronunciation and people here speak with a Taiwanese accent. But the biggest problem is that I’m not able to process the language at the normal speaking speed.

Mike He, Hebe Tian and Lee Wei from Bullfighting

So, I developed a plan to learn to listen. In Taiwan they have a number of television shows known as “Idol Dramas.” They use the current popular teen idols and produce a love story that lasts for about 20 episodes. They’re similar to a soap opera. They have the nice girl, the tough guy, comedy, drama; all that you might expect in a teenage love story is rolled into the package. They usually follow a couple of formulas.

1. The rich, highly motivated, young business heir falls in love with the girl from the other side of the tracks. The mother is opposed and does everything she can to destroy the relationship. The son stands up to his domineering mother. In the end there’s always a happy ending.

2. The girl falls for a guy that is way beyond here. He’s smart, rich, popular and she’s a nothing. She eventually wins him over because of her charm and sweetness.

Okay, so basically they all have the same plot. The young woman overcomes all odds to end up with the super successful young man. The nice thing about them, probably owing to the culture, is that they are wholesome and enjoyable. I watch them on the internet because I got rid of my television many years ago.

The good part is that you can find these dramas all over the Internet. Many sites carry them with English subtitles. Because they are written to appeal to teenagers they use simple language. They are often written about everyday life so they are excellent tools for learning to listen in Mandarin. English subtitles help understanding when vocabulary fails and you can check your understanding of the dialogue quickly and easily.

Ariel Lin and Joe Chen from It Started With a Kiss

One good site for watching these video dramas is mysoju.com. They have a large collection of current and past dramas. Many of them are produced in Taiwan and you can hear the language with a Taiwanese accent, which helps if you live in Taiwan. But they have many others from Mainland China and Hong Kong. Youtube carries a number of them as well both with subtitles (in a number of languages) and without.

Here are some that are worth watching if you want to try this out:

Devil Beside You: Starring Rainie Yang, Mike He, Kingone Wang and Tsai Pei Lin: The story revolves around a nice young girl who wants to declare her love to the captain of the basketball team. Inadvertently, the love letter she prepared for him she gives to the school’s notorious bad boy, which also happens to be the son of the university’s president. After a lot of drama and plot twists they eventually fall deeply in love.

Why, Why, Love: Starring Rainie Yang, Kingone Wang, Mike He and Michelle Chen: Rainie plays a young woman who works very hard to pay off their family’s debt. The debt was left to the family when her father died. Kingone and Mike play brothers who are the sons of a super successful businessman. Kingone is the nice guy and Mike is the bad guy. Rainie and her friend are temporary workers at the mall owned by the guys’ father. Try and guess what happens.

Bullfighting: Starring Mike He and Hebe Tian (from the popular pop group, S.H.E.): Mike He plays the super motivated business heir. His father wants to buy the land that her father owns to build something. But her father stands his ground and refuses to sell. This pits the two families against each other. But Mike falls for Hebe and well the rest is kind of predictable.

It Started with a Kiss: Starring Ariel Lin and Joe Cheng: Ariel plays Xiang Qin, a very naïve young woman in the lowest class of the high school. Joe Cheng plays Zhi Shu, the best student in the school. He scores the highest grades in the entire school. He is also the most handsome guy in the school. Xiang Qin falls hard for Zhi Shu in her freshman year. But Zhi Shu is unimpressed. Eventually, well you can probably guess. This story is charming and fun. You can’t help but root for this hapless young woman.

Below is a part of Devil Beside You taken from You Tube. It starts out pretty corny but it gets a little more interesting as it goes on. Rainie Yang is a popular singer in Taiwan she's singing the song "Ai mei" (which translates as "Ambiguous" in English). The Title song is by Huang Yi Da it is called "Chou Nan Ren" (loosely translates to English as "The Jerk.") Actually, I think this is the best of all the dramas I watched in my quest to learn to listen.

Eating My Way Through Taiwan: My Locust Impersonation

2011-07-26T14:14:00.003+08:00

Typical Carts - This one serves "Salty Chicken"

I thought about titling this post: Eating My Way Through Taiwan: The Return to Stink, but I realized I’m not going to the same place with this one. How many pieces can you write about Tofu, stinky or otherwise? It’s just bean curd after all. But the adventure didn’t end in the Stinky Tofu place. The adventure had only just begun, although it now became a bit less dangerous.

To tell the truth, there is only so much Stinky Tofu one can eat at one sitting, and that amount is nowhere near enough to be filling. In short, I was still hungry. So we decided to be like ravenous locusts descending on downtown Taoyuan City and lay waste to any unsuspecting cart that smelled like something delicious was happening there.

In my opinion, the food carts are where it happening in Taiwan. Anyone can walk into a restaurant and find a delicious meal. But you have to pay a price. I went to TGI Fridays, recently, they have them in Taiwan; for $15.00 USD I ate a hamburger and French Fries. I tried to offset the price and make it a reasonable value by drinking approximately 12 gallons of ice tea. But after about a gallon or so, I had to make too many trips to the rest room and had to abandon that plan. The food was marginal, (like all TGI Fridays) and it took me about ten minutes to order Iced Tea. I eventually ordered Hot tea and large glass of ice, then had show all of the waitresses what I was doing. They don’t do iced drinks in Taiwan, because in the words of one waitress drinking iced drinks with a hot meal is not “good for your healthy.” If you are the manager of TGI Fridays, please do not construe this as criticism; I don’t want to go to jail.

There are a number of reasons I like the carts. 1) I can eat at the carts all day for much less then $15.00 USD. 2) I can only order what they cook. Most do only one thing and some do it very well; and 3) This is where you will find the real foods of Taiwan.

Ten "Xiao Long" stacked and ready to steam

After the Stinky Tofu cart, we plotted a course through town. The first stop was purely educational in nature. My friend had brought breakfast one morning and he bought, Xiao Long Bao, from a particular vendor. It was delicious so I asked him where he had gotten it, he promised to show me one day and this trip was his first opportunity to keep that promise. Xiao Long Bao, is similar to Bao zi (steamed buns), but it is steamed in a container called a “Long.” A long is a bamboo steamer tray that is stacked up to ten high over boiling water and the Bao (either pork or vegetable) is steamed and served by the long. There are six to eight bao zi per long. “Xiao” means small. So xiao long means small containers, there are also large containers called “da long.” Because they are “xiao long bao,” the bao zi are a bit smaller. The vendor graciously took me through his kitchen to see the process. One long of xiao long bao costs $60 NTD (about $2 USD). This is a filling breakfast.

Fried Bao zi vendor, look at all the customers

After that excursion into education it was time to begin to do our locust impressions. The first place we swooped was a fried bao Zi vendor. These bao zi are a bit larger than the xiao long bao, and they’re fried as opposed to being steamed. I had never tried them like this. They are served hot off the grill, with a sauce, either spicy or mild, in a plastic bag. The idea is that you are going to take them someplace to eat them, because there is no place to eat them at the cart. This cart was incredibly busy. The man was cooking fifty bao zi at a time and couldn’t keep up with the demand. We had to wait about ten minutes to eat. The price was $10 NTD per bao zi (about 30 cents USD). The spicy sauce was perfect for me and the pork was well seasoned and delicious. I could see why this cart was so popular. One thing I should mention about frying in Taiwan is that there is very little oil used. Oil is mostly for flavor, water is added to the oil prior to heating it.

Cong You Bing or "Spring Cakes"

Next stop was for Cong You Bing. I don’t know what to call these in English that would mean anything. I have heard them called Spring Cakes, but that name is really meaningless. The name translates to Green Onion Oil Flat Cakes. The bing or cake is made of a potato starch and seasoned with green onion then fried. You can order Cong You Bing with an egg fried onto it, as well. These were delicious and once again I ordered mine a little spicy. $30 NTD (about 1.00 USD each.)

We followed that up with a trip to the Night market for Oyster Omelots. These are omelets made with eggs, fried with oysters and mustard greens. They were made famous by the teen idol drama, “Corner with Love,” starring Barbie Xu and Brian Luo (aka Show Luo.) Unfortunately they were closed, so we went for Spare Rib Soup at another place.

"Show" Low and Barbie Xu - Corner With Love

The spare rib soup consisted of a light beef broth and held on spare rib. The soup was delicious, but quite skimpy in my opinion. The price was $30 NTD or $1 USD for a small bowl. There is a lady near my home who makes Noodles. In there she includes, home-made noodles, pork, and vegetables. She serves the best noodles I have ever eaten, a filling bowl for $40 NTD ($1.30 USD), a much better bargain.

Finally, I was about full, but my friend had one more stop. We stopped at one last place for “Spring Rolls.” I call them the Chinese Burrito. They are made of vegetables, a fried egg powder and sometimes have pork as well. They are wrapped in a white flour wrapper that looks like a tortilla, but isn’t. They are really delicious. They’re about the size of burrito and cost about $30NTD ($1 USD).

Rollin' up a "Chinese Burrito"

My friend is a much more intrepid adventurer than I am. He was ready to continue on, but I couldn’t. I was done. I was afraid that if I continued to eat that at some point my food would make an unfortunate reappearance. I’m not into gluttony. I like food, but I know my limits. I should comment that I weigh about 76.6 kilos or 168 lbs, about three pounds more than I weighed at my high school graduation thirty-eight years ago.

Other posts you may be interested:

Eating My Way Through Taiwan: Bao zi
An American Presence: What I Don't Miss in Taiwan
Eating My Way Through Taiwan: Niu Rou Mian

Corner With Love photo credit: asianpopcorn.com
All other photos; Chris Banducci

Random Asianess: The Written Driver's License Test

2011-07-18T13:46:00.000+08:00

Today, I want to go back to the Driver’s License test. I’ll get to part two of the, “Stink of Adventure,” (July 11, 2011) soon. But I ventured away from this and I want to be sure I finish it. In the way of total disclosure, I need to say that I still haven’t gotten my Taiwanese Driver’s License. I can pass the test, I’m sure of it. It’s just that I don’t really have time to jump through all of the hoops that have been placed before me. But I’ll get there. I just need to get one of my friends to spend a day with me and I think I can meet all the objections.

I’m a disabled person, which makes it a little more difficult to get a license. One of the requirements for the license was that I add a “suicide ball,” or as it is known here, a “wheel handle knob.” This is a little spinning handle that attaches to the steering wheel so that you can use it to turn the wheel. The wheel handle knob is easily attached with four little Allen screws; the knob even comes with an Allen wrench with which to attach it. But the MVO requires that a licensed professional attach any disabled vehicle modifications. So I need to have a professional do it. I can’t get it done by a mechanic at Ford either; it must be done by someone holding a special disabled modification professional’s license. So that seems to be the holdup. It seems a bit extreme, but rules are rules. All of this must be done prior to taking the written exam.

The infamous "Wheel Handle Knob"

I have taken the written exam once…and I failed it. The test can be taken on the computer, in English. The difficulty is that the study materials are printed only in Chinese. If I could read the study materials, then I wouldn’t need to take the exam in English. There are a number of practice exams on the Internet. If you practice them and carefully check which answer you miss, you can learn to take the test.

The first time I took the test the English language version had a number of problems. Some of the questions made no sense at all. There were many misspelled words and some words I couldn’t find in an English dictionary. But since that time President Ma Ying Jiu has encouraged his staff to rework all official uses of the English language so that they are more accurate and understandable. The result is a much more easily understood test.

There are still some things that need improvement. Some questions are still not easily understood, there are still a number of spelling errors and there are still some made up words. But I have easily passed all the practice tests I have taken recently. So great strides have been made.

The test can be taken in eight languages: Chinese, English, Japanese, Indonesian, Thai, Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Burmese (Myanmar). The MVO staff encourages you to take the computer practice tests prior to trying the written test at the MVO. In the past, one was only able to take the written test in English in Taipei, but now it’s available in any MVO office.

The test consists of a series of questions on road signs, rules of the road and penalties for violating traffic laws. These are mostly about penalties for drunk driving or the use of drugs and alcohol on public roadways. But there are questions abot professional licenses, such as truck drivers and taxi drivers. There are also questions on penalties for driving without a license. These are the most difficult to learn. The signs are pretty obvious most of the time. The rules of the road are similar to the rules of the road in California. But the penalties are different and sometimes don’t seem to make much sense.

Finally, most of the questions that are not worded properly have been weeded out, but you come across one or two in the test that may confuse you. The following question is from the test. See if you can figure it out, before you look at my answer:

Drivers are required to:
(1) pull their vehicles out of the lane and stop on the road are required toer, and wait for rescue.
(2) Stop immediately and ask passengers to get off the vehicles to seek rescue,
(3) Call their friends to tow the vehicle if their vehicles break down on freeway.

Toer? Oh I see you mean the shoulder of the road

This is a difficult question because I can’t find the word toer in any dictionary. The appropriate answer is (1), because what I have determined the answer is saying is to pull over onto the marked shoulder of the road and wait in the car. They don’t want you walking around on the freeway or having non-professionals towing your car, because these things may create more danger to you and others.

I will probably complete the process in the next few weeks, meanwhile, you can find the written practice tests here.

Other posts you may be interested in:

Random Asianess: Driving in Taiwan
Cultural Unawareness: The Wheels of Bureaucracy Turn Slowly
Cultural Unawareness: You Scratch My Back, I'll Scratch Yours

Eating My Way Through Taiwan: The Stink of Adventure

2011-07-11T18:49:00.001+08:00

There is Adventure on the Horizon!

I debated what to call this post. I toyed around with the idea of calling it, Eating Around. But there was more to it than just eating in a lot of different places. It was kind of a culinary adventure, so to speak. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t really all that adventurous, well not for me anyway. I’ll try eating just about anything once, maybe twice depending on whether or not I got the full gastronomical sensation the first time. (Some of these words make it look as if I’m getting paid by the letter.) I’m not like my children who consider mushrooms on their Pizza to be the worst possible hardship. I don’t even want to think about their reaction to Anchovies!

But on to the adventure…My family left for a visit to America, I was to follow a week later. So, I was on my own. When living in the same house and sharing space with my wife, I am required to follow certain rules and regulations, which are enforced for the good of my marriage. Aside from the obvious marriage breakers, my wife enforces some fairly strict culinary requirements. You may think that she’s thinking of my health, not allowing me to eat high cholesterol or fatty foods, ensuring that I don’t become a casualty to heart disease, cancer or diabetes. You might think that, but if you did you would be wrong. Her concern revolves around something much more sensitive than those things, her concerns are olfactory.

World Class "Xtreme Cooking" Practitioners

Taiwanese people occasionally engage in “Xtreme Cooking.” This kitchen-based sport revolves around liberal uses of odiferous spices, herbs and other things. It may even make use of foods, that in themselves, have a high stench coefficient. These types of foods have been included in the “illicit foods” list in our household. I have been told, on more than one occasion, that if I come home with the scent of any of these contraband food substances on my breath, in my skin or on my clothing that I will be sleeping folded into my desk chair, if I’m allowed in the house at all.

But for the moment, the storm troopers, er, uh…enforcement team was gone. So I did the only thing I could do, I immediately checked the “Summary of Forbidden Foods.” What should I do first…More Garlic snake? No, that’s too mundane. Do I need to make a trip through the night market, allowing my nose to guide me to the Xtreme Cooking experts? Completely unnecessary. A friend who had heard me speak wistfully of a food, which was at the top of that list, a sensitive person, who obviously cares for the real essence of manhood, solved the dilemma with two questions. Two questions which speak directly to the core of mankind’s need for adventure. Two questions which were shockingly simple. They weren’t complex and requiring great thought. They weren’t like the question that caused Charles Mallory, an early pioneer of Mt Everest, to hesitate and shyly answer, “Because it’s there.” No these were direct, to the point, there could only be one answer for each of these questions. The first, was a call to adventure, it was framed, on the idea that the time was now…that opportunity may knock only once and then drift off to find someone who would answer more promptly. In other words there was an urgency to this question that could not be denied, “Did your wife leave for America, today.” I was tingling with expectation. The question that followed was so obvious that I was embarrassed not to have thought of it myself, “Do you want to try Stinky Tofu.” It was brilliant, I almost wept at the elegance of the idea.

Of course, I wanted to try it. Every time, my wife smelled it and wrinkled her nose and complained that the odor was the worst thing she had ever smelled, I had to wonder what something like that would taste like. The smell was like a siren call to me. It tantalized, no less than the mermaids of old tantalized the men of the sea back in the day. Although, I will admit that as food it is entirely appropriate in it’s name. But perhaps, to an adventurer that was the allure.

After all, what caused men to climb the highest peaks in the world? No one who has ever climbed a mountain has ever been heard to exclaim, “I want to do it because it will be easy and I just love a nice, cozy tent.” No! The cold, the danger, the difficulty, those were the things that drew men to death zone of Everest. The danger and the discomfort were the draw. This is what makes an adventure, an adventure. I was ready to throw aside the comfort foods, I cared not for the delicately flavored tasty combinations; I had a hunger for adventure. There are two ways to prepare Stinky Tofu, I had only to choose one, and my friend like a trusty Sherpa guide, would get me there.

What is Stinky Tofu? It’s Tofu with a twist. They take the soy bean curd, (that’s what Tofu is) and they ferment it. People in Asia do this with a number of foods. Kim chi is fermented cabbage. Thousand-year-old eggs are fermented eggs. Stinky Tofu is fermented soy bean curd.

They either steam it or deep-fry it. I have heard, from more than one source, some of them were even Taiwanese, that, steamed Stinky Tofu, tastes exactly like it smells. I’ve seen it, and it looks like it smells, as well. Hey, in food, even for me, presentation is important. So I opted for the deep fried type. The lust for adventure runs deep in my family…but not that deep.

Stinky Tofu, at Arm's Length

I found it to be surprisingly tasty. It was covered with sauce and topped with cabbage and raw garlic. In Xtreme Cooking using odor combinations garners bonus points, for style. I have spoken to a number of Taiwanese people about food. In fact, I talk to everyone about food. Most of the Taiwanese people I speak to name Stinky Tofu among their favorite foods. I met a bunch of seventh graders who claimed they liked Stinky Tofu better than ice cream, to them the greatest of all possible foods would be Stinky Tofu flavored Ice Cream. I wish I could remember where I left Ben and Jerry's personal cell phone number, they could make a fortune in Taiwan with that flavor.

I enjoyed Stinky Tofu, the forbidden fruit of Taiwan; well, forbidden in my house, anyway, but I think it’ll be a while before I eat it again. My wife isn’t planning on traveling again any time soon.

See, It Looks Good Enough to Eat

Note: This adventure didn’t end with just the consummation of my desire to taste Stinky Tofu. It was, after all, an adventure of monumental scope. We traveled throughout Taoyuan City stopping at a number of food carts. These are little carts where people prepare food, right on the side of the road. These are the places where you can really get the taste of Taiwan. I’ll talk about the rest of the adventure soon.

Other Posts you may be interested in:

Eating My way Through Taiwan: Hei Tong Cuo Bing
Eating My way Through Taiwan: Buddha Jumps Over the Wall
Eating My Way Through Taiwan: Niu Rou Mian

Taiwanese Tradition: The Hidden Temples of Taiwan

2011-07-04T12:25:00.001+08:00

Taiwan is a religious country. The traditional Taiwanese religion permeates just about every facet of society. Almost all of the holidays and events in Taiwan are based on religious festivals. Only a few notable days like, Double Tenth Day, the celebration of the Wuchang uprising, or 228 which marks the slaughter of 10,000 innocent Taiwanese are “political” holidays. The other holidays are religious in nature.

New businesses are often opened with a blast of fireworks and the traditional lion dance. The purpose of the lions is to drive out and devour evil spirits. Building are designed with Feng Shui principles, (yes, Feng Shui is religion) designed to insure prosperity or harmony. It is extremely common to drive down the street and see people burning “Hell Money” to bless their dead ancestors who may be awaiting reincarnation. People care for stray dogs and remove cockroaches from the house and take them outside out of concern that they may be some poor unfortunate person doomed to that life because of bad karma in their previous life. Taiwan is a religious country.

So it isn’t surprising that on a recent scooter ride that I stumbled upon a number of “hidden” temples.

Within a radius of ½ kilometer of my house there are no less than eight temples. This isn’t unusual. Only one of them is of any size the others are small hidden temples, dedicated to local deities. There may be others that I haven’t stumbled upon yet.

The one I most recently discovered, I found as I rode through the rice fields. I love rice fields, I like to ride through them and look at the rice. I usually do this in the early morning, when the birds are feeding there. This particular morning I was deep into the cultivated fields when I saw a couple of tombs. They were family tombs, built on the family’s fields so the family could properly care for them. Behind the tombs was the family’s personal temple. They built the temple as a way to honor their ancestors buried there. Incense from early morning worship was still burning.

There is another small neighborhood temple about a half block from my home. I often see neighbors there bringing offerings of fruit and liquor, burning incense and “Hell Money” or praying and asking the local deity to meet their needs or grant their wishes.

There is a huge park near my home called Yang Ming Park. On either side of the park there are temples. One is fairly large and often stages temple parades and festivals utilizing the park. The other is small and quiet and I sometimes see people sitting in the shade and meditating.

In the back of our neighborhood is another isolated and, no doubt, personal family temple. It is about 50 meters off the road and in an unused field. By the looks of the field they planted rice there at one time, but in the two years I’ve lived in this neighborhood, I’ve never seen anything planted or growing there. This temple is a bit more elaborate than some of the other small local temples, indicating that the owner may be a bit more prosperous than the others.

The people I’ve talked to coming from the temples are typically Taiwanese. They’re friendly, happy and eager to talk about their temples and their gods. There is one temple a number of kilometers from my home with a huge golden frog. The frog has a disc or coin in his mouth. A friend that was visiting wanted to stop and photograph the frog and two women who were at the temples waved to us and invited us into the temple to photograph the frog (and them with the frog) close up. My Chinese isn’t good enough to understand what the frog meant even though they patiently tried to explain it. Taiwan is a religious country.

Other posts you may be interested in:

Local Color: The Temples of Taoyuan City
Taiwanese Traditions: Ghost Month
Taiwanese Traditions: The Beliefs of Confucianism