tourists in Taiwan, part 4: Kenting

The last part of our trip took us to the southernmost tip of Taiwan. We left Kaohsiung after lunch and it took almost two hours to get to Kenting, so we didn't have time to do much that day except check-in and eat dinner.

Luckily, the streets of Kenting are filled with restaurants and food stands. After walking up and down the main street a few times (too many Western and Thai restaurants!) we found an authentic Taiwanese place, where we had sticky rice in bamboo, pork over rice, a very interesting vegetable that I hadn't eaten before (local specialty) which tasted a bit like the outsides of sweet peas, and some other goodies.


After dinner, we wandered the streets looking for snacks and desserts. We ended up eating green tea frozen yogurt, fried milk, grilled squid, "sausage wrapped in sausage", and more.



Bright and early the next day, we were off to Kenting National Park (墾丁國家公園). There are lots of beautiful trees, ferns, and other plants inside.



The land that is now Kenting was once underwater, and many of the rock formations in the area are actually comprised of ancient coral reefs. As a result, there are some impressive ravines and such.


Last year at the Taiwanese-American Cultural Festival, I learned that nearly 60% of the world's supply of orchids originate from Taiwan. Inside the park, we found a greenhouse full of orchids and other tropical flowers, which my mom enjoyed very much.


We wound up our visit at the new(-ish) National Museum of Marine Biology & Aquarium. We've been to really nice aquariums in Dubai (UAE), Valencia (Spain), and near home in Monterey (California), and I was pretty impressed with this one. They have a giant coral reef exhibit that has three separate tubes inside which give visitors great views of all the sea life. They have a whale shark (we watched the feeding, which was fun), two beluga whales, lots of manta rays, and other cool-looking creatures that I couldn't identify. They also have a some Gentoo penguins, which might have impressed me a few years ago, but not after having seen the Magellanic Penguin colony in Argentina and the Little Penguins on Phillips Island.




We left Kenting at around 5:15pm, and were on an express train bound for Taipei by 7:06pm. We arrived exactly ninety-six minutes later (love the high-speed rail), and grabbed a late wonton soup dinner before heading to bed.

Overall, it was an awesome trip, and I look forward to being a tourist in Taiwan again soon. Next time: Hualien, Taroko Gorge, and Sun Moon Lake!

tourists in Taiwan, part 3: Kaohsiung

From Tainan we drove about an hour south to Kaohsiung.

Kaohsiung is the second-largest city and the largest port in Taiwan. In 2009, it hosted the World Games, which consists primarily of sports which are not in the Olympics. Almost 6,000 athletes from over 100 countries attended the Kaohsiung games.

A brand-new, entirely solar-powered stadium (with 8,844 solar panels) was built to accommodate the games; it's said to resemble a dragon:


Unfortunately, it was a bit drizzly when we went to go take a look, so I didn't get a good photo of it.

I forget the name of the hill that we drove up, but eventually we did get a pretty good view of the harbor itself.


Nearby was another hill called 柴山 ("Chai" Mountain). There is a major university located there, and so there are a TON of motorbikes parked all along the road leading up to the top. Apparently Chai Shan is famous for its monkeys! We saw a quite a few; these guys were hanging out on a parked car.


We also took a ferry to 鼓山 ("Gu" Mountain), an older area of town. There was a temple there and some street vendors selling various types of seafood, but we just spent most of our time watching the gigantic container ships coming in and out of Kaohsiung Harbor.



We had a buffet dinner at the Harbor Buffet, up on the 43rd floor of the Grand Hi-Lai hotel, and then went to visit some relatives at their home. These photos were taken from the roof of their building, facing the harbor.



The next day, the same relatives invited us to visit their old house, which is over a hundred years old. I was most interested in the (still functional) WWII-era bomb shelter and water well in the backyard.



Finally, we visited one of the nicest stations in Kaohsiung's newly opened subway system. Strangely enough, there were very few people actually riding the subway, but that made it easier for me to take photos.


We wound up our visit with lunch at a delicious seafood restaurant called 海天下 (literally "Sea Under Sky") which I'm told is one of the best restaurants in Kaohsiung. Their fried squid and basil clam dishes were both amazingly fresh and tasty with very little seasoning. D also liked another dish which was some kind of internal organ of a fish. Unfortunately, no one could translate for us; the closest we came was "something like a gizzard" except of course fish don't have gizzards. Oh well.

tourists in Taiwan, part 2: historical Tainan

The sightseeing part of our Tainan tour was less extensive than the eating part, but I thought it was also worthwhile.

Taiwan was occupied by both the Dutch and the Spanish in the 1600's. The Dutch settlement, based out of "Fort Zeelandia" in present-day Tainan, lasted nearly forty years. In 1662, a Chinese naval officer named Koxinga expelled the Dutch from Taiwan and ruled the island from Tainan for another twenty years. As a result, there are a variety of colonial-era ruins still remaining in Tainan.

The first one that we visited was the Dutch-era Fort Zeelandia.


We were told that the actual cannons were original but the bases were replicas.

Next we visited Fort Anping, which was built by Koxinga.


Finally, we visited 赤崁樓 ("Chi Kan Lo"), also built during the Dutch occupation. The name literally means "Tower of the Red-Haired Savages" and refers to the Dutch invaders.


Chi Kan Lo is famous for its nine stone turtles bearing tablets inscribed in both Manchurian and Mandarin. It's thought that the tablets were brought during the Ching dynasty Chinese occupation.


I liked this visit the best of all; there were fewer tourists (the other two sights were swarmed of hordes of tourists, mostly from China), and the grounds, including this coi pond, were very pretty.


Overall, Tainan felt a lot more laid-back than Taipei, and seemed to be imbued with a lot more history and culture. For instance, I took this photo out the window while whizzing past a local cemetary.


One notable exception: drivers in Tainan are insane, fearless, and they completely ignore red lights. I asked my aunt about it and she said (my translation), "a red light is just a recommendation".

tourists in Taiwan, part 1: delicious Tainan

Normally when D and I go to Taiwan, we spend the entire time in Taipei visiting relatives and eating at our favorite restaurants. This time, we decided to take a side trip to the south of Taiwan, since neither of us had been down there since before high school.

Our first stop was in Tainan, where my aunt (mom's sister) lives. She'd asked us beforehand what we wanted to eat, and we told her we wanted "小吃" (literal translation: "small eats") so she drew up a list of Tainan's famous 小吃 spots. Despite being pressed for time (we stayed in Tainan a total of maybe 26 hours) we managed to eat nearly everything on her list. (We also hit a few historical sites while digesting; I'll put those in a different post.)

Just after arriving on the HSR from Taipei, we went to 度小月, Tainan's most famous purveyor of 擔仔麵 (danh mi, a kind of noodle dish). The bowls are quite small and I think normally D could have eaten four or five of them, but we were saving our stomachs.


Next up was Chou's. They're known for their shrimp rolls (below), but we also ordered some more noodles, some pork over rice, and some fish ball soup.



We'd already snacked on some red bean cookies from Kobayashi's, but of course there's always room for more dessert, so we went to 安平 for some dao whei (bean curd tofu soup). This one has green bean and tapioca in it.


After some sightseeing, it was time for more snacking; we bought these rice-based snacks from a street vendor; they are topped with black sesame or peanut powder and steamed until they are gooey. Best eaten while hot!


At that point we only had a few hours until dinner, but my aunt insisted we try these oyster & seafood cakes. I'm not a fan of cooked oysters myself, but D seemed to like them.



Shortly afterwards, it was on to dinner. There is a restaurant about 40 minutes outside of Tainan, that advertises that its beef comes from cows that were killed no more than two hours before serving. My sister (aka the beef expert) had been there previously with my aunt, and she pronounced the meat excellent, so we requested that we eat dinner there.

The restaurant itself is very casual and nondescript, and I'm fairly sure I never would have found it myself. (In Taiwan, "it's next to 7-11" is a totally useless description.) The meat is served shabu shabu style, with a plate of vegetables. There was also unlimited 魯肉飯 (stewed meat over rice) as a side/appetizer, but I only ate a bite of it as I was saving room for the good stuff.



Afterwards, our server dumped a whole plateful of rice into the leftover soup and made rice porridge out of it. It was super flavorful and I ate nearly an entire bowl of it despite being very full already.

The second day, we started out with fish ball soup and 油條 (fried dough). We'd had fish ball soup the previous day but apparently this was a special kind of fish ball soup, with all different kinds of fish balls.


We topped off breakfast with "tsai bah tzang", a vegetarian form of 粽子 (rice dumpling?) which only has peanuts inside. It's served with peanut powder and cilantro, and it is yummy but I still like the meat kind better.


Finally, we were on to our last meal in Tainan, at the "A Ha" restaurant. They are known for their crab, which is a type of crab only found near southern Taiwan, but I actually liked the 油飯 (oily rice) underneath it even better than the crab itself.

This small fish is also a local specialty, although I hear it is better done in some other restaurants. I didn't try it, but it looked hard to eat.


We were originally planning to go to a famous tsua bing (shaved ice) place nearby before leaving town, but then the restaurant gave us this enormous dessert, on the house. As I recall it had sweet rice dumplings, red bean, prunes, and lots of almond tofu. Yum.

how much are *your* principles worth?

Yani Tseng won the Kraft Nabisco Championship (one of four LGPA majors) last month. That win, combined with Lorena Ochoa's retirement, has made her the second-ranked woman golfer in the world. She was recently offered a $25 million sponsorship by a Chinese group, and was widely expected to accept it.

My dad was saying yesterday that according to her father, she has rejected the offer. One of the conditions of sponsorship was that she would have to play under the Chinese (PRC) flag, rather than the Taiwanese (ROC) one. Apparently that was a deal-breaker.

I have much respect. That's a lot of money to turn down.

Taiwanese orchids

One of my coworkers is obsessed with photographing flowers; he does a really good job even with the random shrubs between the buildings at work. So, when I was at the Taiwanese American Cultural Festival last Saturday in Union Square, and I saw a ton of gorgeous orchids from Taiwan, I decided to give it a shot, too. This is my favorite:

obsession of the week

Last night I had some people over to watch 海角七號 (aka Cape No. 7), a Taiwanese movie by new director Wei Te-Sheng.

The plot follows two tracks: The present day storyline involves a musician who failed to make it big in Taipei and is returning home to Hengchun (in southern Taiwan) to replace the local mailman. He is recruited into a local band formed specifically to serve as an opening act for a visiting Japanese singer, and eventually strikes up a relationship with the band's manager, a Japanese former model. At the same time, he discovers a packet of love letters which were written 60 years ago by a Japanese man to a Taiwanese woman, during the Japanese surrender of Taiwan to the KMT.

The movie came out in Taiwan last summer and promptly became the second-highest grossing movie there in history (behind Titanic). The DVD was released in December, just in time for me to buy it during my annual visit.

I must admit that my curiosity was piqued partially because the movie was banned in China due to its semi-positive depiction of the Japanese occupation of Taiwan, but it also won several Golden Horse awards and has been submitted to the Academy Awards as Taiwan's entry for Best Foreign Film.

Anyway, a couple post-viewing comments follow.

Of the group that watched the movie yesterday, everyone understood Mandarin fairly well. Most understood Taiwanese, and a few understood bits of Japanese. The movie was subtitled (not too horribly) in English, but I felt like understanding Taiwanese definitely contributed to greater enjoyment of the movie. Sometimes the Taiwanese expressions were significantly more colorful than the English translations, and some local flavor was lost even between Taiwanese and Mandarin. The dialogue rang true to me; even when it was crass it was authentically so.

I liked that the movie demonstrated the fluent Japanese of the older generation in Taiwan. My own grandparents are a perfect example; they all have cute Japanese nicknames and when they are together with their brothers and sisters, they speak mixed Japanese and Taiwanese. Their Mandarin is passable but awkward. That's Taiwan.

I thought the music in the movie was good. I did some research and found that the main character Aga was played by an actual musician, and several of the other actors also had real musical backgrounds, including the Japanese singer Atari. During the movie, I realized I had actually heard the last song already, while at karaoke in Taipei with my cousins, and I had liked it then too. I enjoyed the other (more upbeat) piece as well.

The movie was funny, but not in a slapstick way, and the characters were engaging. The 80-year old retired mailman was hilarious, and Aga's stepfather was also amusing (although he reminded me of some of my own annoying relatives, so sometimes it was harder to laugh). Often, modern Taiwanese movies take themselves too seriously, and this one did not.

My biggest complaint was that the backstory involving the love letters wasn't well developed and I wasn't sympathetic to the writer of those letters. I also disliked the cheesy music that played whenever the letters were read. The relationship between Aga and the Japanese manager Tomoko kind of came out of nowhere as well, but the two actors did a pretty good job of selling it towards the end, so that particular flaw wasn't as distracting.

The nicest surprise was the cinematography. Parts of Taiwan are really gorgeous but I never get to see them because I'm always in Taipei. Watching this movie made me want to make an effort to explore other parts of the island (while not being dragged there by my parents). I'm hoping that motivating effect lasts until next year.

real journalism

Yesterday I clicked on a link in a friend's chat status, and found an unexpectedly thought-provoking article. It was written by Lasantha Wickramatunge, a leading Sri Lankan journalist, predicting his own death. Three days later, he was shot and killed by unidentified gunmen.

In reading his article and reading about his life, I was reminded of how important good journalism is, in establishing and maintaining a free society. TIME reports that "His death has galvanized the growing anger among the press and other civil-society groups in Sri Lanka about restrictions on free expression in the country and intimidation of the media." I hope they are correct.

And, I hope that similarly courageous and talented journalists exist in Taiwan. They are sorely (and increasingly) needed, to keep the government in check during these tumultuous times.

too late!

Speaking of Taiwan, while visiting Yeh-Liu last week, I came across this sign which I found amusing:


It's very Asian of the stick figure to have already fallen off the edge.

Taiwan drivers

I just got back Sunday night from 10 days in Taiwan. I spent the whole time living with my parents at our place in Taipei, which annoyed me beyond belief, but it was still a good time; hung out with cousins and other relatives, went on a couple of excursions outside the city, and ate *tons* of yummy food.

I was amused by the following exchange which took place on the day before I left:
me (sarcastically): Mom! You stopped for a red light!
Mom (dead serious, paraphrased from Chinese): I have to practice. I'm going back to the US in a week and I'll forget if I don't.

hmm

This morning, I read this article about a new Taiwanese movie called "Cape No. 7", which has a lot of Japanese influence.

My first reaction was to try to find the movie on Netflix, but it's not available, at least not yet.

My second reaction was to be disgusted that the Chinese government is again practicing censorship, this time using fears of "nationalistic backlash" as justification.

Then, I tried to consider whether perhaps there was some kernel of truth in their justification. Is there a topic which is so sensitive for Americans that if a movie was made addressing it, its very release would cause mass riots? I'm having a hard time thinking of one.

In any case, there's no good excuse for censorship, so I guess I'm just pondering different degrees of badness anyway.

Taiwan quick update

At first I was following the recent events in Taiwan pretty closely, but then I went "onduty" at work. Since then, things have been crazy, and they're likely to stay that way through the weekend.

Fortunately, there are still such a thing as good journalism, and Newsweek in particular has been kicking ass with their Taiwan reporting. Two of last week's articles were particularly good at describing the current situation: Fallout from Chen Shui-Bian's Dramatic Arrest and Strait Talk: So Near And Yet So Far.

I did manage to drag myself to a meeting of a local Taiwanese organization on Friday night. I cut out after dinner ended, was in bed by 11pm, and slept for nearly 12 hours. Tired...

lost in translation?

I've been following the recent petition and protests initiated by Taiwanese university students and professors, and I'm happy that there is a non-partisan effort to reform the Taiwanese government. What I don't understand is why the effort is being called the "wild strawberry" movement. I'm sure I'm missing something; it probably makes sense in Taiwanese or in Chinese.

yet another Taiwan post

After my grandparents left to go back to Taiwan to attend the 10/25 protest, I was curious about how it turned out, but not surprisingly, I had a lot of difficulty finding English news reports of any substance.

Today, as I was reading about the newest protests, I finally found a Reuters article reporting a turnout of "half a million". Impressive!

Less heartening were the more recent reports that Taiwanese protesters and politicians are being denied the right to wave Taiwan flags in their own country, and that they are being kept away from the visiting Chinese official using razor wires. It's like Taiwan, under Ma Jing-Yeou, is slowly creeping back towards martial law again. It's scary and creepy and generally horrible.

priorities

My grandparents, who have been visiting here in California for the past month, flew back to Taipei yesterday so that they could participate in tomorrow's Protect Taiwan march. That's just so cool that it speaks for itself, so my only comment is: 外公外婆加油!

oh dear

In my news feed this morning: Pro-independence protesters in Taiwan have attacked a visiting Chinese envoy. There's video and everything.

On the one hand, I understand there is a lot of frustration right now in Taiwan. Ma Ying-Jeou has been pandering to China at every opportunity, and on top of that, people are afraid to eat anything, due to the Chinese milk scandal. Part of me definitely feels like cheering on the protesters. But, in the larger scheme of things, I don't think this incident is going to help Taiwan's standing in the international community.

Then again, the international community pretty much spits on Taiwan, so maybe we shouldn't care what they think.

3.5 years to go

Looks like Ma Ying-Jeou's approval rating has fallen to below 40% in the five months since he became president. That's what happens when you venerate former dictators and undermine your own country's sovereignty in the international arena.

I wonder how many of those 60% of disapproving voters voted for Ma during the election, believing his campaign promises not to sell out Taiwan? I wonder if any of them realized how stupid that was and attended the 100-day rally against him, which drew somewhere between 50,000 and 200,000 protesters?

There's a lot of "I told you so" floating around in my head in a pool of bitterness. Sigh.

taiwanation

For the past week or so, I've been debating ordering some TAIWANATION wristbands. The thing is, I really don't need ten of them, plus I think I've spent this month's budget for Taiwan paraphernalia on a couple of "stinky tofu walks alone" T-shirts from TaiwaneseAmerican.org.

unforeseen consequences

I just had a really interesting lunchtime conversation with a friend. The topic du jour was the recent Olympic torch protests.

I've been mildly in favor of the protests, just because I think that it's good to get some visibility for the issues that are being raised (Tibet, human rights, Darfur). A Taiwanese friend even raised the possibility of going up there today with a "Taiwanese-Americans support Tibet" sign, and although I didn't go, it was mostly because of a busy work schedule, combined with laziness, rather than any objection to the idea.

However, my friend, who is from China, pointed out that one of the side effects of the protests has been to push the average Chinese person towards greater nationalism. She herself is definitely not a rabid nationalist (I'll vouch for that, having had multiple rational conversations with her about Taiwan) and she said that upon reading about the protests, she felt herself becoming defensive, wondering why the Western media was determined to make China look bad.

I think this is a really unfortunate consequence. The protesters' goal is to give the Chinese people greater human rights, but instead they are being perceived as attacking the Chinese people. One could argue that the protests are aimed at the Chinese government, not the people, but that's a pretty tricky distinction to make, especially through the media lens. If we're not careful, we could wind up with a billion nationalistic Chinese people who are angry at the West, and I'm pretty sure that's not what we (the global community) want.

When I travel, I hear lots of anti-American sentiment, and I don't typically react defensively (especially as I myself often criticize our government), but on occasion I'll be annoyed by some derogatory comment about how "America" has done yet another stupid thing. Chinese culture places a much greater emphasis on not "losing face" and the Chinese people have really been looking forward to hosting these Olympics, so I can understand why they would feel hurt, to some degree.

I guess the moral of the story is to think really hard about the consequences of your actions, because things may not turn out at all like you had expected or wanted.

taiwan election results

I'm bummed about the results, of course, but am also carefully observing new President-elect Ma's next steps.

I'm annoyed/worried about:
- his emotional tribute to Chiang Kai-shek on the anniversary of Chiang's death
- his plan to use the (ridiculous) name "Chinese Taipei" to apply to international organizations, and especially his statement that the DPP approach of using the name "Taiwan" is a "total embarrassment"

I'm psyched about:
- his mentioning the possibility of boycotting the Beijing Olympics (as an aside, props to protesters in Paris and London!)

I'm undecided about:
- his pledge to launch regular weekend charter flights to China by July

This is me being reasonable and practical. I also have bouts of cynicism when I just resign myself to concluding the country is going to go all to hell over the next four years. Sigh.