scribbler at large

Hi friends! We went to Taipei three weeks ago and I meant to blog about it on April 3rd but suddenly it’s April 23rd. I’m not sure how this time-wrinkle came about, but it's the kind of thing that happens more when you're unemployed than when you’re actually busy. Sigh.

Ok, let’s talk about Taipei though! in China, it’s called Taibei, and it’s the capital of Taiwan, which is an island off the southeast coast of mainland China. If you’re not familiar with Taiwan’s relationship with mainland China, you should definitely, definitely google it. Hint: when President Trump took a call from the President of Taiwan, there was a big problem. For surface-impression purposes, Taiwan is technically part of China but it has a degree of autonomy that is unique.

So, we hopped a plane down to Taipei (about 3 hours) and stepped into the tropical Taiwan night wearing winter coats and hats. It was pleasantly warm, not suffocating, so we took off our excess clothes and cabbed it over to our hotel, where we were treated like actual royalty. The staff spoke English and our room came with all kinds of perks (salty dehydrated fish snacks?!) that knocked our socks off and made me embarrassed at our relative wealth.

Taiwan is one of those places which ex-pats here mention with great fondness—ooooh you went to Taiwannn? **Holds hand to heart** I love Taiwan! So, I was prepared to be swept off my feet immediately. While the weather and our hotel were truly great, when we stepped outside the next morning, things felt a lot like Beijing to me. There were scooters and people and foodstuffs we recognized, and there was also the fact that everyone was speaking Mandarin, albeit with a noticeable accent. The balmy air, extreme greenery, and palm trees were the only obvious indicators that Beijing was more than 1,000 miles north of us.

Our first order of business was meeting friends for brunch at the original Din Tai Fung location (Din Tai Fung, you may already know, is a famous dumpling restaurant with locations all over the world). We decided to walk to the restaurant to get a feel for where we were. The most noticeable, great thing about Taipei is that drivers follow traffic rules and pedestrians have right of way. If you’re used to Beijing, and your brain is tricking you into thinking you’re still there, this fact alone will kick you back into reality. Granted, the scooters are a bit fast and furious. But riders wear helmets, which makes up for their reckless stylings. Also, the majority of Taipei's scooters are gasoline-powered—as opposed to Beijing's stealthy electric scooters—and therefore easy to hear on approach. As we walked (and sweated) we caught glimpses of European-style architecture, too.

We bit off more than we could chew with our walking plan, so we had to cab the last leg of our trip to the restaurant—this is when I was blindsided by the local accent and spent a few minutes panicking in the back seat until some of the stuff our cab driver was saying started to register as words I know. He turned out to be a friendly guy who was willing to chat with us (another sign that we weren’t in Beijing anymore). The dumplings at Din Tai Fung, called xiao-long-bao, (which, incidentally, I never realized were the same thing as “soup dumplings”...embarrassing) were predictably delicious.

After eating, we walked to the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial down the street—a massive building that houses a massive, sitting statue of Chiang Kai-Shek. If you’re not familiar, he is the former head of the Republic of China (not the same as the People’s Republic of China) who led the Kuomintang's collective movement to Taiwan in 1949. He was and is a divisive figure.

Standing at the foot of the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial.

The memorial was guarded by some sharp looking soldiers in military dress, and we watched the changing of the guard—a super elaborate ceremony involving much footwork and rigorous arm/gun movements.

Of note: once the new guards took their post, a guy in regular clothes went up to each soldier to straighten a uniform, nudge an arm a bit, dust off a jacket, or adjust a hat. This struck me as a fussy end to the spectacle—a reaction which in turn prompted some hefty introspection. I was, of course, applying American perceptions of strength and masculinity to a ceremony with cultural context I don't understand. This is something I keep doing over here, and I'm recurrently stunned at how deeply American cultural rules have been ingrained in my understanding of the world. Whoa. Bookmarked for further thought.

Standing on the steps of the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial looking out at the lawns.

It started to rain so we took cover in Taipei Main Station, which is a huge transportation hub that also houses what seems to be a never-ending underground mall. We window-shopped, snacked, drank bubble tea, and almost bought a bunch of tchotchkes, but held back like champions.

This is douhua, which is really soft tofu combined with crushed ice, peanuts, some kind of bean, and tapioca pearls. It was refreshing, lightly sweet, and a real texture medley. Overall, very pleasant.

Malls abound in Beijing—I’m constantly getting lost in them while trying to find a certain store or restaurant where I’m supposed to meet people—but this subterranean jaunt was nonetheless charming, clean, and full of eating opportunities.

That first day in Taipei we walked over eleven miles and, in addition to the aforementioned activities, drank local coffee, ate some tasty eel, and drank Taiwanese lychee beer. Our friends know Taipei well, and we were grateful to be in expert hands. The overall social dynamic in Taipei seemed much more western than we’re used to in Beijing. People give each other space on the street, make eye contact, stand in a perfect line to board the subway, and apologize if they bump into each other. These small differences gave us an impression of elbow room and peace, even in the middle of a bustling metropolis.

A night market we walked through just as the vendors were setting up.

On a none-euphoric note, when we hailed a cab to get home (in the rain, around 10:30PM) we got picked up by this older lady who was totally mystified when the windows of the car fogged up. She kept telling us that this had never happened to her before, and that she didn’t know what to do. My husband even showed her how to turn on the defroster, but she had a giant brown rug draped over her dashboard which blocked the vents. We ended up rolling down the windows (in the rain) just to keep her from stopping the car entirely. Things went from weird to bad when we realized that she was just randomly turning down streets and had no idea where she was going. We were way out in the wrong corner of the city when we finally pulled the plug and told her to let us out. She didn’t protest at all—which I took as confirmation that she'd knowingly screwed us over. Luckily, cabs in Taipei are significantly cheaper than in the old USA. Just when I started to worry about the fact that we were standing on a deserted street corner late at night in the rain, another cab rescued us, and this guy knew how to get to our hotel.

Standing on the steps of the National Palace Museum, looking out.

The next day we went to the National Palace Museum, which, despite my rubber knees, was totally worthwhile. We stared at ceramics, jewelry, maps, calligraphy, and statues that spanned thousands of years. It’s pretty amazing to get up close and personal with a bowl that was made in 900 BC.

Ceramic pillows through the ages. I love these things so much.

Best of all was seeing the jadeite cabbage sculpture. That’s right: it's jadeite, it's cabbage, it's a jadeite cabbage. It was carved in 1889 and is one of Taiwan’s great treasures. It’s about the length of an adult human hand, and at the museum its glass case was constantly mobbed by people snapping photos.

Taiwan also possesses a pork belly sculpture (that looks uncannily real), but it wasn’t at the museum when were there. BUMMer. We bought a giant, tacky plastic bottle opener in the likeness of the cabbage, so if you ever come to visit you can use it to crack open a cold one.

That night, we walked along the river to Raohe night market, which was, for sure, the highlight of our trip. We ran into a bunch of stray dogs along the bank of the river, and a terrifying beast of the deep kept jumping around in the river making lots of noise, but the view of the city at night was pretty great.

Following the crowd at Raohe night market.

Taipei is known for its night markets, the most famous one being Shilin, but we wanted to avoid a suffocating crowd and also maintain our we’re not mainstream tourists, we’re hip, we’re cool vibe. Raohe was crowded but manageable, only awkward in that I had to remember to apologize to people when I jostled them. The market was essentially a long pedestrian street packed with food, clothing, and stuff vendors.

People chowing down at the night market.

The food is the main event, and it was pretty fascinating to watch people cook and eat. A lot of the snacks were hard for me to identify—many a meat product—and I was weirdly shy about diving in. But we tried a bunch of things, including these wacky little pancakes with leggy sea creatures baked into them, and some fried sweet potato balls that were pretty much my dream come true.

Little seafood pancake pockets (finished product in the center).

We also ate stinky tofu (which really stinks, guys, it smells like garbage) and drank the most amazing ice cold coconut milk with tapioca balls in it. We headed back to the hotel around 11PM, on streets completely free of pedestrians. When we found a cab, the driver wanted to know why we were walking. We told him we were getting some exercise after eating 1,000 snacks at the market. He gave us a thumbs up, but I wasn't sure if he was surprised to see people walking in general, or if he was surprised to see people walking at that hour of the night. Mystery: unsolved. Here are a few more night market photos:

Tofu on sticks with pickled cabbage and carrots.

Fried sweet potato balls that looked joyless, but were actually very tasty. Note the backdrop, for juxtaposition.

Egg tarts, filled with mildly sweet custard. So good.

Xiao-long-bao vendor (see the dumplings in the bamboo basket).

On our last day, we decided to climb Xiang Shan (elephant mountain). We walked halfway there and then got a cab, but I wasn’t sure what to say when the driver asked me which entrance we wanted to go to (I thought there was just one). I hadn’t bought a Taiwan SIM card for my phone because our trip was so short, but every time we got into a cab I regretted this, since there was no way to tell if we were going the right way. This driver took us to a completely different place than I’d anticipated, and I freaked out a little bit since we had budgeted our time to the minute in order to catch our flight later that day. We decided to climb up the mountain in front of us anyway, and even though it took longer than anticipated, it was worth the extra minutes. We climbed high enough to get breathtaking views of the city below us. Taipei 101, the tallest building in the city—indeed, 'twas the tallest building in the world until the Burj Khalifa was completed in Dubai in 2009—was right in front of us in all of its glory.

Like most of the hikes we’ve done on the mainland, this one was unexpectedly rigorous but the path was heavily built up with stone steps (none of that American parkland, dirt path stuff). Unlike the mainland hikes we’ve done, though, our fellow hikers in Taipei were outfitted in hiking shoes or sneakers and athletic clothes—I didn’t see any of the high-heeled sneakers or sequined tops I’ve gotten used to in Beijing.

Although my first impressions of Taipei were along the line of “what’s the big deal?” that feeling was replaced with complete understanding after a few hours of roaming the streets. If you're thinking of traveling east, Taipei (and the rest of Taiwan) should be on your itinerary.

We ran into this dude on the hiking trail.

We made it to the airport with enough time to order coffees at a cafe, and figuratively bury little pieces of our hearts in Taipei.

That sums up the highlights of our trip, so thanks for reading! Spring in Beijing is proving to be gorgeous, and I may have more seasonal updates soon. Lastly, most of the photos in this post were taken by my husband, who kept our DSLR safe from the raindrops in a Ziploc baggie, and never missed a photo-op.

Finally, gift options: