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St. Patrick’s Day for many means a wholesale celebration of faux-Irishness through Guinness and everything green. While I’m not a fan of beer, I decided to put something green together to eat today. One of my favorite food writers Mark Bittman of the New York Times made a chicken with salsa verde but since I can’t find half of those ingredients in this country, I made a simpler non-Irish dish: a green pilaf, based on Bittman’s own recipe. Why not try a simple green vegetarian dish for St. Patrick’s Day?

As an added bonus, I set this recipe to Sufjan Stevens’ Illinoise. I was just in a Chicago-missing mood and listening to it while cooking, and it seemed to work so well.

Time: 45 minutes (mostly waiting, though)
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
Salt and pepper
1 1/2 cups (400cc) chicken stock (I used a bouillon cube—雞湯塊)
1 medium head of broccoli, just the flowers, in small chunks (maybe 3/4-1 cup)
1 cup (250cc) short grain white rice
1/2 cup (130cc) chopped parsley, optional

1. Track 1: “Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois.” Put oil in a pan on medium heat. Add the garlic, onion, and a pinch of salt and stir occasionally until the onion is translucent or until you hear the piano riff on track 3, “Come On! Feel the Illinoise!” In the down time, you can make sure your chicken broth is heated up in a pot.
   
2. Track 3: “Come On! Feel the Illinoise!” Add rice to the onion pan and stir occasionally until they get clear and start to brown, sometime during the second half of track 3, “Come On! Feel the Illinoise! Pt. II: Carl Sandburg Visits Me In a Dream.” Throw the broccolli in the broth to let cook for the last minute of “Carl Sandburg.”
   
3. Track 4: “John Wayne Gacy, Jr.” Add the stock/broccolli to the rice/onion pan. Heat to a boil and then let cook for the rest of the track. Stir occasionally. Compare yourself to a serial killer as you watch the bubbles.
   
4. Track 5: “Jacksonville.” Cover and cook until the end of track 9, “Chicago.”
   
5. Track 10: “Casimir Pulaski Day.” Enjoy my favorite song on the CD. Turn heat off and let sit, uncover, stir gently, cover again, and let sit on the burner until track 15, “The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out to Get Us.” Optionally mix in chopped parsley for additional green. Serve.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

The Fulbright program sets up an extra “co-school” to work at for a small period of time in the spring, as a means of giving us ETA’s increased variety and different school experiences, as well as letting us touch more students’ lives. For the month of March, I will be at Dongshan Elementary in Dongshan (冬山).

Teaching at Dongshan every day involves taking the train every day, and I’m fully psyched about that. I was first quite worried as there are, according to the online trip planner, only three trains a day that go directly from Nan’ao to Dongshan but this has turned out to be false. It still does mean at least an hour a day on trains, but I’ve got my iPod with wonderful podcasts, and I’m pretty sure my class schedule lets me avoid transfers.

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Thanks.

The Lantern Festival (元宵节) is annually on the 15th day of the lunar year, this year February 21, 2008. Yesterday my Fo Guang friend Aaron and I, after buying textbooks for our upcoming classical Chinese course, met up with Michelle and Jerry in Taipei to check out the lanterns at Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall. Jerry took us first, though, to a casual but very authentic Japanese restaurant, famous for their eel. (Here’s Michelle and Aaron, below:)

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I made some pasta tonight for dinner, and decided to share it with Barack and Hillary. I haven’t cooked in a long time here in Taiwan, especially as the noodles down the street are so cheap. Now that I have, though, I do really enjoy the process and the smells, and of course the familiar flavors that are hard to come by. I look forward to cooking more in the months to come. ^^

On a side note, very cool section in the Texas Democratic debate on second language education.

It’s been two weeks now since Chinese New Year—I suppose it’s about time to write up the final adventures of my New Year break. My friend Andy from college who is Taiwanese-American came back to Taiwan to celebrate the New Year and invited me to tag along.

Day 1: New Year’s Eve

The adventure began now three Wednesdays ago, when I took the high speed rail down to Kaohsiung (高雄). Andy showed me around the city a little bit (including the nearby temple with the European-looking knight) and we had the traditional New Year’s Eve dinner, which is one of the most important parts of the New Year. We all stayed up watching TV (and the adults playing Mahjong), then Andy and I then set off some fire crackers at midnight.

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Day 3: The Great Wall

Before we finalized our plans to go to China, K80 just had one criteria for an itinerary: to go to the Great Wall of China. We reserved all of our final full day in Beijing to going to the Wall. After our delicious breakfast, we hit the roads, taking a bus from the Dōngzhímén bus station out to Mìyún (密雲) and then a taxi to Sīmǎtái (司馬臺). Compared with other more popular Great Wall sites, Simatai is less restored, less touristy, and a more challenging hiking experience. We gave in to the adventurers within.

The weather was actually pretty nice, hovering right above 0°C, with beautiful clear skies, making up for the rest of China. We could see miles across. The higher up we went, the more of the Wall we could see.

They weren’t kidding when they said Simatai was more challenging of a hike… with some sections >45° up, sometimes it felt like a climb rather than hike… the path also sort of disappeared towards the end.

The whole experience fills with you a sense of awe, especially when you think of the people, real humans just like us (at least, we think), building this hundreds of years ago. Its scope is mind blowing. We made sure to make our visit memorable and well-documented as well.

In the end we turned back after climbing for a couple hours, and when we saw that the next peak ahead of us looked particularly menacing. We took some final pictures and turned back.

K80 made sure to steal a brick on the wall down. Shh… We also saw a frozen river which excited the Floridian.

Noodles for dinner

For dinner we met up with Anna again and her friend. Anna recommended a noodle place where you can watch the guys whip up the different kinds of noodles in front of your eyes… there’s a guy lassoing some into a pot, a guy beating some dough into submission, another shaving little noodle bits off a ball of dough with a knife. These are the Chuck Norris of noodles.

For desert we had what I describe as Chinese 大学芋… some chunks of sweet potato, dipped in hot candy-ness. You then pick some up, dip it in water to let it cool off, and eat it. It was wonderful.

Thus concludes our haphazard trip to China. We all had a fabulous time, enjoying many cultural sites and seeing and making many friends.

Day 3: The Summer Palace

Day 3 begins with the Summer Palace. After Magi, K80, and I finally met¹ in the morning, we hit the (new) Summer Palace (頤和園). The Summer Palace is way out north-west, past Tsinghua University (the Beijing one), but well worth the trek. In retrospect, I would recommend going earlier, as I could have spent more time there.

The Summer Palace is built around a lake which, apparently, is quite shallow, as it was covered completely in ice on our visit, making for some great skating/sliding.

Much like the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace houses a museum-style areas, with various cultural relics on display. Again like the Forbidden City, however, the architecture and gardens are the reasons to visit.

The main attraction is probably the Tower of Buddhist Incense, which involves going up stairs after stairs, moving up this small mountain. At the top is a beautiful Guanyin.

Behind this tower is a little temple with many beautiful Buddhas on the walls.

We had a great time at the Summer Palace, with one exception…

Suzhou street: a warning

I must warn any potential travelers away from the part of the Summer Palace known as Suzhou Street (蘇州街). But first, an aside on park ticket pricing.

In some parks, such as the Summer Palace, you can buy two types of tickets at the door: a “gate ticket” (門票) and a “through ticket” (聯票). The gate ticket will let you into the park, but it doesn’t include the separate tickets for a number of “special sections” of the park, while hte “through ticket” includes these. You can also just buy a gate ticket, enter, and pay the 10 yuan or so for each special section. The Summer Palace has four such special sections. If my memory serves me right, the gate ticket was ¥20 and the through ticket was ¥50. Each special section was ¥10 if you paid as you went. So the through ticket is a great deal!

So if you’re cheap like me, you’ll buy the through ticket, and then make sure to go to each of the places listed on your through ticket. After all, you paid for them, right? One of these was the Suzhou Street. Suzhou Street is on the north side of the Palace and is a little hard to get to… many signs make it seem like you’re just a few steps away, when in reality it is still at least a 15 minute walk. Once you get there, it’s the definition of a tourist trap… it does look nice and you must pay or have the through ticket to enter but, once you’re in, you must walk around this lake (it says one-way, so you can’t get out quickly), along which there are stores with touristy junk and little tea places. There are no exhibits or anything of real cultural interest here. You have to walk around the lake, at least half way, in order to leave.

In conclusion, the through ticket is convenient, the other three “special sections” were great, and you won’t be wasting money if you get one and don’t go to the Suzhou Street. Just don’t waste your time finding or visiting the Suzhou Street.

Bargaining

After the Summer Palace we went back into the city and to the Hongqiao Market (紅橋市場), a mall in the city famous for pearls, which the girls were interested in. I realized I just don’t have the attitude to bargain properly—I’m just too soft. I tried, and I believe we did get a fair price, but I’d definitely need more practice to get good at it, and it’s not the kind of practice I particularly enjoy. At least the price did immediately drop to half or so once they saw that I spoke Chinese. Funny how things work.

The Tree and fried apple pie à la mode

Finally we met up with Magi’s friend who took us to The Tree, a great pizza place in the Sānlǐtún bar area. Magi reminisced about darkly-lit bars like this in Germany, and we enjoyed the conversation and hearth-baked pizza. I highly recommend The Tree.

Finally, we went over to another bar called Rickshaw for desert, and I had the deep-fried apple pie. I felt like I was back at the state fair.

It’s amazing how time flies… just over a week ago I’d just returned from Beijing, but it feels like it’s been weeks… I’ll take this chance to write up my adventures before my memory falters.

Day 1: 北京，你好！

After getting into Beijing two Mondays ago, we took some time to explore the city. Our hotel arrangement (the Red Wall Hotel) was much nicer than in Hong Kong, with windows, free internet, nice decor, and a great location, on the north-east corner of the Forbidden City.

Walking around in Beijing, we were both immediately struck by the size of the city, in particular of the amount of open space. The streets were incredibly wide, with sidewalks and space between buildings! The landscape looked much more like an American Midwestern city than any other city I’ve been to in Asia.

In the evening, K80 and I met up with my high school friend Anna. Anna and I never took Chinese together in high school, but it turns out Anna now is on a Fulbright in Beijing researching environmentalism in China, particularly leading up to the summer olympics. She mentioned she would bring along a friend from her Chinese program who taught English in Taiwan last year, “doing something similar to you.”

It turns out this friend was one of the English Teaching Assistants from last year, in the exact same program that we’re in now. What a small world! K80 and he even lived in the same apartment! We had some great Korean food and shared had a wonderful time catching up.

Day 2: The Forbidden City

Magi and we met up in the morning for some breakfast, and then it was off to the Forbidden City (故宮)! The Forbidden City is quite literally a “city,”¹ but it now a museum with many gardens and historical relics, about half of which is off limits to the public. While most of the “better items” are in the National Palace Museum in Taipei (the joint result of ”history” and Mao, for he is beyond history), I was pleasantly surprised by the items in the City. That being said, I do think the best parts were the architecture and the gardens, which include various perilous hills.

We started in the back (north)—the rather unconventional route—having curry for lunch halfway through. The north half houses most of the exhibits, after which the second half is mostly the larger-ticket items, and a number of large courtyards. The City is definitely not just preserved history… Starbucks most famously had a brief stint in the City for a few years, though it is gone now. The curry was good and it was nice to be inside for a bit, satisfying priority one.²

There were a few items of particular note here. First of all, I was surprised by all the signs having both Chinese (traditional, the real Chinese) and Manchurian on them… it turns out the Qing dynasty court used Manchu as a primary or secondary language throughout its rule. I never expected to see that interesting script there.

Second, I was surprised to see a bicycle inlay on the ground… this led to my skepticism of the Forbidden City actually being built in the 1400’s.³ I present Exhibit A:

Finally, but not least: my four-star toilet experience.

Meet Mao

South of the Forbidden City is the Gate of Heavenly Peace, though you might have heard it as 天安門 Tiānānmén. You know, where the tanks ran over protesting students in 1989.⁴ Everyone and their mother has seen a picture of the huge wall with Mao on it… what you don’t realize is that it’s HUGE. I was standing in front of it, a decent ways away, and it didn’t fit in my camera’s viewfinder. K80 did one of her American Pledge of Allegiance photos there too.

Temple of Heaven

Afterwards we went to the Temple of Heaven (天壇), a large park a little south of Tiananmen Square. There were some really cool trees, including the camouflage tree, below. The gardening organization of the vast expanse reminded me of the Gardens of Versaille. Surely it would have been even more beautiful in the spring or summer.

Afterwards we had some Beijing duck for dinner, though priority one was sadly unfulfilled.

Houhai café

On our final leg of Day 2, we went up to the hip Hòuhǎi (後海) area, basically a lake with many bars and restaurants around, with many traditional Chinese streets (胡同) nearby. We stumbled upon a cute café where we drank some citrus tea, tea, and some cakes, all ordered off of their hand-written menus. It was a little hold in the wall, but fulfilled priority one, and had some great conversations about life, politics, and food. Thus concludes Day 2.

Day 1: Snack time

K80 and I got into Hong Kong last Friday after staying overnight in a hostel in Taipei. After taking care of our Chinese visa and settling into our hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui (尖沙嘴, or TST in English) in Kowloon (九龍), K80 and I walked around the neighborhood, first snacking at a cha chaan teng (茶餐廳), a kind of Chinese diner, where they serve an interesting mix of Chinese and western food. I got a hot milk tea (熱奶茶), Hong Kong style, which entails some strong, way-overbrewed tea with condensed milk, as well as a roast pork sandwich, and K80 got some noodles, both of which were advertised as part of their “afternoon tea” menu. They were all delicious, though the tea did need some extra sugar… but maybe I’m just too used to Taiwanese drinks. They also had prices written using Suzhou numerals, an interesting form of writing numbers which I’ve never seen before in Taiwan, though I recognized them as it was described in McCawley’s Eater’s Guide to Chinese Characters.

Museum time

We spent a little time walking to the nearby Hong Kong Museum of History (香港歷史博物館). The main exhibit is a walk through of the history of Hong Kong, starting with a geology primer and the land that Hong Kong sits on, through the four ethnic groups of Hong Kong, then the British, Japanese, and finally the return to the Chinese. It was a great museum with many life-size buildings and cultural relics, making it much more engaging than just some artifacts behind glass cases.

Dinner and stand-up

We met up with Michael/Kikai, who’s going to school in Hong Kong now, and his friends. We took the world’s largest system of interconnected escalators up from Central to Taco Loco. It was probably the first time I’d had Mexican food since I’ve been in Taiwan, so that was great. We then went out to see Paul Ogata and a couple openers at TakeOut Comedy’s first anniversary show. TakeOut Comedy is Asia’s first full-time stand-up venue, and they also recently started stand-up in Cantonese. Paul Ogata is a Japanese-American comedian from Hawaii, who recently won the San Francisco International Comedy Competition and also an avid Mac fan. The show was fantastic!

Afterwards we went out to a bar nearby, where I randomly met a guy I who was in my Computational Complexity class at Chicago. It’s a small world. K80 and I also got to know Kikai’s friends, including two students from France and Magi from Germany. K80 and I mention we’re going to China, and Magi (below with me and my duck) says maybe she’ll join us…

Day 2: Dim sum brunch

I cajoled K80 into having Dim Sum (點心) for breakfast. We went to a restaurant that Magi recommended in TST and had some fantastic dishes… our favorites were the fried shrimp wontons and pork buns.

10,000 Buddhas Temple

In the afternoon we visited the 10,000 Buddhas temple on 寶福山. After some introductory guard animals and shrubbery, you take the escalators up to the temple, which is made up of a sanctuary with 10,000 Buddhas, and then probably 50 or 60 rooms, each of which house hundreds of graves. K80 happened to see a family bringing in an urn. I was amazed by the number of plates in these rooms which had Christian crosses on them.

Ladies’ market

The Hong Kong Ladies’ Market, as it is called, is like a huge day market, much like Taiwan’s night markets, but with much taller stalls. Kikai took us around the market and then to one of his favorite snacks: a hot waffle layered with peanut butter, butter, condensed milk, and then sugar. It was both delicious and deadly. K80 then saw a Krispy Kreme (nonexistant in Taiwan) and went over for a donut (after the deadly waffle).

Symphony of Lights

At night we walked around and saw the Symphony of Lights on Victoria Harbour

Hong Kong Miscellanea

K80 and I both got saw Hong Kong as a stereotypical yet fascinating mix of east and west. It’s also a very cute city: the emergency man runs even faster than in Taiwan, some trains have a quiet car, a “do not trespass” sign has a cute enter (入) man, and Oracle is 甲骨文, literally oracle bone script. We had some great food, met great friends, and I’ll be sure to go back again—now much more of a possibility as I’ll most likely be back in June for the Association for Language Awareness conference.

Here we are in Hong Kong, on part one of K80 and mitcho’s haphazard trip to China. Let our mistakes give you wisdom.

We were coming in from Taiwan a.k.a. the Republic of China. If you’re a Republic of China national¹ you can get a visiting permit from Taiwan. But if you’re a foreigner in Taiwan, you have to stop in some other country to apply for a Chinese visa. (China can’t have an embassy in Taiwan, because Taiwan is part of China! Duh.) Thus, we’re spending this weekend in Hong Kong.

Lesson 1: If applying in Hong Kong, give yourself a good weekday or two

Here’s the deal. You can apply for a Chinese visa at China’s Foreign Ministry in the Hong Kong SAR. They’re open Monday through Friday and, for express service, you need to get the visa to them before noon (1:30 at some travel agencies) and pick it up in the evening—you can’t pick them up, either, on the weekend. You may have heard that you can get a Chinese visa even on the weekend: this is only if you have a longer layover in the Hong Kong airport, and you can get the visa in transit—you can’t get the visa on the weekend just by going to the airport.

As our flight to China is scheduled for this coming Sunday, that means we need the visa today. In our case, as our flight came in around 11 this morning, this meant an adrenaline rushing couple hours to apply for the visa before a travel agent’s 1:30 deadline. When we finally applied for our visas, though, we encountered another surprise.

Lesson 2: China just raised visa fees for US citizens. Because they love us.

Normally a single-entry visa to China costs HK$150 for most countries, plus whatever expediting charges. Fine. But going to China just got more expensive. As of January 20th, 2008, the base fee for US citizens went up to HK$1020. Not for everyone—just for US citizens. Because they love us.

Now you know.

I just got back from the Fulbright Taiwan Midyear Conference, this year in Hualien with a day trip to the nearby Taroko National Park. Here’s one for the travelogue. I had a great, stimulating trip with lots of talk of linguistics (mostly about Classical Chinese), religion, economics, and politics—some of my favorite subjects. This being a Dr. Wu gig, there was also of course ample food, and Taroko was absolutely stunning.

Day 1: Trains, buses, and talk

I met up with everyone in the morning at the Hualien train station. Living in Nanao, I actually live really close to Hualien (about 40-50m) so I just elected to take a local train and meet the crew there. We then drove around to a couple interesting coastal points. (The one taking pictures below is Dale… I’m sure his blog will soon have photos more beautiful than mine.)

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Kuviasungnerk/Kangeiko just put Bailey on the front page of chicagotribune.com! ^^ You kind of have to see a different page to know who it is, though.¹ Heh.

I recently got Daring Fireball‘ed too,² so that almost makes us a celebrity couple.

I personally like the caption right above. That’s the same story, right?

Happy New Years to all!

I greeted the new year in Yilan with some friends from Fo Guang. We cooked some Thai food and raw food and ate at one of our teachers’ apartments. We had a great time.

I hope your New Years was just as great!

Christmas in Yilan just keeps on trucking. Two days ago I wrote about my Christmas lessons and the special event at Penglai. But Christmas didn’t end on Christmas… I’ve continued to take part in festivity after festivity.

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