Best Curry Udon ever (Yilan)

I’ve been craving some good udon noodles, called 烏龍麵 (wūlóngmiàn) in Taiwan which originally confused me as those are the characters for Oolong tea.¹ I haven’t found great soup udon in Yilan but I did find some fabulous fried curry udon.

The (unfortunate) best way to describe this shop is “half-a-block from the entrance of the night market, across the street from the condom store.” For the past month or two, since I found this store, this has been my dinner every Tuesday before Chinese class. Here are some pictures from when Aaron and I went.

The curry udon is 55 dollars. The other two flavors were unfortunately not as good. I haven’t tried anything else at that store, but I really don’t know why I would. The store also has Coke, Sprite, and Apple Sidra in glass bottles which taste great.

Real Ramen (Luodong)

I asked a few locals where I could get “real ramen”: not that instant schtuff but the fresh firm yellow noodles in a variety of soups with different toppings.² The place that was recommended to me is just down the street from the Luodong night market, past the post office and toward (but before) Zhengzheng elementary school.

They had all the classic soups, like pork broth, soy, and miso, and they all came with wonderful fixin’s. Highly recommended.

The Diner (Taipei)

The Diner, Taipei

The Diner is a classic American diner in Taipei near Da-an Park.³ Other places may advertise “American breakfast” but this is the real deal. It took us a disgustingly long amount of time to find it but it was worth the wait and, with the proper directions or address, I know you, gentle reader, will find it with ease.

The Diner has a great atmosphere. While there isn’t much of a counter, there were soft bench seats and a real diner feel. It even had a print of Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks on the back wall. Nice touch, though it makes me miss the Institute.

Michelle and I split a mushroom and swiss and a California burger. A&W Root Beer was available, so we bit.

We also saw the most disgustingly large burger this side of the Pacific two tables down that just had to be documented. I finished the meal off with their pecan pie, served warm and soft with some vanilla ice cream. Amazing.

“Steak” and bread-covered soup (Yilan)

Aaron and I went out to get some Taiwanese 牛排 (nǐupǎi, ‘steak’) after our last Classical Chinese class. The particular place we went was inside the Yilan night market. We ordered the meal, meaning we got some soup and some salad. This soup had a thin pastry-esque top to it. In classic Taiwanese style, however, the bread was slightly sweet, making it interesting—not bad—in the savory soup.

The Taiwanese interpretation of “steak” is a bizarre concoction. It’s steak on a skillet alright, but with some extras. The steak is laid upon a bed of “spaghetti” (close, but not quite) with some mixed vegetables and a fried egg on top. You have your choice of black pepper and some other sauce although our waitress recommended the half and half.

Once you get over the fact that you don’t live in America, it’s really quite delicious.

Tavoli pizza (Yilan)

Aaron called this “the best pizza in Asia” (possibly only matched by The Tree in Beijing which I went to back in January). The owner went to Cornell and speaks English fluently. She returned to Yilan and opened this restaurant, bringing much needed amazing boutique pizza to Yilan.

I’ve had the white chicken pizza and BBQ beef pizza which were both fabulous, and nibbled at others’ Formaggio (lots of cheese) and Margherita. They also have a great caprese salad with fresh mozzarella (!). I was about to die when I tasted balsamic vinegar.

Tavoli also serves good fresh American-style lemonade, A&W Root Beer (cans), and an Italian import beer. It’s not cheap by Taiwan standards, with a meal registering 200-300 dollars (still cheap by American standards), but definitely worth every penny.

All that being said, the photos above aren’t all about the pizza, but that’s just because good company is the ultimate ingredient in a meal.⁴

Related posts:

1. Ichifuku ramen—一福ラーメン
2. Lantern Festival
3. A Saturday in 台北

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Part of the series: Exploring Nanao

1. Exploring Nanao, part 1
2. Exploring Nanao, part 2: hot springs, waterfall, and beach
3. Exploring Nanao, part 3: sports day, hot springs, Sayun’s bell, and 高峰

Sports day

Three Mondays ago, Nanao had their annual sports day.¹ The sports day reminded me of the years of Japanese school sports days I used to go to, complete with the representative student’s pledge of sportsmanship, a three legged race, and concluding relay, though it was only half a day.² It also was billed as the Nan’ao town and school joint sports day (村校聯合運動大會) and indeed many parents, families, and other miscellaneous townspeople were there to join in the festivities.

The day started with a performance by our school’s very own orchestra (well, after the national anthem, of course). This was followed by a communal running-around-the-track, Atayal dance performance by community members (mostly middle-aged), and the kids dancing to Buklavu.

This was followed by a judo performance. The judo offering is one of the four “special characteristics” (特色) of the school; the other three are the orchestra, aboriginal dance, and reading.

A special event offered particularly for the parents and other community members was the log sawing competition. It took the form of a relay, with teams organized based on the “neighborhood” (鄰), of which there are six in Nan’ao village.

The festivities concluded with the aforementioned relay.

The kids had a lot of fun throughout the day, probably particularly enjoying the fact that school was then dismissed at noon. Kids bought food at the night-market-like stands right outside the school.

Hot spring

We teachers were then invited to a banquet at the head of the PTA’s house. Having the rest of the afternoon off, a few of us teachers decided to go to the Nanao hot springs. There were some major renovations there since I last went and took a bath… there’s even a roof now! The water was, unfortunately, pretty lukewarm, though.

Sayun’s bell (莎韻之鐘)

Special ed. teacher Mr. Cai was kind enough to take us around in his car, so we next stopped by Sayun’s bell (Chinese: 莎勇之鐘, Japanese: サヨンの鐘). The Sayun bell is a memorial to an actual Atayal girl named sayun hayung who died in 1938, located right near a truck stop/gift shop/coffee shop off of the 蘇花公路 (sūhūagōnglù, Suao-Hualien highway).³

The story goes, sayun greatly respected her Japanese teacher and was saddened to learn that he would leave and go back to Japan. She was carrying his luggage for him and was going to send him off when a big storm knocked her off a bridge and into the river, drowning her. The story was picked up by Japanese mainland news (read “propaganda”) as a hear-wrenching story of the Taiwanese indigenous people respecting and loving their Japanese teachers and, by extension, Japanese rule. There was two Japanese songs written about this incident (1941, see lyrics below, courtesy of Chienese wiki) and a Japanese movie (1943) was made as well.

The story was also recently referred to in the popular (in Taiwan) 2007 film Island Etude (練習曲 liànxíqǔ), which has a little five minute segment retelling the story at the bell (complete with historical rendition featuring a guy I know who lives in Nanao!).

The original memorial bell is apparently owned by the family (or was thrown away, according to the Japanese wikipedia article) but this newer bell and memorial was built in 1998. It’s an interesting relic of the Japanese era right in my backyard.

Gaofeng (高峰)

高峰 (gāofēng) in Chinese simply means “peak,” and that’s the only name I know for our next destination. We drove up a steep one-way path up a mountain (an unmarked road off the highway between 武塔 (wǔtǎ) and 漢本 (hànběn) stations) and went up to the top. Along the way we could see some beautiful scenery over the ocean, though it was a cloudy day so we couldn’t see too far.

Up on the peak we first walked around a traditional Chinese-style single-clan courtyard with a few houses around it. There didn’t seem to be anyone home. They seemed to have some fascination with game pieces… there were some dominos scattered in one part of their lot, 象棋 (xiàngqí, Chinese chess) pieces elsewhere, and some 麻將 (májiàng) tiles actually stuck in the concrete in another place. I felt like it would make for a good setting for a mystery novel.

All around us were some beautiful 日日春 (rìrìchūn, Catharanthus roseus (Madagascar Periwinkle)) and not-so-wonderful 檳榔 (bīnláng, betel nut, a kind of palm) trees.

There was a beautiful stream nearby as well as a hose with water from a small man-made reservoir, which Mr. Cai used to clean the car.

Going further into the mountain, we saw even more houses and some beautiful farms, mostly with cabbage. Mr. Cai explained that many of these farmers were actually relatively well off people (and retirees) from Luodong or Yilan who bought this land and come to farm there as a hobby or in retirement. We found a small Daoist shrine as well, as a testament to his statement that these farmers were not aboriginal but of Han Chinese descent.⁴ At this point, though, it started raining more heavily, and we decided to call it a day and head back home. All of us had a wonderful and relaxing day exploring Nanao!

Related posts:

1. Exploring Nanao, part 2: hot springs, waterfall, and beach
2. Exploring Nanao, part 1
3. Atayal cultural festival

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Related posts:

1. The Food I Ate
2. Taipei find: a dictionary of Chinese-Japanese false cognates
3. Hong Kong

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

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!

Related posts:

1. The Food I Ate
2. Lantern Festival

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Day 1: Shilin night market

I met my mother, father, and sister at the Cosmos Hotel where we were staying Friday night. I took them out to the Shilin night market, a Taiwanese tradition. We bought t-shirts, ate lots of things on sticks, saw a man pushing a cart full of guava, and people picking up their stands and running from the cops (technically, the “I’m going to set up a table on the street and sell stuff” part of the night markets are illegal).

Day 2: Exploring Taipei

We went on a Japanese bus tour of Taipei, led by this older Taiwanese guy with great Japanese, though sometimes just a bit off (Bailey would have called him “precious”). We visited:

Longshan Temple (龍山寺);

Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall National Taiwan Democracy Hall;

a market with various traditional foods;

a Taiwanese tea demo and explanation, which was really interesting;

the changing of the guard at the National Martyr’s Shrine (kind of like Yasukuni Shrine), where the guards aren’t allowed to move or blink (I think) for about 40 minutes at a time, and then a guy comes up and covers their face and says some spell so they can move;

and of course the National Palace Museum, where we weren’t allowed to photograph anything. After the tour we went to the top of Taipei 101 and got to enjoy a great night view of the city.

Taipei 101 features an open view of its tuned mass damper, which they’ve named “Damper Baby.” It’s neat, actually, how they took something that is normally only interesting to engineers and tried to make it cute and sexy. It even has a bio, complete with blood type (O, in case you were wondering).

Day 3: Rainy day in Yilan

On Sunday we went to National Center for Traditional Arts (國立傳統藝術中心) near Luodong. We saw some crazy show with all different sorts of animals which I’m sure made more sense if you understood what they were saying and an exhibit on paper craft of all different sorts, including origami. The main attraction there is the traditional arts street, a red brick street with all sorts of stores selling traditional food and crafts. The leather shop had a pig mask.

We then had dinner in central Luodong: some delicious hot pot while sitting on a glass floor above koi fish.

We got some deserts and took them back to the hotel they were staying at. Naomi was excited by the 苺大福 (traditionally, mochi with strawberry and red bean paste inside) from 85°C.

Day 4: Nanao and Jiufen

On Monday I took the morning off from school and showed them around Nanao a little bit. The weather kept getting worse as typhoon Mitag came rolling through. My family still got to see where I live, one of the schools I work at, and have a nice lunch before heading out.

On the way back out to Taipei, my family (without me) stopped in Jiufen (九份), a touristy town atop a mountain on the northeast coast of the island. The town, originally populated due to a gold rush, has some beautiful mountain alleys and tea houses. The city is now popular with Japanese tourists, as some parts of the city were used as models in Spirited Away. My family went to one tea house and enjoyed the tea and atmosphere.

My family went back to Japan Tuesday (Day 5), with my parents leaving later back to the US. It was really nice to be with all of them, even for such a short time.

Related posts:

1. 新年快樂! Chinese New Year with Andy
2. ETA-ROC and Another Weekend in Taipei
3. Exploring Nanao, part 3: sports day, hot springs, Sayun’s bell, and 高峰

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Part of the series: Exploring Nanao

1. Exploring Nanao, part 1
2. Exploring Nanao, part 2: hot springs, waterfall, and beach
3. Exploring Nanao, part 3: sports day, hot springs, Sayun’s bell, and 高峰

Yesterday (Saturday), Katie came over to Nanao and we explored more on my scooter. We first went to the Nan-ao hot spring (南澳溫泉). Wang laoshi took me a while back, telling me you can’t really find it with a map—you just have to go. It really is a hole in the wall—er, ground. There are three “tubs” of concrete and rock built into the ground by this local retired guy in his spare time (whom I only know to refer as “Joe”). While we were there for maybe an hour and a half, three or four groups of people came through to dip their feet in: some college kids from Yilan, some women in their thirties from Taipei, a guy from Taipei who apparently comes often to walk up rivers (?), and finally a group of 15 or so tourists from someplace. And of course a couple locals (you can tell because they come wearing slippers, a swimsuit, and a jacket). Quite the social scene!

We also drove around and found the Jin-yue waterfall (金岳瀑布). There isn’t much of a big drop or anything, but there were some neat rapids and the water was so blue! There was also some construction around, apparently some agricultural engineering.

Finally we stopped to check out the beach. Unfortunately the tide was rolling in and I had a run-in with the waves.

Related posts:

1. Exploring Nanao, part 3: sports day, hot springs, Sayun’s bell, and 高峰
2. Exploring Nanao, part 1

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.