Caught Up

Whew, I am finally caught up in writing about my major explorations. One thing I have not written about is my trip to Yangming Mountain. I am waiting until I go back there on the ninth, when I hopefully will be able to get better pictures. When I went on the Feb. 2 it was foggy and dark.

Now for some thoughts about Taiwan in general:
I really like it here, the people are friendly and helpful. The many times that I have been lost, I have always found a friendly person who speaks English and can help me. I can't say enough good things about Tatung, the university has been very nice to the me and the other exchange students and goes to great lengths to make sure we are having an enjoyable time. They have helped us get everything we need, cell phone, bank account, immigration card, etc. and have brought us places and treated us to dinner.

The thing that I do not like is the weather and the pollution. This time of year is terrible weather in Taiwan. It is grey and rainy all the time. It never seems to be more than a light rain, but it could rain any time (so I carry an umbrella). Also not nice is the pollution. The air isn't as clean here as it is in cities in the US, and you see plenty of people wearing dust masks to filter some of it.

February 4: Electronics Market

Today I went to the Guanghua Market. It is THE place to buy cellphones, DVDs, computer hardware, or any kind of gadget under the sun. There had to be a hundred small shops all selling electronics. The prices were at least the same as buying online and often better. The prices vary between shops, so if you take the time to look around; you can find sweet deals. It looked like the Taiwanese brands or knock-off brands had very good prices. I saw a shop selling the Asus Eee Pc 4Gb model for the price of the 2Gb model on NewEgg. :)

There were lots of DVD stores as well. Everything was above the board and legitimate, so you don't have the cheap prices of pirated movies. If I was into Japanese or Chinese movies, though, I bet that I could find even rare DVDs.

If you are a system builder, this is an awesome place to go. The shops have listings hanging from the ceiling with the individual components that they have in stock. So if you want a specific CPU, hard drive, motherboard, etc. you can wander through the crowds comparing prices and then buy the cheapest. I am tempted to build a new computer while I am in Taiwan.

February 1: Din Tai Fung Restaurant

Today I had lunch with some faculty from the Computer and Electrical Engineering departments. We went to the Din Tai Fung restaurant, which is very famous for its dumplings. And the dumplings were very good; I think now that I have had these ones, other dumplings won't taste the same. The restaurant specializes in Xiao Long Bao which are steamed dumplings that have meat and broth inside. To eat them you put them on a spoon and then poke a hole with chopsticks so that the hot broth drains into the spoon. Then you eat the dumpling and drink the buttery broth. Deliciouso!

When I was finishing up my lunch my hosts asked if I wanted any Niu Rou Mian since this restaurant apparently makes some of the best beef noodle soup in Taipei. Of course I had to try it. The only problem was, instead of a bowl of soup as a side, I was given a huge bowl of the stuff! I was able to eat it all, but just barely. And if you are wondering, the restaurant deserves its reputation.

January 30: Yilan

Today we took a trip to Yilan with many students from the computer engineering department at Tatung. Yilan (or Ilan) is costal city about an hour to the southeast of Taipei. At one point in time the trip to Yilan took over two hours either by a long detour or along treacherous mountain roads, but now the freeway tunnels under the mountain. I counted 36 emergency exits that were approximately 300 meters apart to find a total length to the tunnel of 12000 meters long! You can see why this tunnel cut the travel time from Taipei to Yilan by more than an hour.


Yilan is a smaller city and I saw a lot of rice fields on the outskirts and even going into the city. The fields were the flooded paddy fields type of wet rice production. In the city we went to some presentations that the University of Yilan was giving. The presentations were about 3D imaging and pretty interesting. Although I could only look at the pictures, because the presentations were in Chinese. After that we had a very nice meal with 10 dishes to choose from. I tried everything and had some very good cod.


Now for the best part of the trip, visiting the National Center for Traditional Arts. The center is a nice little tourist village that was built to show and preserve aboriginal art. There is lots of things to see and, of course, buy. We could see people making bamboo furniture, pottery, and glassware. I saw an exhibit about weaving that had lots of very cool pieces. After a couple of hours at the folk art village, we went home.

January 29: Grocery Market

Today as part of our Chinese class we went to Dihua Market to see all of the special New Years foods that they offer. Most of the year Dihua sells groceries and herbs, but before New Years many extra shops spring up to sell all kinds of candies and sweets. And the best part is that they all offer free samples! The shopkeepers practically push sweets at you, leaving you no choice but to try. It was definitely a good place to visit.

January 26: Yingge Ceramics Market

Today we took a trip to Yingge, a town near Taipei that makes and sells lots of pottery. Yingge also claims to have been the first town with a road in all of Taiwan. They have created a thriving tourist spot around that road, and many visitors come to Yingge to buy ceramics and painted china. The craftmanship of all the pottery looked very good, so I decided to find a teapot to buy. Many shops sold tea pots and cups at prices that can only be said to be high. I may not know quality, but I was certain that the pots were overpriced. So for the next two hours I went into any shop that I could find looking for a deal on a teapot. And I finally found the perfect one!

January 25: National Palace Museum

Today the four of us went (twice actually) to the National Palace Museum in the north of Taipei. In the morning we toured the main museum as part of our Chinese class. The main museum has a huge collection of pieces that were taken from the Imperial Palace when the Nationalists retreated from the mainland. The collection is so large, especially for calligraphy and water color, that it cannot be all shown at once, and so is rotated often. The bronze pieces were most interesting to me. They were all old--from Before Christ times--and many of them were records of old kingdoms and warlords. At that time the most durable way of recording important events was etched in bronze, so all kinds of big pots and water vessels were covered in ancient Chinese writings. Very cool. Also interesting was the jade pieces. Most of them were actually from the reign of one Chinese emperor who was very interested in Arabian jade. Apparently, some of the pieces were actually Chinese jade that had been made to look like the Arabian jade by ancient merchants so that they wouldn't have to make the long and dangerous trip to the middle east. Even at that time counterfeit goods were a problem! At this time, the Arabs had better techniques, and their jade plates and bowls were worked very fine and thin so as to be translucent. Another neat thing at the museum were the curio boxes. These boxes contained very miniaturized and detailed reproductions of an emperor's treasures. They were playthings for young emperors and so had secret locks and compartments.

After the museum we took a quick look around a nearby garden. The garden, whose name most closely translates to Garden of Benevolence was once the personal garden of Chiang Kai-shek and is very peaceful. Large interconnecting ponds were filled with some of the largest goldfish that I have ever seen. Instead of writing about it, I think I will just post pictures.




After lunch, we met up with some Taiwanese students and went back to the museum. This time we saw a special exhibit on Baroque paintings. The paintings were from the Hapsburg rulers in Austria and were pretty good. I am not cultured enough to know a whole lot about them and only the titles were in English so I don't have a whole lot to report. The subjects were mainly Greek myths, portraits, or religious. Still, very good to look at.

Sorry no new posts

Haven't posted for a while, but I should remedy that soon. What you can do now, however, is see the new pictures that I posted on flickr. The link is on the right hand side.

January 19

Today I took the MRT to Danshui with Larry, Terry and Peter, and we met Larry's girlfriend Eva there. It was a gorgeous day to go anywhere; the sun was shining and there was a nice ocean breeze. Danshui is a little ocean town that gets a lot of visitors to its carnival-like docks. You can buy Squid-on-a-Stick or aged eggs or any kind of sweets. There were a lot of couples walking around, I guess it is a popular destination to bring your sweatheart.

We took a pleasant boatride to Fisherman's Wharf, passing a couple boats on the way that had weddings onboard. It couldn't have been a nicer day for an outdoor wedding. There was a concert at the wharf so there was some nice music. Further down the wharf was a fish market that sold all kinds of seafood. I bought some spicy dried shrimp as a snack food. Yum! Around this time the sun started to set, so we stopped to take pictures and watch.

At this time some more tired folks went home while I met up with the ISU computer engineering students, Ben and Michael. We (Ben actually) decided to go to the Huaxi night market and eat some snake. Huaxi is famous for its shops speciallizing in drinks containing snake venom, blood, or bile and liquor. The drinks are supposed to promote health, and people pay a lot for them. I had some snake meat soup, and it wasn't too bad. There was a lot of bones in the snake meat, so it took a while to eat, but else was good.

January 18

Today I went exploring with Ben, Michael, and Peter -- the other ISU students on exchange here. We went to Da'an, the older town center, where there are a lot of monuments and government buildings. It was pretty cloudy and grey and not very good for pictures. First we visited the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial, recently renamed to the National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall. To get to the hall, you first walk up 89 steps, one step for each year of his life, and enter through massive copper doors. A bronze statue Chang Kai-shek, perhaps 30 feet high, sits in the hall and looks over the central square. I am not sure, but I think he looks toward the mainland, the land that he was unable to return to. The current government is not very favorable toward Chang Kai-shek, and currently there is a "Wind of Freedom" exhibit in the hall. To draw attention to the abuses of the Strongman's regime, the exhibit had pictures of prodemocracy marches and a memorial to the 2-28 Massacre. I don't know much of the history, but Taiwan seems divided on how to view their former leader.

It was dark when we left the memorial, so we decided to walk up to one of the main shopping districts. We wandered around past shops selling silks and clothing and all kinds of things. Not much memoriable happened, except that I tried Bubble Tea for the first time. If you are ever in Taiwan, you should try Bubble Tea. The tea is good made up of black tea, milk, and honey, but the bubbles are the best part. The bubbles are black tapioca balls and you suck them up with the tea through wide straws. Delicious!

Photo's

I signed up for a flickr acount, so now you can see and comment on photos from my travels. I only have a few up, but hopefully there will be many more to come.

Check it out:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/eeintaipei/

Wan Lin Restaurant

Today we went to Wan Lin, a very nice restaurant that is famous for its lŭ ròu fàn, or rice with pork spiced with soy. The restaurant was very nice, with a traditional Chinese design and lots of wood panels like those used in windows before glass. Around the entrance to the restaurant was many signs put there in preparation for the lunar new year. We ordered the dishes that we wanted (I had an octopus dish and a green bean and beef dish) with the lu rou fan. Everything was delicious, especially the sauce served with the octopus. It was similar in taste to shrimp cocktail sauce, but much more flavorful and slightly spicy. The spiced pork and rice was very good, the restaurant deserves its reputation. I wish you could have eaten some of the dishes; you will just have to look at this picture I took.




Starting from the left, sort of: shrimp and asparagus, tofu, cod, egg and tomatoes, fried chicken, octopus, beef and green beans, a cabage dish, baked fish, and some duplicate dishes.

January 17

Had more Chinese class today, the teacher taught us some basic phrases and words. She tried to teach us some of the actual characters as well, but I must confess that I am much more interested in learning to speak Chinese. Written Chinese has no relation with the spoken language anyway. After a couple hours of class, we went outside and walked around the city for an hour. For the first time since I arrived the weather was clear, so I took a few scattered pictures. We came back to campus and met Professor Shu-Chuan Huang, who is my advisor here. She took us to lunch, which I have written about separately.

After lunch Professor Shu (there is already a Prof. Huang, so I guess students call her by her first name) showed me around the EE building and set me up with a computer account on campus. I wandered around a little bit and then went to the lab space where my roommate and other EE grad students have their own desks. People were still finishing up final papers and projects so I couldn't be too distracting, but I did grab a photo. Nothing else much happened today and I was able to write and post these first journal entries.

January 16

Today I had my first lesson in Chinese. During the winter break, all of the ISU students are taking 3 hours of Chinese (and sometimes 6 hours) every day. We were taught the Chinese National Phonetic Alphabet or "bopomofo." Actually being able to pronounce many of the sounds used is coming only slowly. Maybe by the time I leave Taiwan I will be able to order a meal.

Today I was more adventurous and tried some different foods during a quick lunch in the school cafeteria. The cafeteria is buffet style and only costs me about $1.60 for a good meal, although with nothing to drink. The Taiwanese tend to use very watery soups as their drink. For lunch I tried a little bit of everything, including some kind of seaweed and octopus. The seaweed had a flavor that I did not like, while the octopus was surprisingly good (albiet rubbery) once you get past the tentacle look.

For dinner I went out with Paul and some friends and had "hot pot." Hot pot is basically a pot of boiling water that you chuck a bunch of different foods into. The pot contained lots of cabbage and rice noodles as well as other things that I wasn't sure of. The unfamiliar foods were thin stalked mushrooms with small caps, skin of tofu, and pig's blood cake. My Taiwanese friends made me try some of the pig's blood cake first thing. It wasn't too bad, but wasn't great. Everything else in the hot pot was very good, although I couldn't finish. This huge supper cost only about $3, food is very inexpensive here!

On the way home I stopped at a shop to buy sandals, handsoap, and some other random items. Some of the things were more money than I expected (the soap, paper) but not too bad. Without Wal-Mart I guess shops can charge more.

January 15

Today the other three ISU students and I went to apply for our ARC immigration card in the center of Taipei. Helping us was Jennifer, a Malaysian student who has been studying at Tatung for several years. She is fluent in Malay, Mandarin Chinese, and English and was very helpful. Unfortunately, after we had waited in line to get our papers looked over, we found out that because we were missing the principal's official stamp on the admission letter, we could not get our ARCs. Our trip was for naught. After this we had lunch at a shop specializing in the south-east Asian type of curry. We went back to the school and took care of some miscellaneous business.

Around this time I got very tired, jetlag was starting up. I couldn't go to bed yet though! Peter Scott (the other EE) and I had dinner with some of the electrical engineering professors and our advisor. We ate at Shin Yeh, a restaurant famous for traditional Taiwanese food and seemingly popular with Japanese businessman. The professors ordered many delicious dishes and I sampled them all. The professors were kind to not order anything too exotic, but I was able to try cuttlefish. At this dinner I learned some of the final points of formal dining. It is proper here to hold the bowl of rice in your left hand and using chopsticks in your right hand to take food from your plate to the bowl and then from your bowl to your mouth. Also if you need to use a toothpick, you must shield your mouth with one hand while you pick your teeth with the other. By the time dinner was over, I was so tired but I forced myself to stay up until 10 so that I would be getting used to the time.

January 14

Ni Hao (Hello), I am finally in Taiwan, although my sleep has not caught up with me yet. I left Minneapolis at 9am on Sunday and flew into Taipei at 9pm on Monday, a 22 hour flight once you subtract the 14 hours that Taiwan is ahead. Even without the hour long layovers in Detroit and Osaka Japan I spent a lot of time in the air. From Detroit to Japan was in a great circle, so we were actually over the arctic for a while. I could see miles and miles of ice and snow and huge cracks and crevasses. Upon arrival in Taipei, I was met by Paul, my roommate, and Chau-Yun Hsu, the EE department chair. They were both very friendly, and I had an enjoyable car ride to the dormatory where I will be staying.

The dormatory is one of a pair of eight or so story buildings that house all the students at Tatung, even the graduates. The room is nice and spacious, with its own bathroom. It is about the same as a dorm room in the states, with two exceptions. The hot water is only on between 9 and 12pm, making it necessary for me change my habits. Also the mattresses are very thin and hard, so it is not much different than sleeping on the ground, which I like. Paul was very helpful getting me settled in, especially helpful getting my computer able to connect to the internet. Since I was hungry, Paul, some friends of his, and I went to a small restaurant. We had goose, which they prepared by chopping sections of meat off the bird bones and all and lightly cooking. Along with the goose was large bowls of noodles and vegetables. After eating, we hurried home because if we are not within the building by 11:30, the doors lock. We returned with 3 minutes to spare. Then I went to bed.