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.