Thursday, April 5, 2012

Preview: Baosheng Dadi's Birthday Celebration 2012

I'm all about the temple festivals (as you know if you read this blog with any regularity). Baosheng Dadi's birthday festival is going on, well, right now: yesterday was the parade, which I attended, and today is firewalking. This weekend there are Taiwanese opera performances at the temple both evenings - line up at around 4pm to get a good seat. 

I'm really excited about the photos I took yesterday, but haven't had time to sift through all 550 of them. Here's a sneak preview, with more to come tonight or tomorrow. With a pro camera that can do rapid fire shooting, I've got entire arcs of motion in some groups of photos that are just amazing, and I did a much better job of capturing motion this year than previous years.

Enjoy - with many more to come!





Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Some photos from Lion's Head Mountain




A few weeks ago we did the fairly quick and easy hike up Lion's head Mountain, which straddles Hsinchu and Miaoli counties.  

We got there by HSR, taking the bus (1 hour) from the HSR station that leaves, if not frequently, at least not that rarely - about twice an hour on weekends. Why HSR? Because we're lazy and didn't want to get up early, and I'm used to doing it for work. I sort of forget that when I'm traveling for fun that I won't get reimbursed the NT580 that the trip costs.


I wouldn't call it the best hike I've done in Taiwan, but it was certainly good, and certainly had a great temple at the end (some photos above).  You can start out from either side: Hsinchu or Miaoli. On the Hsinchu side the hike up is longer but is all road, few if any stairs. The Miaoli side hike is steeper, shorter, and all stairs. I prefer road to stairs and don't mind a longer hike if it means avoiding stairs, so I'm happy we went up from Hsinchu (a bus runs between the two).

On the either end you can pick up snacks, eat something and buy bottled drinks - on the Hsinchu side I recommend the street stall with the turnip cake (蘿蔔糕), the best I've had in Taiwan, very fresh. Locals kept coming by to buy huge chunks of it.



The trail is dotted with temples - none are spectacular in their own right except the last one as you descend, but all make nice rest stops and taken together they're lovely dots to connect on a not-too-difficult hiking day trip. Having been extremely busy lately, and generally in a bad mood (punctuated by good moods: it's not all gloom and doom), the adjective "easy" was important to me when choosing a hike that would get me out of Taipei.


Unfortunately, we left sunny Taipei thinking Hsinchu would be equally nice - it wasn't. Pure fog. No view whatsoever until we hit Miaoli.


Many of the temples along the way were actually monasteries - we encountered one full of monks and another full of nuns. At both, we were given tea and snacks and we sat down to chat with the monks, nuns and other visitors. I would call it the highlight of the trip.

At the first we got Pu'erh tea, and the second featured osmanthus tea.  The scent of osmanthus (a delicious flower, not the one below) wafts across Lion's Head Mountain at this time of year: the area is a major producer of the flower which is used in sauces, teas and desserts.  The shops aimed at sightseers all sell Oriental Beauty (東方美人) but if you really want something from this area, try and track down something made with osmanthus (good luck with that, though - what we encountered was fresh and served to us, not preserved and sold).

not osmanthus, just a nice photo

Recent rains, however, left the landscape lush, and turned spiderwebs into crystalline sculptures.



This cave temple in Japanese colonial baroque style was my favorite facade (I just love the style - the turn of the century through the 30s and 40s was a fine time for architecture in Taiwan), although inside wasn't that spectacular. 


Most of the painted murals on the inside did not photograph well in low light.


Brendan and Joseph on the Miaoli/Hsinchu county border.


Later on the view improved only slightly, but the temple at the end makes the whole hike worth it (as mentioned above, you can start from here, but I was happier to start from the other side and end up here). Watch out - the stone steps beyond this temple get mighty slippery.




Besides the extremely ornate multiple roofs, I liked that the roof decorations - the usual dragons, phoenixes, people, pagodas, tigers etc. - were of varying ages. Some were new, some were clearly very old. The temple seems to be undergoing piecemeal long-term renovation and upkeep, but still retains its older unique character.





This is one of the older parts, which I happen to like quite a bit.

If you leave early enough, which we did not, you can  even have lunch or dinner and take a walk around Beipu: the bus passes through in both directions whether you're going to Hsinchu or back to Zhubei, as we were.

Great hike if you want out of Taipei but don't want to go full-on up a mountain!

Monday, April 2, 2012

Taipei Building

         

After finding that my class at noon is postponed, I read a bit of the Washington Post and came across this article:

Tel Aviv's Abundance of Bauhaus Architecture

Bauhaus is not my favorite style - I'm a fan of Art Nouveau and that Japanese brick-and-cement colonial "baroque" style, especially when it's combined with Chinese and Japanese elements in its doorways, windows and flourishes - but  even I've noticed a few Bauhaus-inspired buildings dotting Taipei's landscape. That got me thinking.

Just as Tel Aviv should be renovating and rehabilitating its architectural motherlode, so should Taipei. This isn't the first time I've had this thought, or probably even the first time I've blogged about it, but I believe it sincerely. We shouldn't be tearing down everything in sight - the KMT idiots did that from the '50s onward,  destroying forever some of Taipei's greatest architecture, which could have been a major tourism draw now had it been allowed to stand (and the city expanded in different ways). Sure, in that time some other interesting stuff went up, but most of it was hideous. Instead, a government program to help property owners renovate buildings of architectural significance would be, if not a replacement for urban renewal projects, at least a complement to it, a program to run alongside it.

With the Shilin Wang family case still somewhat in the news (it's still going strong among my Taiwanese Facebook friends but seems to be dying down in the English media), urban renewal has been on everyone's mind. While I generally tend to side with people like the Wangs, some part of me does feel that if your building is not historically or architecturally significant, and a project is going through to improve a community, it might well be in that community's best interests to just make it happen - as long as compensation is fair and inconvenience and upheaval are kept to a minimum. Generally, I don't have a clear opinion on the topic, and I've heard differing reports on the age of the buildings razed (the newspapers are now saying decades-old. I heard one almost certainly false report that they were 134 years old).

I mean, there's a lot of ugliness in Taipei that could be improved. I'm mostly in favor of preserving vintage architecture, but I'm not against attractive modern buildings going up, and definitely not against some of the monstrosities of Taipei being torn down. Prague has done a remarkable job of melding modern with historically significant, as has New York.

Honestly, most of this can just be torn down for all I care. Build something nicer.
It's tough, though, to make a judgment call on what's worth saving. For example, I find old two-colored tile facades to be quirky and interesting, and worth preserving despite their often dingy appearance:

Keep it.
 But anything that's a bare expanse of cement, or has a tin roof, can go:

Raze it! I like the eye graffiti though.
All in all, I think two things:

1.) The Taipei City government has done a middling-to-bad job of architectural preservation (although they're improving - I have seen a visible rise in the number of interesting buildings being renovated and fewer are being torn down) and a terrible job of urban renewal: just ask the Wangs. What goes up in these projects is not likely to be much better than what's being torn down. There are so many architecturally interesting, but somewhat dilapidated, buildings in Taipei. A lot of people could be housed in those buildings were they to be renovated, which wouldn't solve the problem entirely, but it would make a dent in it.

That said, I disagree with the general derision heaped upon public housing. I live in public housing, and it's fine. Then again it was built for veterans and is not "low income", at least not now. People here range from middle class to quite wealthy, with only a few working class families around. Not that I'm anti-working class: I loved living in working-class Jingmei even though I hated my apartment. I'm just stating a fact. My public housing building boasts good insulation, stays cooler on warm days and warmer on cool days, has had far fewer problems than our apartment in Jingmei did, and services in the area abound - including a very low management fee and an on-call plumber at low rates. The buildings are ugly but not the ugliest in Taipei, and residents have improved them with flowers and window casements. Our walls have a few issues - the brightly colored paint on our walls revealed several building flaws, including sweating pipes and weird seams - and we can hear our upstairs and downstairs neighbors, but generally I'm happy with the place.
and

2.) I hear a lot of bitching from the expat community on how ugly cities in Taiwan are. Yes, most of them are pretty horrible, especially the medium-sized cities in the counties, but I don't get all the whining about how ugly Taipei is. OK, fine, it's not Prague and it's not the best of New York, and it's got some really horrible buildings (from ones made of corrugated metal to hulking concrete monstrosities), but it's got a lot of gems, too, and a lot of quirky style. You just have to look. If anything, Taizhong is a much uglier city, albeit with better weather.

Maybe it's that recently I've been feeling more annoyed than usual at foreigners complaining incessantly about Taiwan: I feel some amount of blowing off steam is fine, even necessary, but when I hear someone just go on and on and freakin' on about what he doesn't like (it's usually a "he", but women certainly can do it too), I have to wonder. If it's so bad, why don't you leave? You don't have to move home. Find another country. If you don't like it so much, why are you still here? And if you have a good reason to be here (study, job opportunities unavailable elsewhere, family), wouldn't you be better off looking for the positives instead of harping on the negatives? There are negatives - even I, ever the Taiwan-loving optimist - know that, but there are some really great things that balance them out or at least make them something you don't need to focus on so much. For every hideous building there's a hidden gem. For every rude person there's a friendly one. For every difficult encounter there's a lovely surprise. And, most of the time, I find the positives outweigh the negatives. I can understand hating China - I spent a year there and left because I wasn't happy and was constantly sick - and to some extent I can see how extreme culture shock could render some to hate Korea, and the insular and overly polite nature of Japanese society could destroy someone's faith in Japan, but I don't see what's so bad about Taiwan that it deserves such kvetching. Even India, which I love, offers a lot of good material for the complainer to latch onto. But Taiwan?

Anyway, back to architecture. If you think Taipei is ugly, fine. I think the weather sucks, so we're even. If you think it's ugly enough that it warrants repeated comments - and not the kind where you laugh it off as I do the weather - why are you still here?

Sure, so many buildings in Taipei are so unrelentingly hideous that they should just be razed:


Seriously, this thing is horrible. You could make a case for painting it with funky murals
but it's probably best to just get rid of it.


Some have been lovingly restored (and others half-heartedly):


They could do better with this one. So much potential.


This set of buildings on Dihua Street is fairly well-known
This is one of my favorite window facade


And some are functional/restored, but seem to be noticed by nobody but me:



For example, this is my dream house (although I'd prefer it not be right on Yanping Road), but it seems to be largely ignored.
This funky old building and ones like it are easy to miss, but lovely when you're  looking for them and worthy of being kept in good condition.

Interestingly tiled buildings with curved or unusual facades abound - also worth saving

This one on Guiyang Street is a little more well-known but is still largely ignored
This one, too, on the north-central end of Yanping
This is on or near Hengyang Road, which has many gems

By 228 Park




Whereas still others have not only been restored but  have become art installations

These are not doing badly



And yet still others are barely hanging on, and in desperate need of renovation:


A few interesting shophouses in the area between Ximen and Longshan Temple

I'd love to see this Guiyang Street building renovated
I realize that I took most of these in the older parts of Taipei - Wanhua, Dadaocheng. They were just the most accessible photos, though. There are all sorts of buildings dotting Taipei that are not in those areas: Chang'an and Zhongshan boasts at least one true gem and a few other interesting tidbits. Heping E. Road just west of Guting has a few. Jingmei has one crumbling facade down by Shi Hsin University that deserves a renovation,  half a three-sided farmhouse attached to a building and a few alleys of old shophouses. There is some really funky, almost Bauhaus stuff you can still see around Raohe Night Market. There's a totally fascinating dark cement Gothic-looking building in the lanes near Jianguo N. Road, just north of Nanjing. I wish National Taiwan University would renovate its old Japanese buildings. In the far west of the city,  in the no-man's land by the river northwest of Ximen and southwest of Dihua Street, even farther west than the old warehouses that are being renovated, are some gems of Japanese wooden houses that deserve renovation, even if newer buildings that can house more people go up around them. Even my neighborhood - central Da'an - has a few two-color tile buildings that look vintage 50s and 60s that would be worth a good scrub and a renovation. Xinyi has a few still standing out behind the cabbage farm near Taipei 101 (is that still there? I haven't been out that way in awhile). Changchun Road has a few interesting buildings worth seeing, Minsheng Community on Sanmin Road has a cool curved brick building,  Qiyan has some interesting old warehouse spaces, Roosevelt has some lanes around Guting - mostly to the north but a few to the south - that have stuff worth looking at. Bade as you head east has some weird, cool stuff going on amidst the ugliness, and old temples and shrines from Taipei's farmland days dot the landscape.

These buildings dot the city, even if they're concentrated in the west.

So...why aren't we saving them? Why are they falling apart? Why are they often uninhabited? If the owners can't afford to fix them up, why is the government pouring money into monstrosities like the Yuanhuan Circle "food court" and not into helping the owners make their properties functional and beautiful again?

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Lvsang (呂桑食堂): Delicious food from Yilan on Yongkang Street

Red Date Pork (紅糟肉) at 呂桑
Lv-Sang ("Mr.") Yi-lan Restaurant
呂桑食堂

# 12-5 Yongkang Street, Taipei
台北市大安區永康街12-5號
(02)2351-3323

(they also have a branch in Zhongshan: Zhongshan N. Road Section 2 Lane 59 #5-1)

What a fantastic restaurant! Along with my quest to find a suitable Japanese restaurant in which to SPEND ALL THE MONEY, I'm also on a mission to find a short list of restaurants to prove anyone who says "Taiwanese food isn't very good/flavorful/delicious/well-seasoned" wrong.

I also have to say that the past few weeks have really reminded me of how well I eat in Taiwan for such little money. People say "it's cheap to eat out" and usually mean the night market or hole-in-the-wall restaurants, but even nicer food is generally cheaper than you'd pay at home, unless you're going out for Indian, German or some other non-Asian "foreign" cuisine (and even then, prices are not bad)...and better. Washington DC was a mecca of good foreign food, but didn't have a lot of good "American" or continental fare - and yet restaurants charged through the nose for what they did have - bilking politicians, networkers, social climbers and foreign dignitaries no doubt. In Taipei I can enjoy quite literally the best the city has to offer and not  end up in the poorhouse. Sure, there are NT$6,000 per person restaurants serving birds' nest soup, but come on, that's not really the best Taipei has to offer.

It's places like this that remind me that, as well as I can cook, I can't really cook. Not like this. I couldn't turn out a perfect red date sliced pork like the delicious dish above. I wouldn't dare put cheese on a baked papaya. I can't create the dishes we enjoyed here.

Recommended by our friend Joseph and well-known in its own right, Lvsang is one of the restaurants that gives Yongkang Street its reputation for good food. Serving Yilan Taiwanese food, including plenty of lesser-seen or less-known dishes, this is also one of those places that kicks to the curb any notion that Taiwanese food lacks flavor or that it's all just the light&sound of soy sauce, chili oil and deep fryers.


Fatty stewed intestine
For our meal, we got the "liver flowers" roll, the fatty stewed intestine (above), the red date pork, the cold chicken, the vegetable salad and a baked papaya, and have agreed to try the liver next time (it's supposed to be great).

Other than the papaya, which was interesting and unexpected but not exactly something I'd try to re-create, everything was amazing. I'm not a fan of intestines or innards normally, but the intestine used to make two of the dishes we tried was soft and tender, not chewy and weirdly-textured. It's really the texture, not the flavor, that bothers me. This stuff was melt-in-your-mouth soft and savory without being too salty, served with slivered ginger to give it a spicy, dry punch.

The restaurant itself has an Old Taiwan vibe going, as well.
The salad has a bit of a wasabi vibe to the dressing, but isn't spicy (Brendan called it "decaf wasabi"). I'd prefer if it had the wasabi punch, but the fresh vegetables and tangy sauce were still delicious (although I can't say I'm a fan of the white vegetable, which I believe is 山芋 - biting into it releases juices that have the texture of runny snot).

Quick warning: they don't seem to serve water or any alcohol here - the only beverage available is tea, and the tea seems to be a slightly savory kumquat potion which I liked, but I wouldn't say it sated my thirst. It was made from dried kumquats and so had a bit of the salty-ish stuff they use to preserve fruit and vegetables in it.

和風沙拉
The eggplant, mushroom and other vegetables are delectable, though. Fresh, well-seasoned, delicate in a tangy dressing. Definitely not your standard stewed or fried fare.

Cold chicken (白斬雞腿)
I'm a huge fan of plain cold chicken in sauce (and the sauce at Lvsang is a bit different from the usual flavored oil this dish is served in - the dipping sauce has a spicy punch to it, as well) and this not-very-sexy but standard and good dish is a fine addition to your order. It's simple but they do it well.


I don't have a good picture of the stuffed "liver flower" (宜蘭肝花)but, served with a very Taiwanese "pink sauce" (the kind you get on sticky rice and Taiwanese tempura), it's cooked beautifully and delicious. Above is the 烤木瓜, which is a slice of papaya baked with cheese, underneath which are chopped vegetables in a creamy sauce. Although it was interesting and new, I'm not sure I'd recommend it, an I've never actually seen this dish in Yilan. It's...something. I'm happy I tried it - it was a new experience. I didn't dislike it, but I am really not sure I see the point.

Overall, though, I was thoroughly pleased with Lvsang - especially that divine red date pork.  Thoroughly and highly recommended overall!  

Tanuki Koji / 狸小路

Delicious (and expensive) beef skewers at Tanuki Koji

Tanuki Koji狸小路#93  Sec 2 Anhe Road, Taipei台北市大安區安和路2段93號(02)873-28555



Today shall be a day of restaurant reviews. I might write something thoughtful later, we'll see.

Since Dako went from being a lovely little hole-in-the-wall that served fantastic Japanese snacks and sake to being a boring paigu place with no sake, just Choya, beer and Calpis, I've been in the market for a good Japanese restaurant to add to my repertoire of place to eat and to take friends. Taipei has tons of Japanese food, but a lot of it could generously be called "fusion" (Taiwanese versions of "Japanese food"), or it's all sushi, or it's just not that good, or it's pedestrian (like the fried pork cutlets in curry sauce or the weird rice omelets), or it's way too chi-chi. I don't love dramatic lighting and black granite. I do love places that actually remind me of Japan: wooden walls and tables, large windows, screens,  high-low counters, charcoal wood, plain white canvas curtains, benches or izakaya tables. And that's Tanuki Koji.

So last week we went out with my sister to Tanuki Koji, a delicious but expensive restaurant and sake bar on Anhe Road (very close to the popular bars we never go to, and also close to Zoca Pizza). Yes, I do think it's funny that we live within walking distance of many of Taipei's expat bars, and you'll basically never find us in one.

Expensive but not impossible, well-appointed without being chi-chi, this place hits the spot.

I apologize now for the terrible quality of these photos: I didn't think to bring my camera (which is a massive older pro camera, not a teeny tiny pocket digital) so I just snapped a few shots with Brendan's iPod Touch.

I thought at first that we'd found a place that nobody had reviewed before, but of course, I was wrong, it was reviewed in the Taipei Times just a few months before I first moved to Taiwan in 2006, so I never saw it.

Tanukikoji's famous sea urchin
The sea urchin is rightfully famous -  sweet, subtly flavored, delicate, with just a tiny punch of salt from the bit of caviar set atop the slices that come served in a small martini-like glass. I'm really the sea urchin fan - Brendan merely thinks it's OK and doesn't see the point in spending that much money on something he won't savor. My sister likes it but not as much as I do. The two of us split this serving, leaving Brendan with none. NONE. Hahaha!

The sake we got was also excellent - NT800 for a small bottle but worth every penny, and served in a carafe with room for ice, which I appreciate. The staff can recommend sake based on what you order as well as what temperature you prefer your sake: I prefer it cold, although some sakes are better at room temperature or warm. This stuff went down super smooth and had a rich and complex flowery flavor (which you can probably tell from the label).


Another delicious and well-known dish is the cold tomato cooked in wine. It's topped with a mustardy, sesame-like cream sauce and is simple but delicious.


We also got the beef skewers (above) - which one rolls in the fried garlic provided - a grilled fish that has inedible skin (the skin, however, can be peeled off easily) but is meaty and delicious, and a plate of sushi that included an amazing tuna, a whitefish that was good but not memorable, a delicious cooked salmon, something else that was hard to identify (I think squid) and a few vegetable pieces with some egg pieces on the side. I appreciated that the wasabi was already added under the fish in the right amount for each serving - that shows attention to flavor and detail and is de rigueur in Japan. Finally, we tried the famous potato-cheese-roe dish, which I liked quite a bit but my sister merely thought was OK.

The restaurant itself is small - seating about 20 - and fills up quickly. We've walked by (we live in the area) and seen it packed, and they do take reservations. Even on a Sunday night we had to eat an clear out because they had a group coming. I love the atmosphere - this is the sort of place I'd expect to eat at in Japan itself, not a Taiwanese version of Japan. The sort of place I've been to with friends who live in Japan - where I've had more than one truly memorable culinary experience.

I'm not sure i'd call the food "fusion" as the review does - that kind of cheese/potato/roe dish is definitely the sort of thing I've come across in Japan (a place where I've had raw chicken sushi - yes you're reading that right - and chicken covered in caramelized onions and mayonnaise, and they cover all sorts of things in cheese and call it "foreign"). They serve food that might not fit someone's basic view of Japanese food, but that doesn't mean it's not the kind of food you can easily eat in Japan.

All in all a meal for 3 cost NT$3,250, so come prepared. That is a great price for eating out in Japan or the USA but is on the high end for Taiwan. Definitely in our budget (although we don't eat this expensively every week), but something that anyone looking to be economical should be aware of. I'm not surprised: good Japanese food does skew to the expensive side and it's not only in Da'an but on Anhe Road. You'll get a fantastic meal, but you'll pay for it.

Final word? Go here. It's amazing. If you're on a budget go for a special occasion. Take someone you want to impress there. If you're a little more free in your budget, just pop by.