Non-Lazy Sunday

Last night was another wonderful adventure in Taipei that couldn’t go without at least a short blog post. My evening started out by meeting with Yu-Lin, the father of the two children I visit twice a week, at a bus stop near my house. The reason I met him by my place was because he insisted on seeing that I was able to easily find their residence from where I live rather than from school, the route that I usually take. I am once again stunned by the hospitality of the people in this country, because not only did he meet me at the bus station when he could have just given me directions, but he and his wife were also treating me to a nice Sunday dinner near their house for no other reason than to have a nice meal with me. The weather yesterday was a little chilly which seemed very appropriate for the evening because they took me to a wonderful Hot Pot venue. Hot Pot is quite simply a pot of soup broth on a broiler where you cook a mixture of vegetables meat tofu etc. at your own pace and temperature. When you order hotpot everyone gets a set of veggies and then chooses a side dish of their fancy. Last night I opted for the mushroom vegetarian dish, which turned out in fact to be an entire platter of various mushrooms of all shapes and sizes. The meal was delicious and we left the restaurant stuffed to brim but their hospitality was not yet through.

Much to my surprise, after dinner my hosts for the evening demanded that we take a 15 minute walk over to the Tong Hua night market so that I could have my first taste of bubble milk tea; a drink that Yu-Lin was very surprised to hear I had not yet tried in Taipei. On our way over to the night market we had an interesting discussion about the lack of Night Markets in the United States, and also reflected that in Taipei a midnight snack, eating being a national past time here, more often than not turns into a 4th meal of various street food goodies. Once we arrived at the night market I was able to have my first taste of bubble milk tea, which is aptly named due to the small bubbles of gooey goodness that float in the tea for your consumption. I don’t know if I will make this my regular drink here in Taipei, but I will certainly order one again.

Once I had my milk tea in hand we began to make our way back to their house, but my evening didn’t stop there. Since I was already in the heart of downtown Taipei and the weather was good I decided to call my classmate, Matt, and see if he cared to join me for the Taipei Lantern Display at Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall. He agreed and Ya-Wen(Yu-Lin’s wife) , Yu-Lin and myself continued to make our way back to their home when it dawned upon me that I didn’t have the faintest clue how to get to Sun Yat-sen from this still rather foreign area of town. Once again Ya-Wen and Yu-Lin showed their kindness toward me as they agreed to point me in the right direction. Pointing me in the right direction ended up actually being them walking me all the way to Sun Yat-sen Memorial, an extra 15 minutes from their house, where they finally left me to find the Sun Yat-sen Memorial MRT station for myself by jokingly saying “I think you are old enough to find it alone.” Quick note for the record: the entire walk that we made was one continuous road, but rather than telling me that so I could walk alone they made the whole journey insisting that they show me the way.

After successfully locating the MRT station, on my own, I met up with Matt and we made our way to the Lantern Display at Sun Yat-sen. The Lantern Display at Sun Yat-sen was a conglomerate of hand crafted and hand painted lanterns varying for the more traditional round lantern to the far more bizarre, a crab playing a stand up bass. The lanterns were made by a plethora of designers from junior high students all the way up to art designers that work in Taipei. Each had their own twist and flair, while there were a lot of truly unique designs, one would have to be blind to not notice that this is the year of the rat. I was ultimately drawn to the more traditional hand painted lanterns that hung around Sun Yat-sen memorial hall, but everything on display was fairly incredible. Amazing that such a simplistic design as a lantern could be expressed in so many different ways; although none of the more avant-garde lanterns stood a chance of lifting even an inch off the ground.

The event was nothing short of a great surprise and a truly wonderful treat. While it may not have drawn out the same raw emotions that I experienced last week in Pingxi, it it was something that I am glad I was able to catch in Taipei. Turns out that we were pretty lucky about making it their to see the lantern display yesterday, because it was the last night of the festival. All in all it turned out to be a great close to the Chinese Lunar New Year Festivities. How very apropos that the moon was hanging low in the sky hovering like a lantern, emitting a creamy, rich, rice paper yellow glow.