空心菜

With Daisy headed back to the States, real Taiwan life was set to begin. I spent the afternoon with my aunt, as we went down Dihua Street toward the fabric market. Dihua Street is the oldest in Taipei and it has Western style architecture and stores hawking Chinese herbs and medicines, as well as stuff people use during traditional festivals and celebrations. "Dihua Jie was constructed in the 1850s after merchants on the losing side of an ethnic feud in the Wanhua area fled to Dadaocheng… After Taiwan's ports were opened following the Second Opium War, Western tea merchants flooded into the area and built handsome mansions and trading stores. Later, during the Japanese era, baroque and modernist architectural and decorative touches were added to many shops, making Dihua Taipei's most historically diverse street." Both my aunts here are afflicted with polio and they now both use motorized wheelchairs. (Everyone from San Diego should be familiar with the Salk Instit

In 2013, I tracked nearly every bowl of noodle soup I consumed. Oodles of Noodles , aka my most boring blog ever. A highly debatable title of course. Anyway, if I were to undergo the same project here, I would be posting like every other day. Since returning to Taipei, I think I went to the beef noodle spot by my house three times, including today. And then we did a day time trip to Ximending, Taiwan’s Times Square. Daisy’s cousin went shopping for Jordans and I picked up a floral brimmed Obey hat that would eventually become like daily wear. There are quite a few street brands here that I’m not sure why they’re so popular — Supreme, for one — and most of it I would never consider wearing in the U.S. but here they mean nothing. Just a word on a piece of clothing. So, Obey it is. After a quick bite of Ay-Chung’s popular four rice noodles, we ducked into a many floored building selling a variety of merchandise, including quite a few toy stores. On the fifth floor was also an arcade,

How many night markets are there in Taipei? Great question, JFGI! The problem is, there seems to be no easy answer. Shilin is the biggest one, located at the Jiantan stop on the red line. That’s the only one I had vivid memories of, but as it turned out, it’s also like the worst one. Unless you’re a tourist. The food there is pretty bleh and most of the things being sold in the underground food court are way too similar. Oh wait, Shilin does have some good shopping though, including this hip hoppy store, Trend Setting , where I bought great semi-harem-y capris, from a local Taiwanese brand no less. Anyway, Shilin is usually not the move unless you need to take a touristy sweep through the area. From what I hear, the best food is at Raohe, or at least that's the one my uncle prefers. Earlier in the night, I met Angie at Shida night market, which is located next to the university I’d be attending. It was quieter and smaller, mainly just one main drag, and the food there was defini

I don’t know when Din Tai Fung became Taiwan’s number one export — at least in pop culture — but I guess it’s better than all the “Made in Taiwan” jokes from thirty years ago. When we were here in September, one of Frank’s main goals was to eat at a Din Tai Fung but we thought there were only two locations and I refused to stand in the extended lines for something that I could easily eat in LA. Plus, Din Tai Fung’s thing is that it’s supposed to be precisely uber-consistent at every location. Why stand in line? However I did acquiesce to going to the Taipei 101 location in the middle of the night when nobody else was there and taking photos with the red Din Tai Fung sign. Little did we know that there are Din Tai Fungs everywhere and if you time it correctly, the wait is only fifteen minutes or so. So Monday night was my first taste of Taiwan Din Tai Fung and my basic takeaway is that while it was pretty good — the non-dumpling stuff was a revelation — the thing I lusted for most wa

The night before, after clubbing, we had gone to a late night congee place that served big bowls of congee and then whatever sides you picked out. It was glorious, and I knew that would become my late night eating place. Of course, the night ended at four or five in the morning so our Sunday started very late. Daisy and I went to Gongguan again, as I wanted to check out Chen San Ding, rumored to be the best boba in Taipei. Their boba was made with straight milk, no tea, and the boba balls were soaked in brown honey. I’d seen the line before, but as I was quickly learning, lines in Taiwan were mostly a good thing, as they signaled good food. Plus, the lines were always fast moving and well organized, and I find myself suspending the “no lines” rules in Taiwan often. Anyway, Chen San Ding boba turned out to taste basically almost exactly like Half and Half, or Class 302, but without the large chubby cups. Delicious, but not exactly mind blowing. What was killer, was the gua bao plac

On Saturday, I met up with another friend that I had met during our last trip, Angie. Since she knew about my predilection for noodles, we went to a beef noodle spot near her old college. The day was hot and muggy, and she wasn’t feeling particularly well after a weekend spent on a high mountain hike. The whole day stretched ahead so after eating, we took ourselves over to Xinyi (again) to catch a showing of Dracula Untold. This was my first proper Taiwanese movie experience and I have to go into the differences. First, there are lines for the line. You buy your ticket and then wait around until about five minutes before your movie, and then they let you in. You can reserve your tickets beforehand, but you need to pick up at least thirty minutes in advance, otherwise you lose them. Also, all the seats are assigned seating, which is nice. And if you go to the major theaters, they are invariably very crowded. The great thing though, is that despite the packed houses, people are not

Friday was "hunting for hipsters" day. We’d both read that the hipster area of Taipei was Zhongxiao Dunhua so Daisy and I took the subway over. Turns out, as suspected, there are no hipsters in that area, at least not like the ones we have in the U.S.. Uniqlo loomed on one side of the street, along with other major shopping chains, and on the other side, laid out in a grid of streets, were various smaller stores. That was the hipster area, but the storefronts were also peppered with brands like Nike, Burton, and other familiar names. No hipsters to be found, even if the people shopping here were definitely different in their style and dress. From what I could gather, anything slightly non-mainstream was dubbed “hipster,” even if that divorces the term from anything it might stand for in America. Does irony even exist here? Anyway, anyone who would call Zhongxiao Dunhua “hipster” has clearly never been to New York or San Francisco. We took in a little corner of shops collec

In early September, the weather had still been too hot to be outside during the day. The first thing I noticed was that Taiwanese people are not into the concept of hot weather wear. Despite the raging heat, people were still dressed in pants and long shirts. Even summer gear was restrained to t-shirts and longish shorts. I was basically in beach gear, armed with tank tops and and new (short) denim shorts — my friend said knees were now in. Incredibly, Frank wore jeans our entire trip, and I couldn’t figure out why he wanted to sweat it out so much. Then again, growing up, he was always in jeans and a windbreaker, even as we played football. Now, in mid-October, the weather was perfect and it was actually comfortable to be outdoors during the day. Daisy and I went to Gongguan, an area apparently populated by 80% sneaker and shoe stores. There was quite a bit of food around too, and at an open faced noodle shop, Daisy introduced me to Waygo, the iPhone App that reads menus. Instantan

On the last trip, it was me, a childhood friend, and a week of exploring. I timed returning to Taipei so that I would be here just as another childhood friend, Daisy, was here too. I landed at 6AM, got through customs and stuff in an hour, flagged a cab, and was in my mom’s apartment by 8AM. Last time, my aunt ordered a car for me, but this time I just did it myself because, well, I was gonna be a local soon. My plan, as sloppily conceived, was to move to Taiwan to study Mandarin. On the last few days of our September visit, I hung out with a friend from college who had moved here from Los Angeles three years ago. Robert didn’t know much Mandarin when he arrived — he spoke Taiwanese growing up — but had been taking classes at National Taiwan Normal University (“Shida”) since then. And when I met his fellow classmate, who had been studying Mandarin for a similar amount of time, I was very impressed with their skills. That planted the seed. Things I didn’t expect to say, like ever,

Despite being born in Taiwan thirty plus years ago, I can’t say I know much about it. Sure, we grew up here, and there are loads of childhood memories and just enough early life immersion for things to feel familiar when we visited periodically, but I can’t say it drummed up much emotion either way. That is until 2002, when I came back  after a long hiatus and spent a little over a week feeling worse and worse about Taiwan. By the end of that trip, I was hunkered down in mosquito netting at my grandfather’s watching movies all day, emerging only to visit a smoky Internet cafe for a few minutes. By the time we left, I vowed to never return. (I even turned down a trip to Taiwan a few years ago, with some of my favorite people, on the grounds that Taiwan was not for me.) Fast forward twelve years, to this past September, when I finally re-visited, accompanying my childhood friend as he came back to take care of some family business. During those ten days, I/we fell absolutely in love w