Out and about

My good friend Jose, along with his girlfriend Yu Li and her cousin Wesley, came down from Taichung yesterday for a day of sightseeing around Tainan.  Jose, or more formally Prof. Chiu-Cheng Chen, is on faculty at Tunghai University in Taichung, having graduated with a PhD in Public Administration from National Cheng Chi University in Taipei, where I had a short appointment as a visiting professor a few years ago.  I've known Jose longer than that, though, having met him first on an even earlier trip to Taiwan when he came up to me after a talk I had given somewhere and indicated that he would like to come to USC to do a year of dissertation research.  I agreed to support and sponsor him in that process, so we managed to get him to LA for a year back in 2006, where his research focused on the process of making plans to redevelop parts of the Los Angeles River.  Yu Li joined him in LA for part of that time, and on one of my trips to Taiwan (can't remember for sure which year that was!), the three of us took a little road trip to go see the Taroko Gorge on the east side of the island, which is definitely one of the most scenic parts of the country.  So it was great to see them again, and since Taichung is just an hour or so train or bus ride away, I hope to get up there soon for a return visit.

Taiwan is a couple hundred miles long from top to bottom, and for most of its length is about 50 or so miles wide.  About two thirds of the width of the island is mountainous, and other than a relatively small number of people who live on the east coast, most of the 23 million plus people live in the north in and around Taipei or down the western strip that is flat and more easily habitable.  But one of the things that has struck me most about this place, as I've traveled up and down the west coast visiting the various towns, is how infrequently one actually comes in contact with the ocean.  For being an island, there is minimal "beach" culture here, and while the ocean is a key source of food, it isn't really a big focus of any leisure or entertainment activity for the Taiwanese.   Part of that, from what I've discerned over the years, is because much of the coastline isn't really "beachy" -- it's rocky up in the north where most of the people live, and while there are sandy beaches on the east coast, with not many people living or visiting there, my sense is that you wouldn't ever find a scene of a beach filled with lots of folks sunning and playing in the water.  The one main beach scene is down south of Kaoshiung, the second biggest city in the country (at least up until recently when -- I learned from Jose last night -- the government turned the former Taipei County into "New Taipei City."  Counties here are a distinct form or level of government, and they exclude rather than include, as in the US, the main cities nearby.  So the old country government is now turning into a new city government, and I guess New Taipei City instantaneously became the biggest, i.e., most populous, city in the country!), where the weather is a little warmer and the culture a little more relaxed.  I've told people that it seems like Kaoshiung is to Taipei like Los Angeles is to New York. 

So our sightseeing trip yesterday helped to confirm and explain the lack of this beach orientation in Taiwan.  I arranged to meet Jose at Starbucks, and from there we headed west, first making what I think was an unplanned stop -- due in part to seeing the big crowd out on a nice warm holiday weekend -- to have a little food and visit the Confucious Temple and the Chihkan Tower/Koxinga Shrine, which commemorates the Chinese general who kicked the Dutch out of then-Formosa back in the late 1600s.  We tasted fish ball soup (ground up fish meat formed into little balls and then cooked in the soup broth) and a tasty drink made out of a large melon (picture a cucumber on steroids -- over two feet long!).  Then we continued west, heading toward the water, and essentially out of town -- that's what's kind of weird, as you get closer to the ocean the urban density dissipates, to the point where there isn't any development along the coast at all.  But as we drove around, it became clear why.  Tainan, and this is probably true of all the major cities here, sits along one of the major rivers emptying runoff from the mountains into the ocean, and the delta or estuary formed makes the coastal area very wet and marshy in its natural habitat, and thus not conducive to building villages, towns, or cities.  What the people on the island have done instead is to convert that land into other productive uses, primarily raising seafood (e.g., fish and oyster farms) and cultivating salt.

So after fighting some very slow holiday traffic, we drove through these developed wetlands to the Taijiang National Park Ecological and Cultural Zone, stopping first at Sihcao Dajhong Temple, where a whole lot of people were lined up to take a short little boat ride out into the mangrove reserve.  We opted not to do that, and instead bought some snacks -- including some large strawberries wrapped in the red bean paste that is used in lots of "sweets" here and then covered in powdered sugar -- and headed to the next destination.  This was a little complex of buildings with information about the wildlife in the area, especially birds and cetaceans (OK, whales and dolphins).  Whales run down both sides of the island, with the west side being the 100-mile Taiwan Straight that separates Taiwan from mainland China.  Wesley told a story about when some folks found a dead beached whale nearby a couple of years ago, and for whatever purposes they were moving it somewhere and driving the dead whale through downtown Tainan when, due to heating up by the sun and I guess the expansion of gases inside, the whale exploded and sent blood and guts everywhere!  Apparently it required some repainting of things in the vicinity...

Our next stop was the salt museum.  Probably most of us learned as kids that sal, the Latin root, is the basis of the word salary, since salt was used to pay people back in the day.  Even in 20th century Taiwan, salt workers would exchange one kilo of salt for one kilo of rice.  In short, salt has long been a valuable commodity, and you gotta figure that the amount of salt consumed around the world on a daily basis is pretty significant, but who's ever stopped to think about where it all comes from?  Apparently it is mined directly out of the rock in places like Poland and China, but here in Taiwan (and I presume other places in the world) they developed a process for extracting it from the ocean.  The museum of course helped to explain the rather lengthy multi-step process it takes to do this (or used to, before the process became more industrialized), and the bulk of the human labor involved entails "raking" the salt into piles after the brine has sufficiently evaporated to leave the salt behind, and then getting the piles of salt out of the "fields" and ready to distribute to consumers.  I guess there was a time when a lot of this area was devoted to salt production, to the point where they even had to create a special police force and build a number of security towers to prevent thieves from stealing the caches of salt at night. 

Before leaving the museum, we bought the equivalent of some popsicles -- Wesley had plum, Jose had peanut, and Yu Li and I had almond/cashew.  Quite yummy, thicker and smoother than a water-based popcicle, more like ice cream but without any dairy -- Wesley thought mine might be frozen almond milk, which seems like a good guess.  We were going to head down to Kaoshiung, 50 kilometers away, but after inching our way back towards Tainan and with the possibility that the road could be pretty busy all the way to Kaoshiung, we decided just to head back into Tainan for a stop at a popular night market.  A night market is a place, usually outdoors, filled with lots of little stalls with vendors selling food, clothes, and a whole assortment of other things.  Jose indicated that the primary draw is the food, that people go to the night market mostly to eat.  In fact, as we had discussed earlier in the day, eating seems to be the primary basis or form of "entertainment" in Taiwan.   In addition to the many  restaurants with more typical sit-down meals, there are lots of little snack foods ubiquitously available in Taiwan, many of them associated with particular places (Tainan) or even particular sources (e.g., the melon drink in the morning -- there was a long line at the place because it is "known for" that drink).  So night markets are filled with stalls with folks selling one or another little type of snack, and you can just sort of eat as you go, walking around shopping or playing some carnival-type games trying to win a prize.

As we were heading back towards downtown, the traffic almost came to a standstill, and at some point we tried to get off the main road we were on to find a different route, and as we circled around Jose realized that we were in fact at the night market we were aiming for (Huayuan), and the reason the traffic had stopped was because thousands of people were congregating there, everyone showing up in their cars and scooters trying to find a place to park.  We managed to find a spot, walked a few blocks to the market, and entered the throngs slowly making their way through the narrow walkways between the rows of stalls.  We stopped first for some little deep-fried cream balls, followed right away with a savory snack that consisted of sort of a thick crepe fried on a griddle then wrapped around some pork and green onions.  Yu Li next got some soup made with chunks of some animal organ, and having made it clear in previous years that I'm happy not to eat the insides of animals, there was no pressure for me to join in!  Instead we tried what might best be described as sort of an omelette, made with egg, and another crepe-like thing, and a few other ingredients mixed in, and then a sauce spread around the top.  While the food was good enough, my experience there was dominated by my amazement of how many people had turned out that night to meander around the market -- Jose and I agreed that there could easily have been 10 or 20 thousand people there, in an area that was about the size of a city block.  Kinda crazy.  But all in all, it says a lot about Taiwanese culture -- no one at the beach, but everyone packed together in the night market to sample their favorite foods!

We left Huayuan and as we headed back to my place, we passed by the Xiaobei night market and stopped there for a look around too.  This place was more like a mini-mall, with covered shops and more traditional stores, and after the massive crowd at Huayuan, this place seemed nearly empty.  Two guys were on a stage playing some music and a few people were listening, but the stores were mostly empty except for a few restaurants that had a number of folks eating.  We didn't stay long, and got back to my dorm around 9:30 PM, as the other three still had a 90-minute drive back to Taichung.  All in all, a good day being out and about and learning more about the area and life in Tainan.