Jiufen, Taroko Gorge, Hot Springs, Night Markets

We visited the town of Jiufen, which was supposedly the inspiration for the famous Miyazaki animated movie Spirited Away.  It is a mountainous town built for mining during the Japanese occupation.  We walked through the maze of old-fashioned, packed alleyways lined with small touristy shops.  We ended the day at a teashop with an amazing view.

The bath house from the movie Spirited Away

We went to night markets almost every evening, and I tried so much food.  In the so-so category, barley tea tastes like a drop of coffee diluted in cold water.  Fish balls and pig's blood I was roped into eating by an overeager Airbnb host.  Favorites were pineapple cake with taro ice cream and red bean, tapioca, rice pudding.

Taiwan-style thick toast (coconut-flavored)

Traditional Hakka food including pig's blood and bean curd

Sweet mung bean soup with rice noodles

Fried noodles & rice and veggies on Lanyu

Hot pot

Red bean, tapioca, rice pudding

Fish balls

Steamed buns

Iced mochi with flavored fillings

Fried quail eggs

Glutinous rice with peanut or black sesame filling

Shaved ice with pudding

Pineapple cake with taro ice cream

An entire shelf devoted to pink foods at the 7/11

There are “Sevens” or 7/11 convenience stores on every single street corner, selling Taiwanese packaged food (and the cashiers offer to warm things up in the microwave for you) and much more.  I ended up getting quite familiar with the Taipei City Mall as well, which is all underground and connected to Taipei Main Station.  Taipei Main Station is an underground metropolis, with multiple metro lines, train lines, and high-speed train lines.

Hiking the beautiful Taroko Gorge

Confucious temple in Tainan

This trip I finally got to visit hot springs!  We went to the public baths in Beitou, with a bunch of Chinese old people, where there are four pools with a hint of sulfur smell.  One is normal pool temperature, and the others range from scalding (45C) to really hot (38C), as the water gets further from the natural heating source.

Beitou

We spent our last night in Taiwan out dancing.  When we took a taxi home, the driver was watching a Red Sox game on his phone on the dashboard!  It was kind of surreal to chat in Chinese about American baseball at 3am in a speeding taxi right before flying back to the US ourselves.

Why I would move to Taiwan in the future

They recycle, and the garbage trucks play music like ice-cream trucks.  Taiwanese people wait until they hear the music and then run outside to toss their trash into the truck as it slowly drives through their neighborhood.  It also fosters a sense of community, because neighbors bang on each other’s doors as the truck comes by.

Hiking Elephant Mountain at sunse

They have a woman president.

The subways in all the cities are unreal:
a) there’s eerie music that sounds like Mario Galaxy whenever a train is approaching,
b) there’s no eating or drinking at all on the subway,
c) people actually queue up while waiting for the subway,
d) I once saw a teenage boy spill water on the ground in a subway station and then get on his hands and knees to wipe the floor clean.

The people are so hospitable, just like the Chinese.

They read books "backwards" with the spine on the right.

There are so many tiny pet dogs that people take everywhere in backpacks or baby carriages.

They wear seatbelts (imagine my shock after a summer of no seatbelts at all, when my first taxi driver in Taiwan had to tell me to buckle up or he’d get fined).

Tainan University

The whole country is an island.

Like in China, it would be totally acceptable for me to carry around an umbrella to protect from the sun.

Also like in China, the fashion style is really anything goes.  The most typical Chinese outfit is definitely a T-shirt underneath spaghetti-strap top with attached gaucho pants and platform sandals.

I saw a blood drive happening in one of the plazas, and I took it as an auspicious sign.

The night markets are amazing: pastries, barbecue, desserts, noodles, fortune tellers, clothes, jewelry, electronics, and knickknacks for sale, masseuses, and one white guy selling chocolate chip cookies behind a sign that says “Joy’s Homemade Treats.”

Living right above edge of Shilin Night Market (the biggest in Taipei)

Everyone rides mopeds.

The whole country has free wifi (like London).

Hardly anyone smokes compared to China (but a fair amount smoke compared to the US).

The food is unparalleled, but I do have an obsession with all Asian food.

There’s tons of vegetarian/vegan restaurants.

They’re more or less accepting of gay people.

I’ll be able to easily travel to all the fabulous countries of Southeast and East Asia.

On the steps in front of Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall

Return to Taiwan

For Spring Break, I spent the last two weeks in Taiwan with my boyfriend and a team of three other Yalies.  He and I got a grant from the Yale International Relations Association to lead a trip to investigate public health and environmental issues.  I had been eager to go back to Taiwan, and the grant allowed me to go to new places like Lanyu (Orchid) Island, Tainan, and Taitung.

Flying fish were painted everywhere

The first Tuesday, we took the ferry to Lanyu Island, which is almost entirely populated by Tao/Yami people.  From the deck, we saw a lot of dolphins and flying fish!  I had just studied flying fish in my bio lab so it was really exciting to see.  We thought they were birds at first, but after about 30 seconds of flying above the water they would renter a wave.  Little did we know that on Lanyu they are considered gods, and the entire culture is structured around fishing them.  The fishing season has just begun with a festival that started in one village and passed from village to village around the island as each took its turn celebrating the beginning of fishing.  For the first month, only a specific type of canoe (called tatala) that seats 10 people is allowed in the waters.  The tatala is different from other indigenous groups’ hallowed-out canoes in that it is made of 27 assembled pieces of wood.  The second month 1- and 2-person canoes are allowed to join the others in fishing, and the third month motorboats are allowed too.  Every man on the island fishes, even in modern times.  Each household has at least one fish skin hanging near the entrance.





We originally came to learn more about the dispute between the Taiwanese government and the local people about a nuclear waste facility that was built on the island.  The locals say they were lied to about what the government was building, and that it has since affected the fish population and caused increasing cancer rates among residents.

The island felt a lot like Hawaii to me, and it turns out they are on nearly the same latitude.  Everyone there says hello to each other when they pass on motorbikes or in cars, and that’s included us.  We’ve done several long, beautiful, painful hikes and bike rides on the one road that circles the island and on the one mountain pass that bisects the island.  We watched the sunset from the “grassy grasslands” on the southern tip.

We got a private tour of the little museum from the director of the Lanyu Foundation, and saw the traditional houses.  The houses have three parts: one underground to protect from typhoons, one above ground to host guests from other tribes—or for the men to sleep in when it’s fishing season because they aren’t allowed to sleep near or be distracted by the women, and another above ground and very open for communal living during the summer months.

England & Canada

My family spent a week together in London at the end of 2017.  We rang in the New Year with the crowds in Trafalgar Square, where we could see and hear Big Ben.  That was right after dinner and dessert in Chinatown in Soho, which was my favorite area of the city.

Tower Bridge outside Tower of London where we saw the Crown Jewels

In the maze outside Hampton Court Palace (residence of Henry VIII)

V&A Museum (of decorative arts and design)

Enjoying the Japanese food of London

Tate Modern

Rosetta Stone in the British Museum

Roman baths in Bath

After riding the London Eye

Stonehenge (VERY windy)

After London, I spent a week skiing with other Yalies at Mont Tremblant in the fabulous francophone Canadian province of Quebec.  I'd been to Quebec, Montreal, and Mont Tremblant before with my family--and I ate at the same crepe place again this time.  One the way back, I entered the United States by car for the first time ever.  It was as easy as going through a toll booth, but free.