Day 9

On this day I went with my cousin, her friend, and her friend's mother to a number of different places. The first place we visited was Beitou which is a northern part of Taipei where we went to a beautiful environmentally-friendly library and the Beitou museum which used to be a bathhouse. Similar to Frank Lloyd Wright's houses, the inside of the library was built to make library-goers feel like they were outside. Therefore, the library is made of wood and has huge windows and open spaces. Here are pictures of the inside and me outside the library.

Next we went to the Beitou museum. Beitou means 'north head' which makes sense because it is north of Taipei, but it originally came from a similar sounding aboriginal word meaning 'witch's lair' because the hot springs there give off erie steam. The museum was an old bathhouse build by the Japanese during their occupation of Taiwan in the first half of the twentieth century. Completely irrelevant, but I apparently met one of the most famous Chinese singer's wife there. She was volunteering at the museum and is an American, so we talked for a long time. We went about our business and left, but at night, the people who I was with said she looked awfully like Zhou Hua Jian's wife and asked me how many kids she had, what her name was, etc and it all matched up. I am so thrilled to have met someone so famous! And not have known! I am star-struck post-occurrance.

Anyway, the museum was cool. The basement was where the men took their baths and was styled like a Roman bath, pictured below. We couldn't figure out why there was water in the bath; you would have thought they would clean it up. There was an old picture of a bunch of boys in the bath, and I kept thinking they had no idea their naked picture would be in a museum for everyone to stare at one hundred years later.

I also liked this Japanese-inspired room on the first floor. My cousin told me to pose on the mat and at first I sat cross-legged, which she laughed at. She had to correct me and tell me to sit the Japanese way sitting on my legs. Before heading off to the National Palace Museum, we had some delicious beef noodles. Beef noodles is a very Chinese dish, but the restaurant mixed Chinese and Japanese cooking so my bowl was miso-flavored. Yummm.

The National Palace Museum houses the best treasures from the Forbidden City. When the KMT were defeated by the Communists and fled from China to Taiwan in 1949, they took the treasures with them, which is why all the good stuff is in Taiwan. In the picture below, the museum is in the distance. The words on the gate were written by Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the founder of modern China.

The objects in the museum were mindblowing. One object that everyone likes is this piece of stone made to look like a piece of Chinese pork. In this dish, the cut of pork has skin along with a layer of fat and meat. This stone looks ridiculously like a piece of pork, it is hilarious. They also had a piece of jade made to look like a cabbage head. It is about as long as a computer mouse and the artist used the national coloring of the jade make it more realistic because the tips of the leaves are dark green while the part closer to the stem is a very light green. They are both pictured on the wikipedia page. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Palace_Museum The museum also had a miniature carved ivory box containing lots of mini carved ivory things. The box was about as big as two postage stamps and contained at least 10 or 20 mini items such as a carved ivory bottle with a cap as big as one body-section of a fireant. Many of the items also had mini chains (the kind made with links) carved from ivory that were as thin as a thread. My mind is still boggled at how anyone would be able to carve such a thing.

Lastly we went to a night market in Taipei, which is always awesome. We stuffed ourselves with so much food, I wanted to die. I took pictures of about half of the things we ate. This first picture I didn't eat but I thought it was hilarious because it is a pizza on a fried and bredded chicken cutlet. What a novel idea and interesting mix!

The soup pictured below wasn't as tasty as everything else, but still good. I think the white pieces are squid.

The food pictured below is called "uh-ah jian" which is Taiwanese for 'oyster fry.' It is oysters fried in a jelly-egg pancake with gravy. This is my dad's favorite, I am so sad he didn't get to try it before he left! I also took a bite before I remembered to take a picture, so sorry if it looks nasty.

The food below is like ice cream. They take a huge block of sweet milk ice cream and shave it and put whatever topping you want on it. We got coffee (which turned out to be blocks of coffee jello) and blackberry. This is all I want to eat for the rest of my life. My cousin told me that foreigners who come and eat this think that even the worst example of this dessert is the tastiest thing they've ever had. So true.

The drink below I ordered only because it sounded interesting. It is made from bitter melon, which is a common vegetable that is actually bitter and I used to hate as a kid. They mixed the juice with honey or sugar cane, so it is actually really delicious and barely tastes bitter.

I should also mention that this night market was extremely over stimulating. The lights of the stands were so bright that they reminded me of Las Vegas. Like every other market, there are also people shouting at you to sit down at their stand or buy whatever for so-and-so price. People bring their children and even babies to the night market, and I tried to imagine what it would be like to be a kid with these hugely bright lights, loud noises, and tons of people surrounding you. Here is part of the night market.

Also, here is the chi-pow I bought! :D