Taipei. It's rainy and chilly but there's lots to do... My favorite neighborhood spot, around the corner from the house--Ban-mou Yuan (Half-Acre Cafe), tucked into the corner at Da-an and Deng Feng Rds.. Terrific soup noodles, xi-fan, and flaky sesame bread filled with steamed pork. Help-your-self side dishes -- spicy green beans; dry bean curd with little salted fish; eggplant... I have a special affection for this place because my father used to come here for lunch when he was consulting in Taiwan, in the 1980s...
Of course we made the pilgramage to Din Tai Feng, to the original shop on Xinyi Road (There are several now in town, including in the basement of Sogo, but we have to go to the mother ship). Weekday lunch hour -- no waiting on line!! We had two kinds of xiao lung bao, regular pork (below) and pork with truffles. Worth every dollar!!! Sauteed peashoots, Siu-mai topped with shrimp, and dan-dan noodles (spicy sesame sauce).
After lunch we take a stroll down Yong Kang Street
shopping for clothes, slippers. And oh, remember that guy with the street stand selling zua-bing? (a scallion pancake that's been fluffed up so the layers separate) Picked some up for next day breakfast, perfect with an egg (a "break" from the other, deadly, breakfast, xiaobing youtiao (flaky sesame bread and a deep fried cruller). In my aunt's house, where a two course breakfast is served, the other course is fresh fruit (persimmon this week) and yogurt. We are also drinking Vietnamese coffee this week, brought back from a trip by another cousin.)
Tuesday we went to the National Theater for a performance by Taiwan's renown Cloud Gate contemporary dance company. Their performances are usually very serious and monocrhomatic, but this was a new production, called "How can I live without you" ( 我沒有你) set to Taiwan pop music (love songs)--not my thing but the dance was amazing (they are surely without bones and joints), and the colors and set using light and mirrors were breathtaking. They often tour in the US--catch them if you have the opportunity.
Thursday night -- dinner at my aunt Chung-Ling's, downstairs. It's her birthday and somehow she's spent her birthday making a huge dinner for us, with my mother's favorite, crab--can't have too much crab! Those shrimps are huge--they are on a 6-inch plate. We brought a cheesecake from Taipei's famous bakery, "85-degrees-C." It sounds terrible for a New Yorker to say this, but it was the best cheese cake I've ever had!
Oh, did I say I was working? I gave three talks, one at National Sun Yat Sen University in Kaohsiung, on the southwestern coast. That's the view out the window of the faculty-club/ restaurant, on the beach. Ahee was the architectural consultant when they built the university 30 years ago. It's a gorgeous campus on the mountain side by the ocean. There are hundreds of monkeys living on the mountain, that are notorious for breaking into the dorms and stealing food, even sitting in on classes. The university's official view is to strive for co-existence, recognizing that the monkeys were there first. I didn't see any, though.
Then two talks in Taipei, at National Taiwan Normal (Shida) and National Taiwan University (Taida). At Shida we had a huge dinner afterwards with the graduate students who translated my book into Chinese. They are specializing in teaching Chinese as second language. Their professor, my colleague Prof. Wang (seated right), introduced them to me as "This is Chapter 7," "This is Chapters 1-3," etc. (I did learn their real names!)
OK OK I know this doesn't look like work, so here is evidence of a talk (with Prof. Chao, the U.S. historian at Taida)
