Sun Moon Lake

J. is visiting for a week. We do the city (Palace Museum, dumplings, flower and jade markets, etc etc) but the highlight is our trip to Sun Moon Lake in central Taiwan. We take the high speed train, passing small towns and rice fields, to Taichung; and then a bus to the lake. We're there in about two and a half hours.



Sun Moon Lake has two sections, one is round and the other is crescent shaped, hence the name. Originally the home of the aboriginal ethnic group, the Thao, who still live in the area and work as fishermen, shrimpers, and farmers; and practice a long tradition of little "island" (floating) farms on the lake that grow vegetables and keep the lake ecology healthy. (In Chinese there is a saying, 有山有 水，"has mountains and water" which is meant to describe any place that is scenic, but here it is literally the case. The views are breathtaking; especially when the clouds hang over the mountainside in the morning and late afternoon.



I came here as a teenager with my parents and my grandfather; we stayed at a simple but elegant guest house and as I recall it was the first time I slept under a mosquito net. There was nothing of the development now evident at the lake (though the mosquitos are still around).
J. and I stayed at the Lalu Hotel (in Chinese 涵碧樓, han bi lou), which is sited on that spot on the lakeside where Chiang Kai Shek had his vacation villa during the 1950s and 1960s. One has to admit, it is the best spot. The lake had been enlarged by the Japanese during the colonial period and by the time of the Kuomintang arrival in 1950 one could get from one village on the lakeside to another only by boat. Chiang built a lake ring road in 1951. We took a boat tour across the lake to the Buddhist temple on the other side (the lower one; there is a bigger one higher up the mountain and a pagoda even further up, which are lit at night--see bottom photo.)


The Lalu is elegance and grace. Every room looks out over the lake; the length of our suite (sitting area and bedroom) was lined with floor to ceiling glass windows/doors to the balcony outside. Marble bathroom with rainforest shower etc etc. The 60 meter pool was "edgeless" so it really did seem (while swimming in it) to connect directly to the lake. (That's me above right in the teahouse, near the pool.)

The hotel had both Chinese and Western restaurants, food was good but best was breakfast buffet (Chinese, Japanese, and western style foods); we ate in the village one night for $10 and had little fried fishes and a delicious local leafy vegetable (likely grown wild) that the indigenous people call guo mao 過貓（roughly translated, over the cat?). The Lalu was the #1 hotel at the lake until recently as it's been surpassed by two new luxury resorts, none with the refined taste of the Lalu, the #1 (based on price) now being a monstrosity just behind the Lalu, with flashing lights, built with Dubai money. At least it is behind us; our view is of the lights of the temple across the lake.

Dragon boat festival

Tomorrow is a national holiday in Taiwan, the Dragon Boat festival, or the May holiday (fifth day of the fifth month on the Lunar calender). Everyone will be off from work and school. The holiday commemorates the Chinese poet Qu Yuan, who drowned himself in the river to protest the overthrow of the Zhou emperor by the Qin in 278 B.C.E. During this time of year, Chinese eat zongzi, which are like tamales. (Legend is that the people threw rice packets into the river to placate the dragon in the river.)
Zongzi are made with sweet and sticky (glutinous) rice and a filling (meat, vegetable, etc.), wrapped in two bamboo leaves, and steamed. They can be savory or sweet. The ones we ate for dinner tonight (white string) had meat and salted duck egg yolks. The little ones on top are made with glutinous rice flour (like mochi) and have sweet fillings (red, black, or yellow bean; or sesame). Taiwan style zongzi have meat and peanuts. Some are vegetarian. A few weeks ago, our friends B. and C. came from Hong Kong and brought Cantonese zongzi, which are really big and have green (mung) bean mixed in the rice, and stuffed with meat, egg, sausage, etc etc. I remember my grandmother used to make them, 100 at a time, which, according to custom, she'd give away to friends and relatives.

rabbits rule

Rabbit sightings in the Shida area, White Wabbit Records and Iron Skin Rabbit. I have no idea what the latter is; it's never open when I go by.

Eating with Caroline and Co.

My cousin Y. from California has arrived with her three children to visit her mother, who lives downstairs from us. Today (Sunday) we went out for both lunch and dinner together. It rained on and off all day. The littlest one, Caroline (age 2), carried her own umbrella. We went to two of the best restaurants in the neighborhood.

We had lunch at Peng's Family Garden on Deng Feng Road, which features Hong Kong style food. They make the best Cantonese fried chicken I've ever had. We also had steamed rock cod (photo right), duck with a layer of taro and then crispy taro flakes (phenomenal), and other dishes.











Dinner was at a new Shanghai restaurant on Da An Road. A big selection of small eats (photo), two kinds of xiaolung bao (soup dumplings), one with minced chicken and the other with the leaf of si-gua （a gourd). Two kinds of scallion pancake, thin and thick. Two kinds of soup, chicken and beef, which are steamed, not boiled, so the meat is delicately cooked.
On the way home we stopped at the mung-bean and pearl barley stand for red-bean ice and dou-hua (silky chilled tofu) （overkill）.

Saturday night at the movies

My aunt has a "movie club" with a dozen or so friends, all architects and interior designers. They've been meeting for years, about once a month, for a movie and dinner.

Our host for the evening is L.C., is a German-trained architect. He lives outside the city on the mountain. He gutted two adjacent apartments and built a space that is all white, with lots of light and sparely furnished (eg there is no sofa).

He makes his own plum wine, delicate and not too sweet.








The movie is shown on a large projection screen that descends from the ceiling. It's a BBC documentary called "49 up" about a group of people in London, from different class backgrounds, whom the BBC filmed starting in 1964 when they were seven years old and then every seven years. An interesting longitudinal concept but the people were depressingly similar, all with rather narrow casts of minds and lives. After about 45 minutes, after the sixth or seventh person and with eight more to go, someone speaks the collective mind and stops the showing. Enough--on to dinner.

Dinner is pot luck with everyone bringing very special dishes. We start with bread made with brown lichee nuts from Kaohsiung, which is dense and sweet from the nuts. (This is not available in Taipei but the same baker does distribute other nut breads here. You have to order it in advance and then stand on line to pick it up when it comes in. )









Our host has made German-style pigs knuckles and sour kraut (photo above). My aunt has brought chicken with eggplant and tomato sauce. There is a big salad and a little one made with cucumber and hard boiled eggs, tossed with a sugar/vinegar dressing and topped with a crumbled chips that are made from an Indonesian root that has a slightly bitter taste (plates of bread and chips can be seen on the table in photo above right). Half-way through the meal we switch from red wine to plum wine.

Desserts include a cake from the Red Leaf bakery, very light (the purple frosting is made with taro, and is delicious); and little chocolate cakes that are caramelized on the outside, from the Boite de Bijou bakery. More red wine and plum wine. A very cosmopolitan evening.

Rainy Saturday morning

My brother is in town for the weekend. It's raining but we go out to satisfy his craving for shenjianbao--Shanghai style bottom-fried dumplings. The best place is called "qi hao" (number seven), for it's next to the number 7 exit of the Guting subway station. We get all three kinds, meat, cabbage, and leek, to take home for lunch.

On the way back to catch the no. 74 bus I take him through the little lanes behind Shida Road. We stop to get zua-bing, which is a scallion pancake that the cook fluffs up while griddling it so that the layers separate. We get one with a scrambled egg cooked with it. I eat mine with garlic sauce; he eats his plain.

Do It True

Big rains all day but it cleared up around 7 so we went out for dinner and then did some shopping in the Sun Yat Sen Memorial-City Hall area, not far from our place. We ate at a Beijing restaurant 北平 都一處 (duyichu), which could have been transliterated as dewey chew but they have endearingly transliterated as Do It True... Fantastic shao bing (sesame buns with layers like a croissant; you eat after stuffing meat into it. I've had this many times with sliced beef in it--such as those at A&J's in the DC suburbs--but this came with big slices of pork with the layer of fat on top). We had two other signature dishes, salad of shredded boy-choy, dried tofu, and cilantro, made with a special vinegar; smoked chicken, and braised tofu. They are also famous for hot-pot but it doesn't seem right to order this on a summer day. Though there were people there having it. I'm told there is a Do It True in Flushing, must check on this when I get back!


After dinner we walked to the City Hall area, which is in shadow of Taipei 101 (top photo). When built it was the world's tallest building but it's lost that status to a new building (in Dubai, I think. Who keeps up with the world's-tallest-building data?) We went first to a shop run by Taiwan's Buddhist charitable organization. Mostly books but we were interested in the travel-size chopsticks and other travel-friendly dining ware (little bowls, travel cups, etc)--no doubt originally intended for the wandering monk but now for backpackers and anyone who doesn't care for the splintery and eco-unfriendly disposables used in restaurants and food stands. The Buddhist goods are all of very high quality design and workmanship.

We were going to get on the bus to go home but... the MUJI sign at the shopping mall across the street caught our eye so we went over. The mall is called New York New York New York (not sure why the extra New York). MUJI, sophisticate Manhattan readers will know, is the Japanese store that sells housewares, clothing, stationery, and furniture, all with simple design, colors (back, white, gray, beige) and good prices. There's one in Soho and in the new NY Times building, and a MUJI corner in the MOMA design store. They are all over Taipei and the ones here are much bigger and with much greater selection than the ones in NYC. The Taipei stores are owned by the same Taiwan conglomerate that owns 7-11. I'm told that the price in Japan is one-third of that in Taiwan (and US). Alas, we are not in Japan right now. But it was still a bargain because we bought t-shirts with 7-11 coupons!

7-11 here is on nearly every block. Their coffee is quite good, they have a hot-food bar, and you can pick up train tickets, pay your utility bills, and even recharge your cell phone. It's said that there are two businesses in Taipei that will never fail: a 7-11 franchise and a shao-bing (see above, though these are typically eaten not with meat but with a fried donut stick)/ dou-jiang (soy milk) stand.

Southern Taiwan

My aunt's office took its annual excursion this weekend. Six busloads (!!) of people went to the southern part of the island, to Tainan city and environs (about four hours from Taipei). Very hot (in the 90s) but not humid. More activities than you want to know about. This and the following few posts are some highlights.

Here, outside of Tainan, the "Ten Drums" group, which is housed in an old sugar mill complex. A very large place, with big spaces for performances, classes, museum, etc. etc. etc. (Part of an apparent global trend to use former industrial spaces for artistic purposes. See earlier posts on Beijing 798 and Shanghai Tianzifang, both of which refer self-consciously to NYC's Soho.) The performance was quite good. Though I would say the Ju drum group, Taiwan's premier percussionist ensemble is better (see earlier post on MuLan).

Kaohsiung--Fine Arts Museum

Sunday morning we went to the coastal city of Kaohsiung, about 40 minutes from Tainan, for a visit to the Fine Arts Museum. It's Taiwan's newest and largest. There was a big show of the work of Josef Albers, of the Bauhaus (top right). In addition to his homages to the square, many early drawings, Bauhaus furniture, and color studies.










There was also a retrospective of the modernist painter, Richard Lin (below, top), who was born in Taiwan, spent many years in the UK, then returned to Taiwan (a contemporary of the sino-italo painter Hsiao Chin); and photographs of the Russian artist Leonid Tishkov's series, My Private Moon (below, bottom). There was a moon installation in a pavilion in the park next to the museum but no time to see it. For more on museum and artists, see links, left.

Salt mountain

A tourist stop on the way to Tainan, near the salt flats, with a salt mound and tourist stands, including these guys selling dried fish and goose eggs (enormous), offered raw, boiled plain, and boiled in traditional medicine. There was a store selling salty toothpaste, seaweed shampoo, etc. We had a "salty" ice cream bar, not really salty but savory, egg flavored with big pieces of walnuts in it (pretty good).

In Taiwan, people will create a tourist stop out of just about anything. The vendors gather and so there are snacks, drinks, knick-knacks, sunhats, toys, etc etc etc. The tour buses stop (undoubtedly there are kickbacks). Basically they have figured out how to make money around a bathroom break. We also went to an old sugar mill (no longer operating) near Taichung, same kind of deal.

Oyster Heaven

We went to an oyster farm on the coast, near Tainan. As far as the eye can see there are thousands, tens of thousands, of sticks planted under the water, from which the oysters grow on strings.

There was also a lovely little sand island, with pine trees and a beach.

I had a fresh oyster, opened on the boat. Bigger than a Malpeque; about the same size as the oysters that come out of the Peconic Bay on the north fork of Long Island. Good texture, very briny, but because it just came out of the water it was warmish.

When we got back, we roasted oysters on a little grill on the dock.
很棒！(hen bang! = awesome). Probably the favorite activity of the tour--and not least because the waiting for the oysters to cook (and their shells to pop open) made the eating even more pleasurable. The next day at lunch (restaurant with traditional Tainan cuisine) we had a terrific omelet made with oysters and scallions, served over a bed of stir-fried bean sprouts.

Le Pont （樂 朋）

Here is a most interesting restaurant in Taipei: "Bistro Le Pont", near Yungkang Street, the hot spot for little cafes. As you can see from the photos, it's a French bistro. The menu is in Chinese and French (with prices given in Taiwan dollars and Euros). The wait staff greet you with "bonjour" and bid you farewell with "au revoir." The specialty is goose.

But the food is not French. It's all, or nearly all, Chinese food. Breast of goose is served two ways, smoked and roasted, both absolutely delicious, tender and not a trace of fat. You can order rice or noodles (for example, fried rice with goose meat). We had some vegetables--an order of squash and an order of bean sprouts, both very good but also similar in that they both seemed to have been sauteed in goose fat. Soup with bamboo and some goose meat. etc. etc. etc.

The table is adorned with place mats with a recipe (in French) on how to make duck confit. But you can't order it. The menu did have an item served with sauce "Saint Jacques" but I'm not sure what this is (my only reference is the scallop). Alas, there is no foie gras.

The original restaurant is in the city of Kaohsiung, in southern Taiwan, next to a bridge, hence the name. The translation into Chinese is clever: "le peng" sounds like Le Pont, it means "happy friends."

I'm told that "theme" restaurants in Taiwan are very popular. ( There is a restaurant where the theme is a hospital. Diners sit in wheelchairs.) At Le Pont, the French bistro is a theme, not a cuisine.