The Middle Kingdom Part IV - The End

Zhangjiajie - Tianzi ("Son of Heaven") Mountain

Unlike Tianmen Mountain, Tianzi is full of rock formations, and is advertised everywhere in the park as the inspiration for the planet Pandora in the film Avatar. I haven't seen the film so I can't really judge.
All I can say is that the pictures here are not really doing it justice. It's like a forested Grand Canyon.

Lots of tourists. I was really surprised at the number of Korean tourists since Zhangjiajie is nowhere near Korea. It's so popular with Koreans that most of the signs have korean translations and the vendors can speak simple korean. I know this because one of them tried to sell me stuff in korean.  

There were a lot of photo kiosks where they take pictures for you. The vendors know all the best angles/scenes and can even laminate the pictures for you. I didn't buy any since I had my own camera. Plus, it was a little off-putting seeing all the computers and printers set up right next to the majestic scenery. It also made avoiding the kiosks in the longshots difficult.

 We took the elevator down the mountain. 300 stories, according to the elevator display. Because there were so many people waiting, they really squeezed as many people as possible per elevator. As a result, I wasn't too scared on the way down simply because the whole thing was just too funny. Or maybe it was because the oxygen was running out. Either way, we landed safe and sound.


A lot of the rock formations have names/scenes associated with them. Some are super apt while others take a little more imagination.

A general inspecting his troops.

An old man carrying a backpack of medicine (in the distance)

The Three Sisters

Yueyang Tower (Hunan)
This tower is also a member of the Four Towers of China. I don't know too much about it except that it was built as a vantage point in a time of war back in the Three Kingdom period. The three stories represent the sky, the person, and the earth. The "tomb" (quotation marks because it doesn't hold the actual body) of a well-known beauty of that period is located near this tower.

It was also rebuilt many times. You can see one of its predecessors as a scale model (right). Puurtty!!!! Imagine one these babies in your backyard. How cool would that be?

Well, that's the end of that.
Our tour guide really sucked on this trip. He didn't know his stuff, basically ditched us at each site, and was super insensitive. Really wanted to sock him in the face the last day - he actually ranted about us TO us for a good hour. The nerve of that guy! But no matter, still saw some interesting stuff and didn't get hoodwinked, so I'd count that as a win.

It's all about food (Part I)

While retracing my Taiwanese roots is important, in the end, it really is ALL about the food. 

In a way, the two are one and the same since such a large part of Taiwanese culture is the food. We love to eat the food. We love talking about the food. We love discovering new food. 

Just the fact that there's at least one daily television show (that I know of) dedicated to exploring all the popular places/foods to eat in Taiwan and it's been running for at least three years and going strong should give you some idea.

Beef noodle soup
My uncle talked about this place's beef noodle soup for weeks before I finally got to try it first hand. He compared every beef noodle soup we had to this place and none even came close.
I should explain that there are many different variations of beef noodle soup, depending on the type of noodles and the way you cook the beef soup.
I'm more partial to the knife-shaving noodles (when made/cooked properly) because it's more chewy. The picture on the left is the hand-stretched variety, which is really good too.
As for soups, I like the clear, more subtle-flavoured stock instead of the more intensely-flavoured red stock (they both have actual names, I just don't know how to translate it properly).

Anyways, the place was AMAZING! Their noodles was perfectly cooked that it still have the al dante consistency. The soup was just right, didn't overpower the beef, didn't leave you thirsty afterwards. Most importantly, the beef. The beef is the ultimate taste. Whether or not you have to chew a million times before swallowing. This beef just came apart in my mouth, releasing its flavours. My mouth is starting to water even as I type. It was just THAT good. It may be the best noodles I've had so far.

I also had the braised beef wrap. Delicious! I even brought some home to have as breakfast the next day. The fact that it was still pretty delicious after a day of sitting in the fridge was a true sign of its food goodness.
 
If it wasn't for the fact that this place was far from my house and I got sick the very last week of the trip, I would have surely visited it again and had more of this delicious delicious food.

McDonald's 
Part of me feels resentful that I spent two perfectly good I-could-have-eaten-elsewhere-far-more-delicious-and-more-Taiwanese breakfasts at Mickey D's. But alas, it was right by the subway exit closest to home and they were having a special breakfast deal. Sausage McMuffin combo for about $1 Cdn.
While I'm glad they finally put away the old Ronald McDonald statue that haunted my nightmares as a kid, the new one is even creepier (left). I mean, he's beckoning you to sit beside him. That grin, the vacant eyes, the way the arm is draped across the back of the seat. What kid/person in their right mind would want to sit next to him?!?!?! He looks like a clown with lewd-ish/pedophilic tendencies. Arg! I'm getting goosebumps looking at this picture.

On to happier images.

Deep-fried Stinky Tofu
Not as stinky as I remembered but still delicious. I had to share (gah!) this batch with 3 other people so I could only have one piece :(  There were tons of food already so I didn't order any more. This is what I get for trying to cram all the delicious food available from the Shilin nightmarket into one night. Which in retrospect, was the correct decision since I didn't get a chance to return.

Back in my glory days, I could have eaten 2-3 servings of stinky tofu all by myself. And a large bubble-tea.

More deliciousness from the nightmarket.

Left: Oyster omelet with egg. A classic.
Right: Squid stew. Vermicelli is optional. Yummm.

Look at that food I didn't get to try (Mango slushie, bubble tea, takoyakis, fried chicken filet...) Darn!

I guess it'll have to wait until next time.

Ranina ranina


FYI: "Ranina ranina" is not the chinese name of this crab. I had such a hard time finding its name in english that I figured I'd put in its scientific name too, since it's what finally led me to its name in english.

How it all started was this soup (left). If I were a comic character, I would have stars in my eyes and seafood dancing in the background after trying this soup. Western soup-wise, I tend to like creamy soups over broths, but this was like seafood concentrate. All the best parts of seafood without the funky seafood taste (I'm not explaining myself well, but that's the best I can do).

When my mom described the sea creature used to make the soup, what I understood was basically, "A crab with a tail...umm... kind of like a lobster, but not quite a lobster." You can imagine my confusion. So I decided to try to google this elusive crab-lobster hybrid. Yeah, typing "crab-lobster hybrid" did not get me anywhere.

And since my mom only knew its nickname (in taiwanese, no less!) I was pretty much left with nothing. In the end, I scoured seafood menus, googling everything that might be this mysterious creature. Finally I found it, which lead me to its scientific name, which led me to its english name -> Red Frog Crab.

Personally, I like "crab-lobster hybrid" better.

Stinky Tofu

There are so many different types of stinky tofu: steamed, grilled, and deep-fried (my fav, of course).
Here it is, grilled. I had the classic - special sauce with peanut powder and parsley.You can also have it with kimchi.
The trick to eating grilled stinky tofu is the skewers. You have to hold it like chopsticks, but not with too much force because you'll end up slicing right through the tofu and the bottom half will fall off.
It requires careful coordination and dexterity to eat one.

Lastly, we were in a town famous for their tofu (where we also got the grilled stinky tofu above) when I discovered this little novelty - tofu ice cream.
I wasn't too sure about it. Past experience with tofu-based meat products has left fear in my heart. But my mom already bought it so I figured, why not, I could always spit it out (discreetly of course) if it ended up tasting like... well... tofu.
It actually turned out much better than my expectations. No weird aftertastes and still somewhat creamy. Okay, the texture was slightly off, but I think it's more because of the sesame rather than the tofu. It's one of those I'm-glad-I-tried-it-but-the-real-thing-is-still-better items.

The Middle Kingdom Part III

 Zhangjiajie - Tianmen Mountain ("Gate of Heaven" Mountain)

The highlight of the entire tour was really Zhangjiajie ("Zhang Family's Region" ), which is a town-city surrounded by mountains.

One of the more famous mountains, Tianzi Mountain, uses an old-styled painting as the park map, which I thought was pretty neat. You prob. can't see it, but the line running up the middle of the picture is the gondola route.

Never a big fan of heights, I wasn't very happy about the gondola ride. Luckily for me, the weather was pretty miserable that morning. The fog-cloud was so heavy that I couldn't see what was underneath as we rode the gondola, but just based on the movement of the gondola, we were going pretty high up. And just I saw a mountain peak that seems to be the gondola's final destination, we went over the peak and even higher up. Not sure you can see it on the map, but the gondola runs from the bottom (the little red house), hits a peak about 1/3 up, and then all the way up to the very top.

Some pictures from the gondola.

On the way down, we saw the road leading up another location - Tianmentong ("Hole in the Gate of Heaven") - on the mountain. Classic "hairpin" loops. While it was super cool looking from above, my stomach was starting to churn from just thinking about the potential for motion sickness. A genetic weakness. Curse you, sensitive inner ear!!!!

We finally arrived at the very top, above a sea of clouds. Very very cool (in both senses). I had to wear my extra thick jacket.

 

Along the mountainside, a scaffold pathway was built right into the face of the cliff. I pretty much freaked as I walked (lots of cursing inside my head) trying to convince myself that we weren't THAT high up and try not to look down. All the while, my mom walked super fast (by my standard, and I already walk pretty fast), zooming pass tourist groups. Basically, when you look down, it's clouds and more clouds so you can't even see the bottom, which I'm not sure added or subtracted from the fear factor. On the left is a picture of the beginning of the pathway. This is where the path was the widest and the easiest to walk. As it continues, it gets narrower (about 1/2-2/3 the width) and the side of the cliff becomes more and more vertical. Not sure what the ribbons are for. I'm guessing for luck?

The scary height aside, the view was amazing. The fog-cloud was starting to clear up.

 Right: I was totally coerced into this picture. I did not want to step onto this platform. The floor is FRICKIN' glass! It took my mother a good 10 minutes lecture about "once-in-a-lifetime blah blah blah" to get me on there. I didn't let go of the railing the entire time. It might seem hysterical on my part but I really REALLY don't care for heights. And when she told me that the picture was bad and she wanted to take another one, my answer (I believe) was, "Uh...thanks, but no freakin' way!" I can deal with a bad picture, but not the mental anguish.

Going down the mountain on the gondola. Yes, I held my camera outside the window (even though the sign said not to). Why? Because my mother said that since I was closest to the window, I was obligated to take the picture (I promptly switched seats with her after this picture). I can just imagine it now, losing my grip on the camera and watching it fall into the mountainous abyss below. And of course, if that really happened, it would have been my fault for losing the camera.

The bus ride wasn't too bad, but a few people on the bus were looking a bit greenish afterwards.

What you're looking at, my friends, is the nine hundred and ninety-nine steps of the Stairway to Heaven, and the Hole in the Heavenly Gate.

As the youngest person my group (my aunt and uncle are both in their 70s), I felt it was my obligation to conquer the stairway. Yeeeeah, big mistake. About half way up, I thought my heart was going to jump up from my throat and kick my ass for being overly confident and for eating all those fries in my youth.


 But in the end, conquered it I did. Muhahahahahahah!!!! That's my foot on the bronze turtle-dragon at the the very top (left). Whooo!!!

Unfortunately, the euphoria waned quickly as I realized I now had to get myself down without tumbling down. In retrospect, getting down safely was more difficult than climbing up. Number one, the stairs were steeeeep, and number two, the stairs were short (bottom), only covering about 3/4 of my feet.

 In the end, it took me twice as long getting down as it did climbing up. And my legs were shaking so badly afterwards that I couldn't even walk properly.

And to think, my mother wants to go to Huang Mountain next time, which, according to sources, requires so much climbing/walking that it makes this place sound like a cakewalk. 

The MIddle Kingdom Part II

Guiyuan Buddhist Temple (Wuhan)

Europe has churches. Asia has temples. Look at that pond full of turtles. So many of them! And they're stacked on top of one another! People "donate" the turtles to the temple as a gesture of goodwill. 

The temple grounds were HUGE and packed with both patrons as well as tourists like myself. You follow the crowd/herd because trying to go against the tide would be just plain crazy. I mean, look at that crowd!

One of the most noticeable characteristics of this temple was the number of "Lohans" it hosted. You walked in the building and it's a maze full of these minor buddhas, every single one of them unique. You're suppose to add up your birthday or something or another and find the corresponding buddha with the same number in order to get your fortune. I wasn't a big fan of all the buddhas (some of them were pretty spooky looking...), so I skipped that part and just moved on. There must have been over a hundred statues. Gah, the nightmare about statues coming to life in the dark of the night suddenly just got a lot scarier! The reason why I didn't take any pictures in this particular room.

You could have also gotten your fortunes by picking up wooden sticks with numbers. You'd then use the number to receive a corresponding fortune. Of course, a "donation" was necessary.

 

A rare moment of peace (left) taken near the back of the temple (me thinks...)

P.S. Just thought I'd include this picture of a really cute dog I saw on the temple premises while waiting for the rest of the tour group. Because it's always nice to look at pictures of cute animals!

The Middle Kingdom Part I

Since chronology is already majorly messed up post-wise, I figured I'd embrace the chaos rather than trying (in vain) to fix everything.

I spent part of my Taiwan trip in China with my mom, aunt, and uncle in one of those bus tours. While originally, everyone wanted to go to the World Expo in Shanghai, the purported 5-6 hour line-up per exhibition site had us going to Zhangjiajie (in Hunan "Lake-South" province) instead. We actually started in Hubei "Lake-North" province (in the red), in the capital city of Wuhan.

 Yellow Crane Tower

One of the four great towers of China (alongside Yueyang tower, Tengwang tower, and Yuejiang Tower). It was where poets gathered to drink and make poems (what else?) Legend has it that it's where a famous person became enlightened and rode to the heavens on a yellow crane, hence the tower's name. In the lobby, there is a large mosaic depicting this scene. 

Due to fires and civil unrests, the tower was destroyed and rebuilt many times (a common theme in all the "historic" sites), each time reflecting the architectural styling of the period . The current one was built in the 80's.

The tower actually dedicated an entire floor to models of the tower's previous incarnations. Since I love scale miniatures (who doesn't?), of course I had to take pictures. Aren't they cool? If I could run away with them, I would have. The one on the left depicts the tower from Qing dynasty while the one of the right is of the Tang dynasty.

Neat fact: because the tower is so prone to fires, when they designed the current building, they added a special motif to the roofs (left). The "fish tail" depicts one of the sons of the sea dragon king. Since dragons controls and is of water (sea, lakes, rain, etc...), the addition is believed have the ability to prevent fires. *Fingers crossed*
So far, so good.

It's the little details that makes historical buildings such as this one so amazing to visit in person. Although personally, I think the "christmas lights" really cheapens the vibe of the whole place. Gah! It's like putting Starbucks in the Forbidden City (Oh wait, they already did that...)


Mural depicting all the famous people associated with the tower (mostly poets whose names I have no idea. I really need to brush up on my chinese history/geography).

View from the top of the tower (right). See the bell? Ringing it supposedly gives you good fortune. I didn't do it mostly because our guide was herding us to the next destination and also that it was pretty pricey for knocking metal with a piece of wood (they charge per knock).




Things I've Learned - Important Things to Know When Going to China:

1. At all times (and I mean ALL TIMES), have tissue paper/toilet paper on your person. Because it is never safe to assume that the places you'd think would have a steady supply [i.e. public washrooms] would have any. Also, hoard any and all of antiseptic wipes you come across. Those things are equivalent to gold! You'll thank me later.
2. Chinese people are pushy (both verbally and physically). They are verbally blunt to the point of tactless-ness. Even people in the service industry can seem extremely rude/lacking in common courtesy. Case in point: at one of the hotels, a housekeeper came in our room to lock up all the cash bar stuff (which in itself was already kind of a rude thing to do right in front of customers) and then proceeded to argue with a co-worker through her walkie-talkie right in front of us. After which, she slammed the walkie-talkie on the table before leaving for the next room. I was flabbergasted at her behaviour but what I got from the whole incident is that generally speaking, they feel that being extremely blunt/straight-forward is a positive trait and that people who are polite/courteous as really fake because they don't speak their minds. I also realized that they don't think of themselves as representatives of the restaurant/hotel/service they are working for. "As long as the work gets done, who cares what my attitude is." It's definitely something to get used to and not be offended at. Someone on the tour said something that I felt was really apt and summed up on China really well. "The infrastructure/hardware is all there, now the software needs to catch up." In the cities we visited, all the hardware (roads, buildings, technology, etc...) were great and modern, but the software (people) needs some updating, especially in the common courtesy department, which I'm sure will happen as they interact more and more with "foreigners" from outside. Whoa, didn't meant for this to be an op. piece, but I guess somethings just needed to be said. 

The end...

   Well, I've arrived back home and in retrospect, I have to say, this vacation has been bittersweet, full of up and downs, and not at all what I had expected (in both good and bad ways).
   Aside from having fun, this trip was really meant to visit family (since I haven't been back to Taiwan for 6-7 years). During that time, a lot has happened, the details of which I'm not going to get into. I can't tell you how shocking it was to have to overlap the memory of my once vibrant grandmother with that of an ailing woman on an hospice bed. During my time in Taiwan, she caught pneumonia and things were a little touch-and-go for a while but luckily she stabilized just before my departure.
   While seeing family members was really great, it also meant I didn't have any personal time to just explore by myself and I only hit about three-quarters of the places on my list. I guess I'll just have to go back to Taiwan again... :)

   All that being said, I also went to a lot of wonderful places that wasn't on my original list thanks to my third uncle (whom in my opinion, can be a professional guide). Over the next week or so, as I unpack and adjust to the 13-hour time difference, I'll be organizing my pictures and updating the blog so stay tuned.

Karma

Well, karma is a real witch with a capital b sometimes. With less than five days left in my vacation, I’m running a small fever and expelled from my own home (we found out that some major repairs had to be done). I’m sitting at a McDonald’s, internet-less (this post was typed out on Word), the construction outside compounding my headache. I suppose it’s the cosmic universe’s way of punishing me for having too much fun. Even the hash brown brings a new wave of nausea.

I really just want to lie down on a comfortable bed and pass out at this point, but as they say in theatre, “the show must go on!”

I was fortunate enough to attend the “trial run” of the Taipei Floral Expo. Thank you big uncle and your connections! It was pretty amazing. Of course, the amazingness of the expo meant huge line-ups everywhere. There were several pavilions, each with a different theme. I went to “the ark,” the wall of which was made up entirely of recycled plastic. The recycled bottles snap together like LEGO and refract light in a way that softens and amplifies. Pretty neat.

I also went to:

-The pavilion of dreams: the pavilion with the biggest line-up. You had to line up just to get your time ticket. I think I lined up around 9:25am and ended up getting a time ticket for 1:40pm. By 10 am, all the time tickets for the day were gone. This pavilion was about the merge between technology and nature. The pavilion is very interactive. You step in a circle and as you breathe in and out, a tiny sapling grows into a giant tree. And there’s also a 360-degree screen that showed amazing views of mountains, marshlands, clouds, etc… I’m sure my description is not doing the pavilion justice. 

That's all for now. Heading home to see if I can lie down for a little bit.