I dearly wanted to ask this kid whether his choice of t-shirt was intentional or not; and also, whether his parents understood it!

Well, now that I’m finally back in good old New York and my last silly t-shirt gift has been posted to its recipient, it’s time to collate my best photos– of the best silly t-shirts with broken English (or, Chinglish) spotted in Taiwan.

Given to a friend and former roommate, we puzzled about what the intended meaning might have been. Perhaps, "Every setback is a hidden opportunity?" What do you think??

So although these shirts are not brought to you BY the Ministry of Silly Walks, they were photographed in the same gently-poking fun spirit. Other amazingly silly captions spotted over the year (but lacking in pics) are listed below, in order of remembered hilarity:

This shirt wins for "most understated." Also, not shown here: it is ridiculously cropped, and goes over a fitted tank. For everyone's favorite hip and trendy lab manager!

1. This color sucks! (written in sharpie pen-like font on a salmon-orange 80′s style t-shirt)

2. ZEAL (written in rhinestones across a bedazzled hot pink t-shirt)

3. The Amazing Miracle: One day you’ll see it happen to me. (I may or may not own this shirt. Optimism is good for the soul, ya know?)

4. STOIC (in dark blue on an acid-washed jeans denim printed 80′s style t-shirt)

5. I Need More Sleep (worn by a 40-something Taiwanese man nonchalantly walking down an MRT escalator)

6. You’re the Best! (in fancy silver script on a black background, which begs the question– is it talking to me or to you?)

7. She was so tired… her sneaker was untied… looks so good!!(utter chaos, really)

I seriously considered getting this one for my friend who writes a blog of a picture of Karl Marx (among others) saying funny things. But then, I thought he might appreciate a photo just as much, if not far more.

8. Let’s Plant Some Greens (couldn’t tell if it was related to being green, eating greens, or simply gardening)

9. Barbie (with a golden crown on a navy blue hoodie)

10. And, last but certainly not least, Winner The Pooh (under a huge picture of Winnie the Pooh’s face)

Please comment below and/or link to your favorite Chinglish/English/Chinese characters mangled into English translations on t-shirts, bodies (hilarious Chinese characters tattooed on westerners, anyone?), or street signs.

And wishing you a very silly Monday and mid-holiday season week! Coming soon: more pop songs in Chinese, and Taiwan election coverage from this side of the Pacific.

Hello, stranger, indeed.

My former roommate Tascha helps model t-shirts.... and in case you didn't catch that one...

.... let's see that t-shirt up close!!

Weigh those optiond, please! Weigh them!

Okay the thing I love about this t-shirt is that it is ACTUALLY silkscreened from a real, live, I <3 NY plastic bag. See the fine print below for recycling instructions and how to stop kids from choking on it. Amazing.

And THIS is my favorite t-shirt of all time. Should've bought it, seriously. I now have a terrible case of non-buyer's remorse. But at least I have this photo to prove it exists!!! Also, to anyone interested in Taipei: it was at that funny cheap t-shirt shop by the intersection of Zhongshan and Nanjing roads.

Happy week after Thanksgiving, everyone! Just a quick announcement to say that my writing has been published in the new issue of Fourth River, a literary magazine based in Pittsburgh. And it’s IN PRINT. Sure, I’ve seen my writing in print before, but it’s typically been short columns, with creative stuff going up on the web. So there is something very satisfying about being able to hold my work in a bound magazine, to flip through the pages of familiar words (oh, so, so familiar, after much revision), and toss the weight of the printed volume down onto a table with a light thud.

These are the moments when I feel like a real writer, not like someone in a delusional state who mistakenly pretends that anything they are scribbling down might actually ever be read by another human being.

Which brings me to a conversation I was having with my former roommate Bridget about writing, and discipline, and sticking to the work even when it’s so hard and lacking in external moments of gratification like this one. We both remembered reading this quote by Ira Glass, and feeling both heartened by it and also wishing that someone had said this to us sooner:

“What nobody tells people who are beginners — and I really wish someone had told this to me . . . is that all of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, and it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not.

But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase. They quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story.

It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

And here’s a video with Glass elaborating just a bit on this theme:

So after that long preface, please click here to order a copy. Fourth River makes a great stocking stuffer! Thanks to friends and family for your support, and hopefully you’ll soon be seeing clips up here of published writing from my year in Taiwan…

And to writer friends and readers, let’s keep producing our large volume of work together! I have only recently realized that the key to writing well and someday being satisfied with the work is just to KEEP WRITING, write deeply, write freely, and just write my heart out. These few and fleeting moments of external recognition remind me that it’s worth it to keep working, to write the stuff that I want to someday read, because it’s worth it. Even if only one other person reads my words and maybe cares a tiny bit about them.

Just to whet your appetite, here’s a short excerpt:

“Cities are my favorite natural expanse–a jungle of people, a forest of culture, an ocean of opportunity. And for me, subways most approximate the kind of motion that Newton described. Sometimes when I ride the subways of New York, I think about our train’s swift movement through the dark tunnels, and wonder: could a train really continue on forever in a vacuum, unhampered by such inconveniences as friction, inertia, or dirt on the track? Such hypothetical motion seems perfect.

Occasionally, I can almost imagine what that kind of perpetual motion would feel like, when I stand on a Local train and hear the rumble of an Express gaining on us. The two trains thunder through the tunnel, until they meet and continue side by side, and for a second, I catch sigh of the passengers in the other car through the brightly lit oval windows. Then the Express roars by; our train seems to catapult backwards and for a moment, I feel myself suspended between time and space, floating.

Sometimes I wonder what forces of physics propelled me out of my hometown, across the country to go to college in California, across the ocean to Paris and back, to live in Boston, as I continue my search to find a city that is my own. Like my father, I see wanderlust embedded in my love of public transportation: the promise of potential, the wind on my face when a train pulls into the station.”

Everything looks familiar, but I feel like an alien. Like I’ve been turned inside out, so my lungs and nerves and liver and intestines are on the outside, and my skin on the inside is rendered a useless organ–sheltering nothing and sweating and goosebumping all over itself.

I sit in a cafe in the health food store in my hometown, that I have been frequenting with my mother since I was three years old. Before I could read, I used to walk around and smell the whole grains and fresh produce and no-sugar-added juices and spritzers. My favorite treats of all time with carob-covered rice cakes, because I didn’t even know chocolate existed. Then came honey sticks– little straw-like tubes full of flavored honey, and black and red “Panda” brand licorice. Later when I discovered chocolate, there were Tiger’s Milk Bars: a light chocolate coating over a nutritious, protein-filled peanut butter interior.

Now I sit at a booth, a recent addition to the cafe of 5 to 10 years ago, with a cup of coffee and a carob-covered rice cake. I used to have Proustian flashbacks of nostalgic childhood memories when I bit into these; today, it tastes slightly stale and waxy. The coffee is lukewarm.

Why does nothing measure up to my memory of it? The menu is in English, not Chinese, Japanese, Malay, or Vietnamese, but I don’t comprehend it. How is a small cup of soup $8.25 USD??

On the left side of the wall, even the First Aid for Choking sign has been re-vamped, refurbished. Now the people choking and saving one another are rendered in full color, and the instructions for how to save lives are more detailed. But it is illegible from more than 10 feet away, whereas the old CPR signs that were required in restaurants in the 1990s were full of huge line drawings of the intricacies of the Heimlich maneuver. I used to study them as a child, preparing myself for the inevitable moment when I would be called upon to save a life. As a 10-year-old. Of course this was perfectly logical to me back then.

Being back in America, from a year living in Asia, is weird. But being back in my small and beautiful but cloyingly intimate seaside resort hometown is unimaginably stifling. I had no idea it would be like this. I feel smothered by the 25 years of memories tucked into every crevice of this place, by the heartache and resentment and despair and fear and desperation I used to feel here as a teenager. My mantra from ages 13-18 was “Get Me Out of Here.” So to be back, with only sketchy plans to go to NYC, only flimsy job leads, little to no savings to speak of and no immediate employment prospects (in the middle of a recession) is TERRIFYING.

But then I think: it was all worth it for the amazing year I’ve just had.

I gulp down my now cold coffee and think with a secret smile of Taiwan, of speaking Chinese, of the food, of the people there who I accidentally grew to love. Of my Liao family– of Aunt Margaret and Uncle Suho and the deluge of family history and political turmoil and personal wellspring of life that I discovered.

Platitudes like “amazing,” “awesome,” “transformative,” “productive,” and “informative” tumble out of my mouth in conversations with strangers, friends, and family– and I kick myself later for not digging deeper, for not being more specific. For not offering anecdotal evidence of how I have completely evolved and transformed and deepened my endurance and capacity for and potential to love and learn and survive and thrive.

I long desperately to somehow prove that the year was worth it– to show people my mosquito bite scars, to carve out a piece of my heart and say, LOOK!!!, Look how finding answers about my half-Asian identity has filled the gaping hole that had always splintered my heart into so many more than four chambers.

Words fail me– frustratingly, as usual– in conversations, but I also sense that no one is quite prepared or willing or interested enough to say, “Tell me HOW your spleen was ripped out and stuffed full of intangibly wonderful and difficult and at times humiliating but mostly exhilarating experiences.” What I really want to do is whip out a syringe and a collection tube and siphon out a little blood from a vein in my arm. Then hold it up and say, “Look! My blood is a different color than it used to be! This is how deeply and cosmically and thoroughly this year of living abroad and research and self-identity quest has affected me.”

But instead, I typically tell a few funny stories about foods I’ve eaten (accidentally and on purpose), places I’ve been, the convenience of the Taiwan 7-11, the views of the beautiful natural scenery, the brutality of the White Terror period and the intensity of visiting the former prison island where my uncle was sentenced to serve for eight years. How many great friends I made, how to say “the best food I ever ate!” or some other phrase in Chinese.

Being back is weird. Everyone who’s ever gone away has had to come back, and maybe experienced similar symptoms–unless they decided not to return. I’m not sure which is harder, staying away or coming home. But until someone invents a blood-color-samples-to-show-how-much-I’ve-changed scrapbooking kit, I’ll have to keep trying and failing to describe the depth of my experience.

On that note, want to see 350+ facebook photos of my amazing adventure in Asia?? It’s okay, I know you probably already looked, even if you’d never admit it.

Temple aglow at night at Asakusa

Can you imagine why?  Below, some views from along the winding and often surprising journey through this beautiful place…

This was my first gong spotted in a Japanese temple, but by no means my last. Temples abound! This one in Ueno Park in Tokyo.

Did I mention that there are lots of temples? This one in Kamakura overlooks the ocean.

Big Buddha.... (Kamakura)

.... little Buddhas! (Kamakura)

Kanji: Chinese characters imported into Japanese language, usually with different pronunciation and often with different character pairings or even some different strokes. Result: I can almost read.... sometimes. This is something something flavor room, I think....

Tokyo sunset...

dusk...

...

... and finally, night. This view from the top of the Metropolitan Building in Shinjuku. (free! open till 11pm! FREE!)

This is my favorite sign in all of Japan. (Arisugawa Park, on my way to the Tokyo Central Library to search for my grandfather's name and political group in a language I don't speak. Results: 3 newspaper articles in Japanese, 1 academic article in Chinese (!!), and several copies of beautiful historical Tokyo photographs. Mood: beyond exhausted.)

And now, for some traditional scenes in Kyoto. I went tripping here with a good friend from Tokyo who has been once or twice before, so she was my guide!

At Kyomizudera temple, the springs of long life flow in the fresh, clean water. Tourists line up to sip from the ancient springs, with cups sanitized in an ultra-modern ultraviolet light machine. Japan: where traditional culture and technological prowess come together in good hygiene!

You too, can dress like (and/or hire) a geisha for a day! (24 hour parking not included)

Kyoto style food: both beautiful and delicious! But remember to eat these delicate shapes slowly and carefully, savoring each flavor and texture. Chinese family-style cooking this is NOT.

Our two days of traipsing through Kyoto's temples, preserved traditional streets, and beautiful natural settings were absolutely magical. Get away from the city and lose yourself in the beauty of historical Japan...

Just before sunset, we found the elusive "Philsopher's Path," tucked away up in the high hills... winding its way next to a small river, and past many little well-preserved Japanese houses. And while two cats played in the brilliant orange glow, we took a moment to contemplate deep questions as the sun set on a long day of exploring Kyoto.... And, cut. print. that's a wrap. (no this was not a movie, we just had a really great day!)

At Arashiyama, two mountains frame a gorgeous green river-- in the distance, a lone temple nestled into the mountainside offers amazing views of the city of Kyoto and its surrounding scenery. Well worth the short if steep climb!

Back in Tokyo, temples at night are even more dramatic than temples by day (at Asakusa).

This goes out to anyone who watches Arrested Development (there's money in the banana stand!). Enough said.

Japan, it was an amazing first visit. You may have won this round, but I will be back: mark my words. For now, Arigatou gozaimasu. ありがとうございます (so long, and thanks for all the fish).

Leaving on a jet plane, a photo by Fields of View, courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons.

Greetings, dear readers! My apologies for the long delay in posting, but it’s because I was packing and leaving Taipei. (cue sad music, movie credits, etc) However! All is not lost! Chin up, disconsolate selves who wish the girl would stay in Formosa (including me!), and consider this: I have much more to write about and reflect upon from my last few months. And then, once I get back to the States, the blog has many possible future lives in its, well, future…

All of these things to be determined and executed, but for now, I am spending a transitional month traveling in Japan and in California, as I finish up research on my grandfather Liao Wen-Yi’s life (15 years of which was in Japan, SCORE! and Stanford University’s Hoover Institution has a whole Taiwan KMT/independence archive– double SCORE!) and wind my way back towards home.

So I will try to stay connected to all of you via the blog, and continue to consider the nature of travel and transience and research and writing, and TAIWAN (as I get nostalgic for foods and drinks and places I will wax even more poetically about them, right?)….. but in the meantime, I turn my eyes to you, dear readers.

What else do you want to hear about Formosa? Please weigh in NOW, in the comments section, so I can make sure in upcoming posts that I answer your questions, tell you no lies, and strive to entertain and inform on this topic in this format, for just a tiny (or very long) bit longer.

So please please please tell me: What else do you want to hear about? Give me some topics and I will write a post inspired by YOU!!!

Some possible topics include but are not limited to: more food and travel around Taiwan posts/advice, on the traveling life, on writing, on research, Taiwanese history findings, how to travel to Tokyo on a shoestring, top 5 (or 10 or 100) things you should do in Taipei while you’re there, the unbearable lightness of being… (the feeling, not the book, ha), cooking in Taiwan, beaches, hikes, and so forth.

Also to everyone in New York, Cali, England (and elsewhere) and in Taiwan: I miss you. My heart is now being pulled towards the east and the west and every which way, so I hope I will see you all soon. And to some of you in the SF area, that soon is going to be now…. before you know it! Now please, help me out and ask some questions!

A few weeks ago, my friend and I went out to Cihu Mausoleum Park, in Taoyuan County, to see Chiang Kai-Shek’s preserved remains and the garden of abandoned Chiangs. I would say, without exaggeration, that this is the most surreal place in Taiwan that I’ve been to all year.

I had wanted to go see the Generalissimo’s former summer home after my professor at Zheng Da explained to me that Chiang Kai-Shek has never been buried. Instead, his preserved body waits in his former home for the day that the “Republic of China” reclaims the China mainland from the “Communist rebels,” at which point it will be given a traditional burial in his hometown. However, the “Republic of China” retreated to Taiwan in 1949, more than 60 years ago, and Taiwan has not had a seat in the United Nations for 40 years. So the pickled body of Chiang may be waiting for quite a while.

There has been recent talk of scheduling a burial for him in Taiwan in the last 10 years, but so far, talks have not led to action.

I am working on an article about the visit to Cihu, since it helped me resolve a lot of my very tumultuous personal feelings about Generalissimo Chiang, and his and Chiang Jing-Guo’s campaign to bring down my grandfather Thomas Liao (廖文毅, Liao Wen-Yi), his political independence campaign, and all connected members of his family. I have been to the 228 Museum in Taipei, and seen Thomas Liao’s name on the arrest lists from 1947, because of his work on the magazine Vanguard (前鋒, Qian Feng), which criticized the KMT government. After the 228 Incident, my grandparents’ apartment in Taipei was ransacked by KMT soldiers, my grandmother and her children were harassed and traumatized.

Suffice it to say I am not Chiang’s biggest fan, but this year has helped me put him in the context of Taiwan’s history and China’s history.  I understand now, that though both the KMT and DPP political parties and politicized historical accounts seek to keep him larger than life– as a God, a role model, a villain, or a symbol– really, he was in the end, just a person. A human, like all of us– full of good qualities and flaws, and he had the fate to play out all of those qualities on the stage of history.

So hopefully, you’ll have the opportunity to read more on this experience and my tangled relationship with the legacy of Chiang, soon enough! For now, though, I have mainly pictures to offer from the trip.

In 2000, when the DPP Party came to political power in Taiwan’s second democratic Presidential elections, the DPP administration offered institutions the chance to remove their Chiang Kai-Shek statues. This is an interesting case of saving face in a massively delicate political situation– since Chiang Kai-Shek has been considered Taiwan’s first president, he is commemorated with an enormous Memorial Hall in Taipei, and has been rendered in bronze in statues placed everywhere: in all public schools, colleges, hospitals, and other government-funded institutions. Accepting a Chiang statue, I believe, used to be mandatory. But in 2000, people had the option to get rid of their Chiang! However, I think because it would be a symbolic gesture of great disrespect to destroy the statues or throw them away, the DPP administration and the Cihu Mausoleum Park decided on a compromise: rejected statues could sit in the park of Chiang’s family, not far from his temporary not-quite-grave. And so the garden of abandoned Chiangs was born. And ironically enough, within the boundaries of this tiny tucked away countryside home, Chiang Kai-Shek is still the emperor of his own tiny kingdom, preserved in bronze and formaldehyde for perpetuity.

A newly discovered Seurat painting: Sunday in the Park with Chiang

Cihu (慈湖) literally means "benevolent lake" (or maybe more appropriately, merciful pond. Pond of forgiveness? Too big a stretch?) Anyway, this is the "慈湖" on the walk up to the black marble coffin housed in a small, fairly modest building.

Here are some visitor’s links and the wikipedia entry for info on how to get to Daxi, where the Cihu Mausoleum is located. My recommendation is to take a train to Taoyuan station, and then wrangle a deal with a cab driver (we managed to get him to take us on the 30 min ride for NT$450, or $15 USD). The local bus to Daxi from Taoyuan, plus the super-local bus FROM Daxi up the mountain (or a $150 NT cab ride from Daxi), is an extra hour and a huge hassle. It’s not exactly an easy public transport commute.

Yesterday morning, I returned to a familiar spot to witness environmental awareness in action: Fuyang Eco Park, for a Scavenger Hunt organized by Ideal Day. It was 11 am, and the heat was just beginning to rise, but it was moist and shady until the umbrella of trees enveloping the entrance to the park. Participants in the scavenger hunt gathered in loose groups– the teams that they brought or formed on the spot– and Taiwanese and foreigners, students and professionals and families, all mingled together happily. Excited anticipation hung in the air.

“I’m so afraid to speak Chinese, afraid that people will laugh at me,” said an American student to a Taiwanese girl. “Don’t worry, we feel that way about speaking English!” her new friend replied. “We won’t laugh,” they all agreed. “Let’s practice both languages today.”

My new friend Dan is part of Ideal Day, a group for social action, philosophical discussions, and the promotion of social change through raising money and awareness about various causes. In May, they had their first event to raise money for a few different charities– and this weekend, the cause was the environment. Fuyang Eco Park was an apt location, then, since it represents a victory by NGOs in Taiwan to promote green spaces, and preserved otherwise potentially endangered species. As a speaker from the Society for Wilderness, an NGO formed in 1996, explained, the park was a converted property that used to be part of the military training grounds (probably part of the nearby Liuzhangli military base), but now there are many different species of animals, that you wouldn’t see anywhere else.

This and most other photos taken by the talented Ada Hsu. Check out these and more on the Ideal Day facebook page.

Since Fuyang Eco Park is down the street from the apartment I lived in for 10 months in Taiwan, I know it well! I used to climb the mountain trails, to see the view of Taipei 101, hike around the hills, and along the way, I used to see amazing flora and fauna. There is a butterfly viewing area (Taiwan has more different species of butterflies than any other place in the world!), and once, my friend and I saw flying squirrels soaring down the mountain paths at dusk. Another time, while drinking beers on tree stumps by the entrance at 2am, my buddies and I watched the park’s local bats.

Jim, one of the Ideal Day organizers of the scavenger hunt, said that morning he saw “an insane death match between an enormous spider and an even larger wasp! You know, the wasps that are as big as your fist? It came flying in, stung the hell out of the spider, and then dragged it away. A one of a kind sight!” I told Jim I was sorry I missed it.

Ming-Tang and Jim explain the day's adventure to a large group of participants.

The group Ideal Day does do more than just observe wasps and spiders, however. Founded by Ming-Tang Yang and a group of highly committed and enthusiastic young people, Ideal Day set up yesterday’s scavenger hunt to introduce locals foreigners alike to Taipei’s green spaces and environmental preservation efforts. Destinations included 228 Peace Park, the Botanical Garden, and Da An Park– and tasks involved taking photos of different species of animals, answering questions about nature exhibits featured at different locations, and even having some goofy fun among the group! Participants excitedly collaborated to enrich their own experiences of Taipei and to share these insights with the greater community at large.

I asked Ming-Tang how the group Ideal Day came about, since the group began this year, and they are looking forward to planning more events in the coming months. “We used to be a Ted Talks discussion group,” he said. “We found ourselves discussing all of these issues, and having many ideas about how to enact change. So I thought, let’s do something about it.”

Turning talk to action is tricky, so I admire the group’s enthusiasm and commitment to organizing events. “We all have full-time jobs,” Ming-Tang said, “and we only meet once a week. So we have to do a lot of planning and discussing by email. It’s amazing how much work goes into planning.”

More than 100 people joined in for the day, so hopefully Ideal Day’s hard work has paid off in raising more awareness about the environment, and about their group!

The Winners of the day!

Ideal Day organizers and volunteers group photo!

To get involved with Ideal Day and hear about their next event, check out www.facebook.com/IdealDay, or check out their blog: http://idealdayspread.blogspot.com/. OR email idea.1smile@gmail.com. Coming up next is a city walk to see more cultural and natural gems in Taipei– slated for the 3rd week of September. Check facebook for details.

So, now to you, readers: How do you discover and appreciate the spaces near where you live? Alone, or with friends? I like to bring a notebook and a camera (or a snack) when I go hiking up a mountain or exploring a park alone, to write in a different setting. What are your favorite activities to do in the natural world?

Friends + Cast after the show. Pippi is the one with the orange braids, of course!

Do you remember Pippi Longstocking, the beloved Swedish books (and movies) from your youth? Well, apparently Pippi has gone from the “south seas” all the way to Taipei, and our friend Bryan told us about a wonderful Swedish director’s version at a Taipei theater on Guling Street.

So we trooped down, for a live show in Chinese with Pippi, wiping the floors with towels strapped to her feet, dancing and singing with her friends, the white horse and the monkey Mr. Nilsson…. as well as a few human children too.

And it was surprisingly good! Great, even. For me, ironically, the best part was not the surreal escapades down memory lane or the goofball slapstick comedy, but the fact that I could understand just about all of it. I apparently speak 6-year-old Pippi Longstocking Chinese, but it was thrilling to be able to sit, listen, and follow the dialogue, no matter how fast. I did have to turn around and ask my more advanced Chinese-speaking friends for some vocab help (“drown,” “naughty,” “shipwreck”), but then I also helped translate sentences or scenes for less experienced friends (not at all qualified for this, obviously, but still quite a heady feeling).

Check out tickets and so forth HERE, since it is playing for one more weekend in Taipei.

And here are some more pics of the cast, below, with two other friends’ impressions. Long live the inner child in each of us!

“The monkey is the best thing I have ever seen in my life. When I grow up, I hope I can dance like the horse. I was scared when it went dark and the baby cried. I cried, too, because Pippi is all alone and her friend says that her dad is probably dead. Pippi’s mum is definitely dead, and so this would mean Pippi is an orphan. But also I mainly laughed, because it’s really funny, it’s the funniest play I have ever seen in Taipei. I wish I had a gold sequin tailcoat like that. I feel inspired to paint my house yellow. Maybe I will dye my hair. This review is not necessarily in order. Pippi is the best.”

– one satisfied customer, a Chinese-English translator and dramatic connisseur

“What for small children is a hearty serving of hijinks, for adults is nothing less than whimsical trip down surreal lane, with racial role-switching and plenty of monkey business.  A veritable smörgåsbord of laughs.”

– another satisfied customer, and Swedophile

Sushi Express, you complete me.

So I’ve been packing and shipping boxes home the last week or two, as I enter my last month in Taiwan. Which leaves me very little extra energy to write every day, work on the book, make coffee, sleep, say good bye to  friends, follow up on research– let alone blog. (Also maybe I was being haunted in the fantasy treehouse–possibly).

But I still had time to eat!

So this is an unabashed excuses-making post, documenting some recent photos of food in Taipei. Aka: what I’ve been eating lately.

Some pros of summer in Taiwan: When it is 36 degrees and 90 percent humidity (read, 95 degrees F with a heat index of 110), there is NO BETTER FOOD than sashimi and sushi. At least, in my humble opinion. (Cf: the Ninja-themed restaurant where a friend had her birthday dinner.)

Also, one would never expect to eat hotpot in the summer, right? But apparently, with lots of air conditioning and a therapeutic sweating-effect, “mala hot pot” (痲辣 火鍋 spicy, Szechuan-style peppercorn hot pot) can occasionally hit the spot! Yummm, spice that up!

Cons: Such delectable fare (especially the sashimi), though miles cheaper than its American counterparts, can be rather expensive, or gui (貴)– so I have also eaten my share of cheapo street food, local Taiwanese noodle shop eats, and, my favorite combo of sushi + cheap eating, the grand “Sushi Express.” With a conveyor belt sushi bar, a menu for ordering your favorite combos and plates, and takeout trays, Sushi Express combines the best of what Taiwan has to offer in its culinary scene: quality, consistency, convenience, and creativity. Every plate (orange or green) is 30 NT (or $1 US) so no worries about eating your fill of sliced raw fish!

Sushi Express has an intimdiatingly awesome takeout sushi platter. Add 6 people, some Taiwan beer from 7-11, and a scenic place to sit and eat (in our case, CKS Memorial Hall gardens, maybe or maybe not during a typhoon) and it's a party!

One fun and slightly poignant discovery that I’ve had this week, now that I’ve been in Taiwan for a year, is that I’ve seen every fruit season in Taipei. This week, the late August/early September season, I began to see two of my favorite tropical fruits lining every fruit stand’s counters and packing the shelves at the grocery stores: passion fruit (百香果, which means, literally, “100 fragrances fruit”) and longyan fruit (龍眼果 which means, literally, “dragon eyes fruit”). Check out my former fruit/commute post from last year for some serious time travel!

A big bunch of longyan fruit and a big bowl of cold noodles from the noodle lady at the nearby noodle shop! Heavenly summer lunch.

Vietnamese food in Taipei is a rather uncommon but always budget treat! At this place on Taishun Road near ShiDa, I got these spring rolls, a Vietnamese sandwich (amazing spiced meat filling and veggies in a French baguette) and a Vietnamese iced coffee, all for 130 NT, or $4.30 USD. Yum.

And of course, summer’s pineapple (鳳梨, feng li, literally “phoenix pear”) continues to make me pine away until I’ve got it, ha–but to my dismay, mangoes are nearing the end of their season! This also explains why I didn’t see many fresh mangoes around Taipei last fall, but why my mango-a-day summer breakfast schedule was so successful for the past two months.

A "festive" breakfast of crepe with melted cheese from Carrefour, mustard from Fulbright friend, mango from fruit produce market down the street, coffee from our French press.

Other highlights of packing and eating this week included making my second round of Taipei Buffalo Wings, with the Frank’s hot sauce imported by kind friends this year straight from the US of A.

So please tell me, readers: what foods can’t you live without while living abroad? What’s the best thing you’ve eaten lately this summer? And to those friends, Fulbrighters, and fellow world travelers who have returned west, what Asian foods do you miss in the States? Please chime in with your comments below and happy munching!

One of the lanterns at the Keelung Hungry Ghost Festival.

This month in Taiwan is Ghost Month. Like an extended Halloween or Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), Ghost Month is the 7th month of the lunar calendar. Apparently during this time, the gates of the underworld fly open and the ghosts are unleashed into the land of the living.

Sound morbid or spooky? Luckily in Taiwan, Ghost Month is quite raucous, loud, full of bonfires, parties in front of temples, festivals, and sacrificial offerings of food, paper money, and treats for one’s ancestors– who are just on an extended visit. Like a summer holiday with the in-laws, if you will.

The list of “Don’t”s for Ghost Month, though, is quite superstitious, and a little creepy–or funny– depending on your tastes. To avoid getting snatched up by one of the ghosts, or casting bad luck on your family to come, you better NOT….

• …  go out alone at night, or camping, or to the tops of mountains alone. You might get snatched!
• …  move into a new house, buy a new car, or go on vacation. Bad luck!
• …  swim in the ocean, lakes, or rivers– ghosts can catch you and sweep you away! I’ve heard pools too, but that seems like a bit of a stretch.
• … pat someone on the shoulder. (I think this one is hilarious, personally!)
• … whistle.
• … say the word “ghost.” (Ooops.)
• … buy sculptures, dolls, or puppets.
• … do anything too risky, alone, at night!!!

Smack in the middle of the 7th lunar month is the 中元節 (zhong yuan jie), or Hungry Ghost Festival (or just Ghost Festival, but I prefer to add the ‘hungry,’ since it adds a visceral sense to the term!). It fell on this past weekend, so with some friends, I ventured out to Keelung, the northern Taiwanese harbor city for the most famous Hungry Ghost Festival on the island. Below are some photos from the festivities.

We stepped out of the train station and practically into the parade, a several-hours long procession of intricate floats, high school and college marching bands, music, firecrackers and fireworks, and streetside stands selling food and giving out cups of juice.

Everyone was in great spirits– and after the parade ended, the entire city trooped down to a “nearby” beach (actually not so near, a fairly far shuttle bus ride away, but it was free!), where paper lanterns from all the floats are removed. The paper lanterns have already been filled with paper money, ornately folded paper flowers, and other offerings to the ancestors, with fortuitous messages written on the sides. Then they are taken down the ocean’s edge and set on fire. And floated out to sea.

On Fire.

These water lanterns, or 水燈 (shui deng), were quite spectacular to behold, and followed a great fireworks display– which we decided diverted the crowd’s attention so the lanterns could be arranged and prepared at the water’s edge.

Photo by Marie-France Johns.

Photo by Marie-France Johns.

Supposedly, the superstition is that the further your family’s flaming water lantern goes in the ocean before it succumbs in a burning mass into the water, the better your luck for the coming year. (Actually, the lanterns floated out to a team of boats waiting to guide and clean up the lantern wreckage– it was a carefully supervised event.) In its metaphorical burning and release of ancestor sacrifices into the ocean, I find the water lanterns quite a beautiful ritual, actually.

A full moon shone overhead, as my adventurous friends and I stood elbow-to-elbow with Taiwanese residents, observers, and tourists from all over the island. In a collective gasp at the first lantern’s commencement out to sea, and a collective sigh at the last one’s departure– there was a real feeling of shared community. I remember thinking of how comforting it must be to pay homage to your whole society’s ancestors, the collective ghosts, as a community.

And personally, as someone who has felt haunted by many family and history ghosts ever since arriving in Taiwan and beginning to uncover the stories of the White Terror period, I felt some catharsis in watching these flaming beacons float out to sea.

Photo by Marie-France Johns.

Photo by Marie-France Johns.

I am not really a religious or spiritual person, but the holiday rituals such as this one in Taiwan– although many are Buddhist or Taoist in origin– often feel less dogmatic than simply traditional. A cultural tradition, after all, is one that brings comfort, and security, and renews your sense of belonging, and of wonder.

So the ghosts are fed for the year!

When I returned home much later that night, there was a roaring bonfire outside the small temple by our apartment. I felt peaceful and empty, and went upstairs and right to sleep.