Tag Archives: Night Markets

Photo by ctsnow courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons

Blog readers, meet Eva.  She is my Taiwanese college roommate from Stanford, one of my best friends, and kind of a sister to me.  She and her family have been my cultural translators for Taipei and Taiwan (although she currently lives in Boston), and I will be referring to their help and guidance throughout my adventure.

She has also been a great language buddy with whom I’ve been practicing my burgeoning (and bumbling) Mandarin. And at the risk of turning this into a food blog, one of the most effective ways to learn Chinese vocabulary I’ve found is through discussing food!

So before I left, I asked Eva what her top 5 favorite Taiwanese foods are, that I must try when I arrived in Taiwan.  Her answers provided a great lesson in Chinese language and the fascinating etymologies of meaning that lie embedded in each combination of characters. Eva’s list of Taiwanese highlights was as follows:

1. Beef noodle soup- 牛肉麵 (niu rou mian)

2. Stir fried vegetables, in particular, watercress- 炒空心菜 (chao kong xin cai)

3. Potstickers- 鍋貼 (guo tie)

4. Grilled Sausage with Basil- 烤香腸和九層塔 (kao xiang chang he/han jiu ceng ta)

5. Stinky Tofu- 臭豆腐 (chou do fu) Continue reading →