Taiwan - Chinese New Year 2003
And So It Begins...
Friday, January 17, 2003
Today was also December 15th in the Chinese Lunar Calendar - the last full moon before the new year, and work began at the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial for the giant new year lantern they build each year. It is also the day when families prepare a large feast for the gods, which they leave on the table. The next day, the remaining food can be eaten. Perhaps not surprisingly, all of the food is generally there the next day, but it is the gesture that counts.
Unfortunately, those facts were completely lost on me as my in-laws do not observe that tradition, and my wife failed to inform me that the lantern had begun construction until the next day.
Our day was spent largely in pursuit of food. In the morning, we bundled the baby up in the stroller and headed out in search of breakfast and in the pursuit of other errands. I managed to find another Cong You Bing and had some breakfast.
We stopped at the Technology Building subway station to charge the "EasyCards" my father-in-law provided us with. Since my last visit, Taipei has installed a new system to pay for subway tolls. The EasyCard can be re-charged with credits as needed and only needs to be placed near the reader to be scanned. I've found that the card can remain in my wallet and all I need do is wave my wallet near the reader and it reads it with no problem. It seems to be a good system, although (and I'm not complaining) it doesn't seem to be charging us the full fare. Perhaps there's some discount program in progress.
Our next order of business: SIMM cards for our
cell phones. Since our last trip abroad, Chu-Wan
and I have adopted cell phones using GSM technology.
It's not as widespread in the US as the CDMA
technology used by most US cell phone companies,
but it has the extreme virtue of working in virtually every country in
the world - except Japan, whose cell phone standard is so hopelessly
screwball as to be a nightmare for anyone travelling to or from there.
When we arrived at CKS International Airport, we'd switched our phones over to the local network frequency and we were up and working. At last, cell phone coverage like the rest of the world enjoys! (I can't help but remember the two American businessmen on the train headed to Salisbury, England back in 2000 bitching about the fact that their cell phones didn't work anywhere else in the world except the US.)
Nonetheless, the roaming rate is $1.49 per minute in Taiwan, which is outrageous, so we proceeded to the nearest 7-11 to purchase a pre-paid SIMM card for our phones from a local carrier. (Does it begin to sound like you can buy anything from a 7-11 in Taiwan? It seems you just about can.) Our concern is to be able to contact one another, not receive unsolicited junk phone calls from home, so picking up local numbers seemed the way to go.
Before heading back to the house, we decided to head further southeast from Chu-Wan's parents' home. For some reason, this is a direction I hadn't really walked around in on previous visits - partially because there's nothing there - but it was a nice day for a stroll.
One thing you learn to appreciate quickly when you're pushing a pram is the vastly superior handicap-accessible sidewalks we have in the US. Taipei has gone a lone way to try to improve their sidewalks, including curb ramps and redoing virtually all of the city sidewalks since my last visit. Unfortunately, a theme I see time and time again is: Good intentions, but brain not engaged during implementation. In the two miles or so we walked, I cannot tell you how many times we reached a point where it was simply impossible to proceed without navigating up or down a step or two, sometimes a high as 6 or 7 inches. Most comical are the streets where on one side of the street is a clearly marked handicap ramp, and on the other side of the street, a high, straight curb. Once down in the street, where were they supposed to go?
Upon our return, it was nearly time to go to lunch. It was decided to go to Din Tai Fung for lunch. Din Tai Fung is a famous dumpling restaurant. The tales I've been told are almost unbelievable - restaurant so good that tours are actually organized in Tokyo, 3 hours by plane and at least 1 more hour by bus away, to come to this restaurant for a meal. There's no way I can prove or disprove that story, but I can tell you that, unlike most restaurants in Taipei, this one had 40-50 people (many of them Japanese) standing outside waiting for their number to be called to get in for lunch. We had reservations and still had to wait some 15 minutes.
The restaurant has at least 4 floors holding about 8 tables each, each with its own waiting staff and kitchen. The place is spotless and the service is excellent.
Din Tai Fung is famous for their dumplings, and it is clear that 90% of their business is dumplings. From the street you can watch them making dumplings through the window and they are cooking pan after pan as fast as they can. Are they as good as the legend would have one believe? Yes, they are. Without reservation, they were the best I've ever had, and while I'm far from the most rabid of Chinese food consumers, pork dumplings have always seemed like something that couldn't go wrong, and yet, virtually always in my book, they do. For starters, pork dumplings are ground pork wrapped in a noodle - too often what is billed as "pork" turns out to be a mixture of materials that reminds me that I might be eating yesterday's leftovers - not necessarily all from the same type of animal and certainly not from any definable place on the animal. Not so with Din Tai Fung's dumplings - the pork seemed as good and consistent as can be. At the same time, they make the dumplings so that each one has a pocket of broth inside - care needs to be taken when biting into each dumpling lest a scalding burn could result. I can't describe how enjoyable these dumplings were to me.
Between the four of us, we consumed 3 trays of dumplings, and could easily have eaten more had I not also ordered a bowl of Niu Ryo Mien (Beef Noodle soup). The soup was similarly high quality, with large tasty chunks of roast beef. I can hardly wait to go eat there again.
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