Contrary to popular belief, I do not have a poor sense of direction. I cannot count the number of times when I have followed my instincts correctly and gotten to my intended destination while the “man” in the car (note the quotation marks, which were very deliberately inserted) insisted I should’ve turned the other direction some miles back.
It is true, however, that upon arriving at college, it took me several days to figure out which door I needed to exit my dorm from in order to reach the dining hall, and that once I discovered which door was the correct one, it took me several days more to figure out how to reliably arrive at the dining hall. Keep in mind that the dining hall was within five minute’s easy walking distance. It must be said, though, that this was not the fault of a poor sense of direction. I am merely unobservant. You see, if I am walking with someone who knows where they’re going, the spatial awareness capabilities in my brain shut off and my feet go on autopilot. (This is, incidentally, why I will never tolerate the presence of a GPS in my car.) Being a typical college freshman, I was desperate to make connections with people and going anywhere alone was personal proof that I would be lonely throughout all my college days. Thus, especially in the beginning, I never went to eat by myself and was, as a consequence, always following someone else’s feet in order to get to the dining hall.
Since then, I have gained an increasing fondness and appreciation for knowing where I am. In fact, when I was traveling throughout Southeast Asia a couple years ago, the girl I was traveling with was immensely grateful for my presence because I always knew where I was and she never did. Without me, she said, she would have been hopelessly lost. (I told her to call up my mother and tell her that. I don’t think she ever did, which is truly a shame.)
You may be asking yourself right about now, “What on earth does all this nonsensical prattling have to do with Taiwan?” Here’s what it has to do with Taiwan: here, I get lost all the time. This is not because I can only read half the street signs. This is not because I haven’t taken the time to acquaint myself with my surroundings. No. It is because every street in Asia looks EXACTLY THE SAME. Block after block consists entirely of restaurants and shops and stores utterly lacking in personality. As evidence, I provide the following.
These photos, as it happens, were not taken in Taiwan, but it makes no difference. Asian streets all look the same (though, admittedly, the streets tend to be narrower and there is less green bandying about the frame). In fact, they bore me so much that I struggled even to come up with those two pictures, as I seem to steadfastly avoid taking pictures of typical Asian streets.
What we have uncovered here is a fundamental difference between American and Asian cultures. American culture is all about individualism and being unique, and that is reflected in the numerous establishments in every American community. They strive to create their own special atmosphere and personality; they use their appearance to mirror the goals of the company, whatever they may be. The appearance of an establishment is, in essence, a reflection of the owner’s personality.
That’s not to say that Asians are devoid of personality, for they certainly aren’t. It’s just that when it comes to business, their focus is decidedly elsewhere (say, on turning over a profit). This is the heart of the observation that in American restaurants, customers pay for atmosphere, whereas in Asian restaurants, customers pay for food.
Unfortunately for me, this means that my landscape is entirely without landmarks. I have to rely solely on street names in order to get from point A to point B. Imagine, for example, someone telling you to meet them at a café, of which there are about a million every mile. “It’s right by that place that sells those good noodles,” your buddy might tell you. This is bad news for you, my friend. Because if there are a million cafés every mile, then there are a gazillion trillion places that sell noodles. And they all look identical.
I know I’ve been kind of a failure at documenting Taiwanese culture since I’ve been here, so I’m going to attempt to make up for it at least in part with an extraordinarily long post. One of the most distinctive aspects of Taiwanese culture (and Asian culture in general) is the food. Life revolves around food. Food is everywhere. Restaurants are omnipresent. In fact, there are so many even within a one-block radius of my apartment building that I’m fairly certain I could eat at a different one for every meal every day and still have restaurants to spare at the end of a month. Everything is noodles, rice, stir-fried, deep-fried, served in pools of oil. The Taiwanese will tell you it’s the best food in the world, but I have yet to figure out how they don’t all weigh 300 pounds, as they eat all the aforementioned types of food constantly and in vast quantities. (Speaking of which, the typical Taiwanese wedding celebration is an 11- or 12-course feast.)
In any case, at the very end of December, Alex came to visit me. I thought documenting what he ate might be an interesting walk through Taiwanese culinary culture. Let’s do the breakdown thus: Relatively Normal Things; Things That Aren’t Gross But You Probably Haven’t Heard of Them; Sea Creatures; and Animals That Walk the Earth.
Relatively-Normal-Things that Alex ate
Taiwan is a haven for tropical fruits. Among the many fruits the two of us ate while he was here were star fruit, pomegranates, wax apples, Asian pears, papayas, and kiwis. You’re probably familiar with all of those except for wax apples, which are bell-shaped, red, slightly spongy, and mildly sweet. They’re really quite nice.
As can be expected, Taiwan is also very well known for its tea. It’s most famous tea is called Oolong tea, so of course Alex had to try it while he was here. Personally I find Taiwanese Oolong tea a little too bitter for me, but it’s definitely worth a try. The other Taiwanese tea innovation known throughout the world now (and yes, it is originally from Taiwan) is called Pearl Milk Tea. Milk tea is either a black or a green tea mixed with milk—the proportion is typically half a cup of tea to half a cup of milk. It’s also extremely sweet (too sweet and milky for me, but you can at least specify how much sugar you want them to put in it for you). The pearls are large, black, chewy tapioca balls that get put in the drink and sit at the bottom. You get an extra-wide straw so you can suck up all the tapioca balls. Lots of foreigners really like the tapioca balls, but I do not number myself among them. They’re just kind of chewy and slimy and flavorless, if you ask me. However, being characteristically Taiwanese, this was another thing Alex tried.
Things-That-Aren’t-Gross-But-You-Probably-Haven’t-Heard-of that Alex ate
For example, hotpot. Hotpot is a meal that takes a long time to eat, so you’d better not be in a hurry. It’s a pot filled with a water-based broth served to you over a burner. You are given lots of different things to put inside and let cook, like meat, vegetables, and seafood. This is definitely one of the less-gross Taiwanese options.
Another interesting option is green-onion pancakes. They’re sort of pancake-shaped but made with white or whole-wheat flour, lots of green onions (a.k.a. scallions), and typically bits of chicken (at least in Taiwan). They’re rather salty and heavily fried. Still, not too bad, although I tend to forgo the chicken bits, as I don’t eat meat.
Slightly more out there were the oyster omelettes we tried when my host family took us to a local night market (night markets are another hallmark of Taiwanese culture, by the way). They must have been made with some kind of starch because they were semi-translucent and gelatinous, like jello. I’m pretty sure there was an egg in there somewhere, too, and some kind of green vegetable, and of course the oysters. Oh, and I’m pretty sure it was served with some manner of sweetened ketchup.
I also made sure Alex tried another Taiwanese staple while he was here—stinky tofu. True to its name, it smells awful. I think it tastes like goats. Not goat meat (I can’t say I’ve ever tried that), but it tastes the way petting-zoo goats smell. Not surprisingly, many westerners avoid stinky tofu.
Sea Creatures that Alex Ate
Taiwan being an island, there was a fair amount of seafood ingested during his trip. Lake fish, steamed fish, fried fish, steamed shrimp, and some really fabulous clams were run-of-the-mill.
The shrimp, however, come with a catch. Unlike in America where we are morally offended when our food stares back at us, Taiwanese people are not the least bit squeamish about the appearance of their food. The shrimp comes to your table much as though it were just plucked out of the ocean, dropped in a frying pan, and dumped on your plate. This is fairly accurate for the most part; when you go to seafood restaurants in Taiwan and ask to see their “menu,” they show you the large quantities of sea creatures sitting alive on ice, on display right outside.
The shrimp, then, are completely intact. They still have their shells. They still have their heads. If you ever wondered how long shrimp antennae are, I can now tell with assurance that they are at least as long as the entire length of their body. For fun, you get to behead your own shrimp. Many Taiwanese eat the brains and such, but that’s a little much for me. It’s enough that after I behead the shrimp, I can still see the greenish spinal fluid oozing from the other half.
Alex also ate some rather fabulous octopus (really, it was delicious), some sort of stir-fried shark, squid-on-a-stick (a local specialty, rather bland and rubbery, but worth trying once), and some exceptionally chewy snails. The snails were quite a challenge to eat, as they were still in their shells, and rather stubbornly at that. In fact, we hadn’t the remotest idea how to remove the darn things from their shells. We eventually resorted to spearing them with a single chopstick and prying them out. I later saw a real Taiwanese person using a toothpick, which seemed much more efficient.
Also of note is that Taiwanese people will eat anything that moves as well as everything that won’t, with the possible exception of rocks and dirt. In my sojourn here, I have tried all the normal kinds of seafood you can think of, plus, for example, sea cucumbers. I have also seen jellyfish served with panache.
Animals That Walk The Earth that Alex Ate
I saved this bit for last because as far as I’m concerned, it is the most outlandish. Admittedly, Americans are notorious the world over for being unadventurous eaters. We have these weird ideas about being grossed out by food, and there are many kinds of meat we simply won’t eat because they’re “disgusting.” As an interesting note, primary among these is horsemeat; never mind that the horse’s original purpose as far as mankind was concerned was as food.
Imagine, if you will, some hapless creature wandering around outside. Now take this creature, slaughter it, pluck it or skin it or whatever is required, chop it up into smaller (but still identifiable) bits, throw it in a wok, and put it on display for random passers-by to gawk at and ingest. Welcome to Taiwan.
One of Alex’s great mechanical feats here was figuring out just exactly how one eats duck tongue. It is a rather challenging endeavor, as it comes with very little meat and two bones attached. Never the less, he eventually succeeded. By the bye, every conceivable part of a duck is apparently edible. Consider that we walked past numerous duck heads cooked and ready to be eaten. Never mind that a duck head is almost entirely skull and beak (and what part of that is edible for a normal human being?).
Speaking of every part of an animal, something called “Pig’s blood cakes” are very popular here, so of course Alex tried that as well. These interesting cakes are made from congealed pig’s blood. They sort of look like blackish sticky rice in square-shaped patties. I was told they weren’t terribly exciting. Alex also ate snake soup while he was here, complete with bits of snake floating about in it. I was assured it tasted just like chicken. It gets better, though—another Taiwanese snake specialty is a liquor made from snake testicles. Mmm.
I’m ending this list with a familiar creature: the chicken. Before you relax too much, though, remember that the Taiwanese are not discerning at all when it comes to which parts of the animal they will and won’t eat. While Alex was here, he ate many chicken bits that are often neglected in the States: the heart, the gizzard, and yes, the testicles. The real kicker was that my 12-year-old host sister loves the taste of chicken testicles. While I was covering my mouth in horror, she was popping testicle after testicle into her mouth. Yes. Her mouth was full of testicles.
