Our Not China Trip Begins — The Towering Travelers

A quick disclaimer about this collection of blogs - during this trip we visited three regions that, while China considers them to be part of China, consider themselves varying degrees of…not China. Hong Kong and Macau are Special Administrative Regions of China, and Taiwan doesn’t have an official status because no one can agree on what it should be. The politics of these regions are all very complex, and while we tried to fact check everything in this blog, I can’t guarantee that we got everything right. If you want to learn more about these fascinating areas, there’s a ton of great information out there.

Taiwan has a pretty bizarre status at the moment. Originally Taiwan had been a part of China, but when the Qing dynasty needed an offering while losing a conflict with Japan, they offered up Taiwan in 1895. For fifty years, Japan occupied the island, which already had some European influences due to Dutch and Spanish mining. In 1945, Japan gave up the island during its post-WWII retreat. Then, in 1949, the Republic of China government fled to Taiwan when the People’s Republic of China (PRC) took took control of mainland China. For decades, the two governments, each considering themselves the true Chinese government, existed in an uneasy status quo. Now, under the One China campaign, the PRC wants Taiwan to be officially part of China. Taiwan, which feels like it hasn’t been part of China for 125 years, generally does not agree. Taiwan has some support from the western world, but China is a force to be reckoned with. It’ll be an interesting next few decades for the island.

After an insanely busy six months of moving across the country, starting new jobs, and missing a European vacation due to a freak blizzard, Taipei felt like a gift. It’s different from the U.S., so it fed my need for new experiences, but it’s also just amazingly easy. The food is amazing, the people are wonderful, and the scenery is spectacular. The city is safe and clean, and the public transit is cheap and useful. To our surprise, there’s even a ton of great coffee available from adorable local shops. Many people speak at least some English, and everyone else was happy to interact with us and figure it out.

Our first day was spent being jet lagged, wandering the city, and eating Din Tai Fung. I had been skeptical that we should visit the original, since we have one in Seattle, but I’m glad Jason convinced me to go. Din Tai Fung is amazing everywhere, but in Taipei the menu is bigger and all the flavors are just a bit better. It’s also just a very fun experience.

One of Taiwan’s fantastic birds (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A temple in the 2/28 Peace Park (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Taipei 101 through the fog (Photo/Jason Rafal)

At the National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A white fluffy bird (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Another fun bird in the rain (Photo/Jason Rafal)

An ornate cup at a wonderful coffee shop with a wonderful cat (Photo/Jason Rafal)

We stopped by the Huashan Creative Park, which is a great collection of shops and exhibits.

A Pocky…exhibit? At the Huashan 1914 Creative Park (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Overgrown apartment decks (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Waiting in the crowd at Din Tai Fung (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A sign-filled street near our hotel (Photo/Jason Rafal)

We went back to the hotel for a bit, then rallied for a rainy (but warm) walk in the dark through some of the city. We headed to a nearby Taoist temple, then to the Ningxia Night Market. The Taoist temples have really incredible carvings on the roof, and they are very brightly colored.

Nighttime street wandering in the rain (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Night at the Dalongdong Baoan Temple (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Everyone in Taiwan uses umbrellas instead of raincoats, so we got a lot of stares for wearing our Seattle second skins. Or, you know, maybe they were just staring because we’re giant white people.

Nicole follows the lines and orders a scallion pancake (Photo/Jason Rafal)

The heavy umbrella use is very challenging at crowded night markets (Photo/Jason Rafal)

On Saturday we took a tour to learn a bit more about Taiwan and tea. We realized while on the tour that for all our coffee tours, we had never done a tea tour, and it was time. We only had two other people on our tour, a young couple from Manila, so it ended up being a small group. It was very rainy, with occasional gusting winds.

Our first stop was a view of Thousand Island Lakes, which is a beautiful area to the southeast of Taipei. The lakes are a water source for the city, and all of the land around them are protected with the exception of families who have been there for generations. We stopped at one such family’s farm to take a look at the lakes. It was incredibly beautiful in the rain and fog.

The beautiful view at Thousand Island Lakes (Photo/Jason Rafal)

From there we went to another view and tea plantation area, where we learned some more about tea. Taiwan only grows small amounts of tea, which is mostly oolong - they have a lot of regulations about quality and everything has to be organic, so they end up importing a lot as well. Taiwanese tea is considered pretty special.

Our next stop was a traditional tea shop in Pinglin, where a tea master made three types of tea for us and our guide translated. The first was green tea that had 10-12% fermentation, the second was a black tea with 100% fermentation, and the third was a green tea with 25% fermentation. Green tea is delicate, while black tea doesn’t care how long you steep it or at what temperature.

We were taught to use the sniffer glass to smell the tea and warm our hands (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Our guide explained that the honey black tea that we were drinking had become popular because of a bug, the green cicada. Every late summer, the green cicada would bite the tea leaves and ruin them - the flavor of those leaves, when made into green tea, was apparently not appealing to anyone. At some point, though, some tea farmer thought to make them into black tea, and there the cicada saliva (?), or oxidation of the leaves, or something, could really shine. It created a smooth, slightly sweet flavor that added a lovely complexity. We promptly bought some after trying it.

Our instructional tea ceremony (Photo/Jason Rafal)

A cat who didn’t care about us at all (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Finally, we went to a tea museum, where we learned about all of the steps in tea processing. Tea processing takes quite a while, and requires either a few different machines or a lot of manual labor. The tea has to be dried, fermented to the desired amount, and kneaded. The type of kneading depends on what type of tea is desired - kneading back and forth results in long strings of tea leaves, while kneading in a circle produces round beads. We also learned a bit about the different tea roads - not just the traditional European one I learned about in school, but also the Russian tea road and the common practice of trading horses for tea.

An old circular tea kneading machine (Photo/Jason Rafal)

Teas with their relevant details (we had to put them on a sensor to see the translation) (Photo/Jason Rafal)

…I have no explanation for this bowl of bubbles (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After our tour, we wandered around in the rain in Taipei and ate a ton of great food. We started with one of the popular places for beef noodle soup, which was the type of hole in the wall that had a 20-person line at minimum (but you only had to wait about 20 minutes to get cycled in). Taiwanese beef noodle soup, when done right, is incredibly delicious - rich brown broth, thick homemade noodles, and tender chunks of beef. The traditional toppings include a sort of pickled vegetable mix, vinegar, soy sauce, and hot oil. It’s amazing.

Waiting in line for beef noodle soup (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After lunch we wandered across the city to try a coffee shop that was on our list (we never quite figured out who had recommended it). Taipei is very walkable, and also has an outstanding metro system - cheap, clean, convenient, well-used.

Let’s get into coffee for a minute - as I mentioned before, we were a bit shocked at the amount of quality coffee in Taipei. Much of Asia is not especially into coffee, and when we were in Vietnam, when there was no Vietnamese coffee available, there was often only instant coffee. From what we can glean from people we talked to and the internet, Starbucks brought reasonably good coffee to Taiwan, and then Taiwan attached to coffee and took it from there. Every specialty coffee shop we tried was between somewhat and incredibly good.

A lot of the coffee shops are also hang out spots that serve beer, snacks, and even full meals. I tried a craft beer, which was really solid. All of the desserts were amazing, as expected.

The delightful trilogy of coffee, dessert, and beer (Photo/Jason Rafal)

After some more walking through the rain we stopped by Raohe Night Market, which I highly recommend. Taiwanese night markets are evening markets that feature street stalls selling all sorts of things, depending on which market you’re at. My favorite night markets have a lot of street food to try, but it’s also pretty common to see clothes, toys, and gadgets. We tried some pork pepper buns from a stall - ground pork is mixed with spices and a whole lot of pepper, then wrapped with a lot of scallions in a thin dough bun, then stuck on the side of an oven (very similar to a tandoori oven) to cook. When it’s golden brown, it’s scraped off of the side of the oven and handed to you in a paper bag. It’s as mouth scalding and delicious as it sounds.