Dimethylnaphthalene.
So if you’re like me, you just said, “Eh, what?”
Apparently we’ve all been eating it over the last however many years of our lives. Unless, of course, you’re one of those people who can afford ‘organic’ everything. For the rest of us ordinary mortals who must shop in Budgetland, this lovely chemical has probably been a part of our diet. Yippee! Continue Reading »
I awoke and stumbled out into the kitchen to find this note from my mother.
Would you guys rake the gravel and vacuum? ❤
Me: Rake…gravel? Oookay.
Went out into the garage, wrestled the rake from the tool bin, and marched out to our parking area. It’s covered with some kind of industrial grade gravel, so I started raking.
Why?
Who knows?
Any windmills I could joust next? Continue Reading »
This summer I took a Book Arts class up at my old university. In the midst of counter-culture shock and frustration, taking that step back into one of my favorite stages of life was good for my heart. I’ve realized once again how much I love the university environment.
I will be the eternal student.
The subject of our Book Arts class was urban agriculture. Continue Reading »
Weeeeell, I’m back in America now. I suppose life could be considered slightly less zany now, but I’m still running across things that make me laugh or think hard (that’s not too difficult).
Thank you all who read and supported me with your kind thoughts, prayers, and love while I was in China.
Grocery stores have a decided shortage of seating. Does no one every take a break while they’re shopping? No one ever needs a breather between the frozen desserts and wine aisle?
There’s nowhere to sit, except on the floor. Continue Reading »
Jeez, this is the longest part-series-post I’ve ever done. Well, a lot happened on Saturday, I guess.
After escaping David’s oily clutches, I decided to ensure he wouldn’t be following me by going straight to a bathhouse. (Traditional bath houses are segregated according to sexes. So unless he was willing to hang out in the lobby for 2+ hours–something I wouldn’t entirely put past him in retrospect–he couldn’t follow me back to my hostel.)
Now the bathhouse recommended to me by the front desk lady was a tiny hole in the wall directly across from the police department. Most definitely not a place for the typical tourist, because the more anglicized gentleman who ran the desk in the morning gently but insistently recommended against going there.
Here’s why.
As the night desk lady so delightfully put it: “You go nak!”
Me: Uhm, naked? Continue Reading »
And now David.
Oh, David.
Who’s David, you ask? The spectacular awkwardness of all things inappropriately asian. That was David.
I wanted to go to a hot springs while here in Taipei. The Beitou district where I’m staying is renowned for white and yellow sulfur springs. When the Japanese controlled Taiwan, they built several bath houses in this area. (Beitou was also one of Taipei’s most notorious illegal red-light districts, a discovery that did make me momentarily leery of going to a bath house.)
While I was wandering around looking at different bath houses, a man stopped me.
Heading back from the National Palace Museum, I noticed a middle-aged Chinese woman with a tightly permed head of hair talking very animatedly with a younger couple on the bus.
Now chatty old Chinese people usually means one thing: they are instructing the woefully ignorant younger generation how best to take care of themselves. The elderly here are not the least bit shy about letting young’ins know where they stand. It’s a trait that America could really due with a bit more of, frankly.
Her enormous sun-visor swiveled toward me, and she said, “You go Shilin station? Three stops.”
I nodded and smiled, doing my best to show her that I was competent enough to know how to dismount a bus on all my ownsy. She grinned back broadly and returned to her map.
Wait. A map? Chinese people don’t use maps. What’s going on here? Continue Reading »
Unfortunately, folks, this is going to be a one picture post. Both places I visited today were AMAZING, and cameras were totally banned there.
Additionally I was nearly molested by a potential new Taiwanese boyfriend.
All that and more to follow!
But all things in their time and season. This morning started with a light breakfast of a banana, nuts, and sushi and then a quick bus ride to the National Palace Museum.
Me by my new pet bronze lion. Think the National Museum will mind?
First full day in Taiwan, and I venture down to the Longshan Temple. I’d planned to visit one or two street markets nearby (if I could find them), but it turns out that the warren-like streets around Longshan are rife with markets. I’m not sure if I reached the ones I was specifically looking for, but I definitely passed a lot of fresh vegetables, raw meat hanging from hooks, incense, and temple trinkets made of fake jade, red string, and old Chinese coins.
I spent the better part of the afternoon and evening down walking through endless winding streets stuffed with tables of goods, fruit, and animal parts.
Which means getting to eat street food! Best part of being in a new Asian city.
After lunch somewhere in the vicinity of Longshan Temple, I headed down to see the renown Diahua Street Market and NangXia Night Market.
Nothing like a deep-fried duck head to stir your dinner appetite.
And you thought I was joking.
Farther down was a stupendous line for one small stand. The signs had no pinyin, and I didn’t recognize the characters. Sooo, I hopped into line and figured if there were this many locals lining up for it, it couldn’t be that bad. Right?
Here they are, in all their mysterious, asian-people enticing glory.
Those little orange balls might be fruit. Longan or Lychee or cantaloupe balls. The brown stuff looked suspiciously like meat floss, but I’m willing to put up with a little meat floss for the sake of experimentation.
We inched closer and closer. Then there! Behind the stand! Behold, a sign with English.
Fried Taro paste with preserved egg.
…egg? As in, came out of a chicken’s butt, egg? Preserved in what? Did they brine the yolks like a pickle? But isn’t Taro sweet? So, something pickled, deep fried in sweet dough? Surely not.
Oh, yes.
Yes to all of the above.
They were indeed pickled egg yolks in sweet dough. I took one bite and nearly yakked on the paving stones.
Next up. Sausage. What could go wrong?
Grilled sausage!! Yay! Sign me up!
…That ‘yippee’ just got officially annulled.
Matters were beginning to look dire.
Taro-egg was unpalatable, and I’m not sure which part of intestine-inside-intestine was supposed to be appealing. I usually take a pass on any street market seafood. I prefer my fish not crawling in flies with a hint of potential mercury poisoning. That’s not to say that I haven’t eaten seafood in Asia. I have, and it’s usually very tasty. I’m just choosy about where and when I’ll eat it.
This not being one of those instances, although they were pretty looking.
Also, call me a wimp, but I still don’t like chicken feet. In my defense, none of the foreigner teachers I knew liked them. I think it’s something you have to grow up eating to find delicious.
…What’s left?
I ended up with mochi (Japanese sticky-rice) topped with group peanuts and something black (possibly powdered sesame, possibly cocoa powder) and a crepe with banana inside. I considered buying some barbecued chicken hearts–they’re one of my favorites–but the taro-egg was not agreeing with my stomach, so I opted on hearts for a later time.
Even though tonight wasn’t much of a success, I remembered again why I like street food so much. Usually it comes in small portions, so I can try a lot of different things. Also, I can watch people make the food, which is always fun, especially when it’s food that I’m not familiar with. Add to those two perks that most street food can’t be bought in regular restaurants.
Even with minor setbacks (like pickled eggs), street market food is always a adventure well worth having.
Here’s the nummy mochi. Sorry it wasn’t more photogenic. You’ll have to take my word that it was delicious.
Riding the buses here in Fuzhou is fertile ground for stories. In fact, I feel most the foreigners here could compile their accounts and publish a book called, Survival on the Bus: Close encounters in Fuzhou.
Today, Bus Story 2,034:
I was headed back home, freshly bought wall-hangings in hand (See Laowai in a Chinese Auction). We’re nearing my stop, so I swing a la Tarzan to the bus hanging-hand-things nearest the door.
(Okay, what do they call these?)
Overhead bus hand-holds? Nah, that’s too long. Tarzan holds.
Abruptly the bus swerves across two lanes of traffic, blaring its horn. People swing and spin, myself flying among them, bags yo-yoing around us. One girl clings like a lemur to the holding bars (those yellow ones in the picture). An oncoming car shoots in front of us and swoops into the oncoming moped lane.
What’s it doing on the wrong side of the road during rush hour? Who knows; who cares? Certainly no one Chinese.
The old man beside me–not a hair under sixty if the steely fringe around his gleaming dome is to be believed–swings around with the rest of us, not even raising a gimlet gaze from his cell phone.
Well done, sir. Well done.
The bus swerves back and screeches to a halt at its bus stop. I stagger off, considerable less composed than the gentleman beside me.
Ah, Fuzhou. How I shall miss thee and thine insane roads.
Happiness is a Golden Panda 