chiufen   2004-07-01

A few things ....

First. I met Marlene for an iced coffee and a couple of rounds of crib after "the crash" to unwind. good times. Further evidence that there's nothing a few good laughs can't take care of. See you later techno rage. I don't know what I was thinking writing that much and not saving. Not five minutes would go by at school or work when I wouldn't save the document I was working on. i must be getting soft.

second. you may have noticed that the archived journal entries are now sorted with the most current entries at the top of the list. finally. it's been gnawing at me since day one that the original code sorted them with the most current entry at the bottom of the list. well ... with a little help from our good friend javascript the most current entries will now be at the top of the list. thank you javascript. if for some reason (privacy, protection, etc.) you've chosen to disable javascript (ahum ... dad), then i'm afraid the entries on your screen will be sorted as they always have.

also ... for those of you using Internet Explorer 5.5+ on a PC ... you may have noticed that the scroll bars are slightly different now. in fact ... save for the white arrows at the top and the bottom they've all but disappeared. just click on the white arrows to scroll up and down ... or if you have a wheel on your mouse just slide your cursor over the text and move the wheel to scroll the text. i'm trying to unclutter the page for ease of reading. let me know if you have problems with it. what with all the different browsers and operating systems out there it's hard to know what interesting bugs will pop up. since i'm limited to testing on a windows 98 super computer i'm probably the bottom of the barrel so if it works for me it should work for you. MAC and/or other browser users ... any difference for you?

third. some of my more attentive readers have observed that i rarely if ever mention marlene's fragile emotional state in my journals. to put enquiring minds at ease ... she's doing very well. unlike me, her days are filled teaching english. i think she's up to 35 hours of classroom time now ... compared to my 10 ... although rumour has it i'm moving up to a respectable 18 hours starting next week. for every hour spent in the classroom she spends at least 30-45 minutes preparing lesson materials. like ... games, activities, teaching strategies, etc. factor in travel time to and from school (a not insignificant number given the heavy traffic), those awkward hour breaks between classes that leave her only enough time to flip through the chinese editions of Vogue magazine and before you know it ... she's put in at least a 12 hour work day. six days a week. whao. sure ... we all have days when we want to kick the stray dog in the alley ... but those days are few and far between for marlene. one thing i love about her is her near constant ray of sunshine. she rocks ... and not just because she's bringing home the bacon.

i've asked her numerous times to contribute to the journal ... but the truth is ... when she gets home from work the last thing she feels like doing is heading down here to the smoke pit and firing up a super computer. one thing i've discovered since moving here is that teaching is exhausting. not even the kung-pow all-nighters i pulled at fujitsu or school compare to a few hours spent in the classroom. my feet kill. my throat is sore. i'm drained. and that's at 10 hours a week. so for all of you who wonder why marlene's emails and/or contributions to the journal are few and far between ... back off! just kidding ... keep the emails coming. we'll try and find some time for her to get in here a little more frequently.

now ... as for this journal entry ...

last tuesday it was a national holiday ... dragon boat festival day ... so everbody had the day off. well ... everybody except those working in the service sectors ... which is pretty much ... everyone. so no day off and probably no time and a half for them. bummer. no school for teachers thought. wicked.

coming from victoria/vancouver i'm no stranger to the dragon boat festival ... a bunch of people row awkward looking boats with awkward looking paddles. but i was still pretty keen on checking out the action. it's always nice to check things out at the source. like ... does the guy pounding the time-keeping drum have to wear a crazy head dress of some kind here? maybe ... i don't know. and i may never know as for the first time ever the races weren't held in taipei. the shenanigans were moved to kaohsiung at the southern tip of taiwan. bummer.

so we weren't going to take in the dragon boat races ... but brian and juno decided it would be good times to get out of taipei and into the country. which we did. we met up with a couple of their friends and the six of us hopped on a train and set off for "chiufen" (pronounced ... "jo-fun"), a small town carved into the side of some mountains about an hour and a half north of taipei on the coast. the following description of chiufen is taken more or less intact from the "china post," an english language newspaper in taiwan.

Chiufen, or "Little Shanghai," is a small town majestically nestled on the mountains southeast of Keelung City. It is a small town rich in history, overlooking the East China Sea. Because of its elevation, Chiufen is a good place to view the surrounding areas - the mountains, seas and the ocean that lend a touch of romanticism to this once famous gold mining town.

When the weather is fine, the houses and the fishing boats from the nearby piscatorial villages of Ruipin and Shenao can be clearly seen. The splendid seascape far below, adds a feeling of contentment to a rather fastidious traveler, especially when the moving silhouettes of fishing boats lambent at dusk, on the silvery waters of the China Sea.

Chiufen's glory peaked during the gold rush in the 1930s. At that time, around 3,000 to 4,000 households came to call Chiufen their home. It was during this time when Chiufen was aptly called the "Gold Capital of Asia." However, after World War II, the mines in Chiufen were nearly wiped out, and the town's shimmering prosperity faded away.

As in other town markets here in Taiwan, where food is often the center of attraction, the Chiufen old town market cannot be an exception. The town market teems with local delicacies — taro candies; peanut crisps; popped rice in honey; sticky rice dumpling with red beans, sesame and peanut fillings; wheat sprouts on ice; and many other sweets. Some of these delicacies are available only in Chiufen.

so ... true to the china post ... chiufen did lend a darn tootin' contented feeling to a fastidious traveler such as myself. i'm speaking to my BC audience here when say that it's not unlike barkerville. take barkerville ... throw it against the side of a mountain ... get ride of all the white people ... increase the number of gambling dens ... get rid of the saloons and replace them with "tea houses" ... (wink, wink ... pass the opium pipe ... i don't know for sure about that ... but it could have been) ... keep the bronze age technology ... and there you have it ... chiufen.




not sure ... nice photo though ...






i can't believe it! i found a picture of the tea house we took tea in. it's the place on the left ... a crazy, cool place. now ... i'm no fountain of country music knowledge but call me a liar if i didn't hear the carter family drifting out of the tea house. very strange. but not quite as strange as the HUGE black velvet painting of a very curvaceous and very naked woman in our private tea room. picture a room in a cool scandanavian lodge ... lots of wood ... clean lines ... very muji ... with a breathtaking view down the mountain out to the sea ... and hanging on the wall soaking it all in is ms. naked. weird. brian and i thought it would be best if we sat facing her so the ladies wouldn't be uncomfortable. apparently it was nice view from the other side of the table too.






a place to buy sweets, powdered deer horn, back scratchers, ...



chiufen is a town made for leisurely strolling ... which is exactly what we did. just wandered up and down and through the narrow streets checking out little stores selling this and that. some touristy type things ... like things to scratch your back with ... and things to pick your earwax out with ... and loads and loads of food places.

i had my first cho do-fu experience in chiufen. now ... i believe i mentioned in a previous entry that cho do-fu translates as "stinky tofu." which is totally true. it reeks. it reeks so bad it compares to ... i don't know ... maybe a small kid throwing up milk and orange juice on a smoking hot day in a black tent. so imagine that smell but waaay worse ... just something really rank ... and that's what cho do-fu smells like.

now ... there are two kinds of cho do-fu ... barbeque'd and deep fried. of the two kinds barbeque'd is the lesser of the two evils. there was no deep fried available so i had bbq'd. and you know what? sure it freakin' reeks ... but the taste ... yum yum on a stick. if you breathe in while you're eating it's game over ... but if you can exhale a little you're on easy street. i've had the barbeque'd kind a few more times since chiufen and it's really growing on me. it makes a deadly good combo if you pair it with deep fried squid balls as a "meat chaser." dip the balls in chili powder ... add a dash of sesame oil and it's a party in your mouth and everyone's invited.

after hanging out in chiufen for most of the day we made our way back to taipei on the rickety bus. to pass the time brian and i continued on with our usual language exchange. he teaches me the basics of chinese ... and i teach him idioms and "things not to say at dinner parties." i think we're both making good progress.

As a quick wrap up to Chiufen ... when we got back to taipei we went out for "shabu shabu" ... which is Japanese for ... and correct me if I'm wrong Madoka ... "swish-swish," referring to the swishing action when you cook a very thin slice of beef in hot water. but don't think you're limited to just beef. Nope. You can swish-swish whatever you like in hot water and you're not limited to just hot water either.

In the centre of the table is a little recess in which sits a boiling hot pot. The pot is divided into two sections. one section has boiling water ... and the other section has a very spicy, boiling "au jus" concoction. hard to say exactly what it was but every so often a guy would come around and top it up with diluted blood. we were throwing everything into the pot. thin stips of beef, pork, lamb, mushrooms, cabbages, dumplings, corn, breads, cow stomach, wind pipe, cubes of duck's blood that for some reason remained congealed after immersion. yum yum ... save for the wind pipe. it's like octopus in texture ... but different. hard to describe. the pipes are creamy white cylinders a couple of inches long with small openings along the sides which once accommodated bronchial tubes. pretty tame in the bigger "what it's possible to eat" picture but they did make me kind of uneasy. a mild yet distinctive flavour. not something to casually mess around with. accompanying the boiled goodies is a dipping sauce of your making. they provide salt, pepper, garlic, chilies, cilantro, raw eggs, oils, lemons, and bbq sauce and you mix them up in whatever ratio you like. my first crack at the dipping sauce was a heinous, gloopy mixture quickly discarded. juno then guided me gently through the finer points of ratio balancing ... my 51% in high school math had reared its ugly head once again.

This was going to be a double-shot entry covering Chiufen and the beach, but that beach will have to wait until next time. I'm going to publish this entry before the super computer crashes and I'm completely paralyzed by techno rage.

Until then, watch what you put in your mouth ...

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