Boba’s birthplace, and a betel nut beauty

Dragons are born, so it’s said, when koi swim upriver and hop longmen, the mythical dragon gate. If one succeeds, it transforms into a dragon and soars off into the sky, its gold and white scales glittering.

If there’s any place in Taiwan similarly steeped in the myth and magic of longmen, it’s Taichung’s Chun Shui Tang (春水堂), where boba was born over two decades ago as a result of dark and daring tea experiments.

OK, I’m exaggerating.

But next to the ubiquitous “Made in Taiwan” labels of the 1990s, boba (or tapioca, or bubble, or pearl milk) tea is probably Taiwan’s biggest cultural export. In 2001, the Los Angeles Times covered L.A.’s “boba boom,” years after the chewy pearl of yum had already hit full swing in the San Gabriel Valley, which now produces enough boba to build an Earth-sized planet of boba – every day. (Humor me, people drink a lot of this stuff.)

The black tapioca balls floating at the bottom of every boba drink make every mouthful of milk tea an adventure, as well as providing abundant ammo for parking-lot boba wars.

So it was with awe and anticipation that I visited boba’s birthplace yesterday. I wasn’t disappointed. The tea was slightly sweeter than average, with just a hint of grass jelly, and infused with an elusive charm – perhaps the knowledge that it was the first, a pioneer in the coming tea revolution. In short, it was the stuff of legend.

But what’s a legend without an epic journey? While seeking our treasure, lost on a lonely road as we were, none other than a betel nut beauty, another national treasure *cough*, came to our rescue. She pointed the way – her fingernail polish flaked and peeling, her arms jiggling – as she (emerging from her glass roadside shack almost naked as the day) confessed she wasn’t exactly sure which way we should go.

So she didn’t save us. Fair enough. Stick to betel nuts and drive-thru boob feels. We found our holy grail, and I took home a new story or two.

The real new year

We’re over the hump now, but for a few days this past week, Taipei almost completely shut down for Chinese New Year.

I missed Santa’s day in the States, but Taiwan’s full-on equivalent more than made up for the loss. With Taipei hollowed out as families gather to feast, Chinese New Year probably even upstages American Christmas in sheer scale: cash gifts to children, firecrackers at ungodly hours of the night, stuffing your face past reason, and smoke filling the air as hell money burns.

I’ve never celebrated the holiday in its native land (or as a grown-up) before, so I had the second pleasure of seeking out for the first time an appropriate food gift for my family. There was no shortage of places to go.

Even convenience stores like 7-Eleven got in on the act, piling gift boxes at store entrances: chocolate, mochi, Hello Kitty treats, everything imaginable – though I don’t know who would have had the nerve to buy their family a Chinese New Year gift box at 7-Eleven.

Days after the big day, most 7s are still overstocked with stacks of gift boxes.

The city’s gradually waking from its slumber now, but with Lantern Festival on the horizon, there’s happily more to come.

Taiwan’s battle over names

My roommate, who writes English textbooks for junior high school students, recently received a cryptic comment from the Ministry of Education demanding a revision: “This sentence is too long.”

The sentence, the shortest one in the text, contained one offending phrase, up until now the least controversial possible: “Taiwan, Republic of China.” Part of the phrase had to be removed, and though my roommate was left guessing which part, she knew well enough which part she was being asked to strike out.

Last week President Chen Shui-bian promised to do his own striking out – by removing the “China” in the nation’s postal and petroleum enterprises and replacing them with Taiwan, an explicit step toward further “Taiwanization.”

The postal union revolted. Chaos didn’t ensue.

Instead, Taiwan woke up earlier this week to find a country more or less like the one it woke up to last week – just serviced by one Taiwan Post.

A quiet revolution? Dunno. But I’d save my R.O.C. stamps. They may become collectors’ items.

Kaohsiung by train, scooter, and ferry

The last time I spoke of Taiwan’s new high-speed rail was on the eve of its launch. The public greeted its handle-bar-mustachioed arrival with consternation over Asia’s new Euro/Japanese Frankenstein, while some worried over what the Taipei Times at the time called a “bird massacre.”

Last Friday I grabbed a chance to hop the Taiwan HSR for a full-length ride between Banqiao (there isn’t a Taipei link yet) and Kaohsiung – a trip that took 90 minutes, compared to the five-ish hours it would have taken otherwise.

Kaohsiung itself was a blur on a scooter, a whirlwind 24-hour trip that included strawberry picking and a sun-kissed ferry ride to Qijin (旗津), a small island minutes off the coast.

For an hour and a half spent dozing on a train, it was well worth it.

Click for more.

In Hualien, it’s gorges

Hualien welcomed us, on a soggy gray day, with all the pageantry of a ghost town. After a three-hour train ride to the east-coast city, we were hungry, and our search for food – in entirely the wrong side of town – was turning up nothing.

We passed by a lone mochi shop, whose staff members, upon seeing actual pedestrians in front of their store, launched into a fully synchronized rhyme and hokey pokey hocking their mashed-rice goods – a Hualien specialty.
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But we weren’t about to make a lunch of gift-box mochi. A guide at the visitor center sent us in the direction of real nourishment, toward the city’s arterial shopping street, Zhongshan Road* (中山路), where drink stands, restaurants, fashion boutiques, and more mochi shops jostle for prime positioning.

There we found Wang Ji (王記茶鋪), a tea house and architectural standout, but more importantly, a warm refuge from the rain. Wang Ji had fairly priced meals for a tea house, but their generous portions and first-class flavors were what really won us over. After extended walking in the rain, the food was a much needed reprieve, considering what would come shortly after as we explored the city: a lot more walking in the rain.

The next day, the early sun brought tidings of a better day to be out. We caught a quick breakfast at Sarlee’s, a charming organic bakery/cafe that has a few locations in the area. Later, after being continually hassled by a taxi driver to take his one-man tour of Taroko Gorge, we got on a bus that took us to Taroko’s Tianxiang (天祥) for a fraction of the cabbie’s price.

We climbed the pagoda at Xiangde Temple (祥德寺), where the world’s highest bodhisattva statue is said to stand. We stepped tentatively through a neverending tunnel, whose blackness was interrupted by only a distant pinpoint of light . We watched a Taroko (local aboriginal) woman on a scooter zoom along the Baiyang Trail (白楊步道), unfazed by steep dropoffs and paths slicked with rain water.

After Tianxiang we were too exhausted for anything else. We rewarded ourselves with Hualien mochi, then said goodbye to the city with another meal at Wang Ji.

*Hualien romanizes its place names using Tongyong Pinyin, if not some other alphabet concoction. For names whose English spellings aren’t already well established, I’ll stick with Hanyu Pinyin romanization.

Flickr: more pictures of Taroko Gorge.