[RD] Discovering Taiwan

[warpus]

To get straight to the point - I spent 4 weeks in Taiwan and will be documenting what I discovered there in this thread. The posts will be chronological in nature and will more or less follow the format of previous travel threads.

Taiwan has a unique culture shaped by Chinese, Japanese, indigenous, western, and other influences, and you can see hints of that in everything from the architecture to the food. The culinary scene is interesting also due to the 700+ night markets you can find on the island - vibrant communal markets that draw huge crowds and offer a myriad of culinary creations from tiny stalls, usually lining both sides of a street or pedestrian walkway.

Taiwan is a modern island nation about 400km (250 miles) long and 150km (90 miles) wide, with a population of about 23.5 million. The main population centres lie on the west coast; they are well connected by multiple rail lines - including a high speed rail link from Taipei to Kaohsiung. You can get from one end of the island to the other in under 2 hours.

The interior of the island contains the Central Mountain Range, where you will find a long list of worthy hiking trails, beautiful lakes, dense forests, and nature reserves.

I admit that going in I really only knew a couple things about Taipei, the capital, and that's about it. This trip was a journey of discovery for me personally and I hope that I can extend this in some way to those reading this. Of course feel free to chime in if you have knowledge or an experience that would shed more light on some aspect of what I'm posting.

Index

Prelude - Super Typhoon Leon
Arrival - First impressions of Taipei City | Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup
Day 1 - Din Tai Fung | 2 | Taipei 101 | Jimmy's Moon Bus | Xinyi Commercial District | Fly High Over Taiwan | LOVE | Taipei 101 After Dark | Mural | Tonkatsu | Ximending | Street Food

 

[Birdjaguar]

Taiwan has a unique culture shaped by Chinese, Japanese, indigenous, western, and other influences...

The central mountains and east coast were largely indigenously controlled until late in the 19th C. Prior to that, control of Taiwan meant control of the western and northern coasts.

 

[warpus]

First impressions of Taipei City (臺北市)
Tuesday, November 5, 2024

Taipei City is the economic, political, and cultural centre of Taiwan. Along with New Taipei City and Keelung City it forms the Greater Taipei Area. Some consider Taoyuan City to be a part of the same metropolitian area as well. Altogether over 9 million people live in this part of Taiwan.

These 4 cities have an interesting relationship with each other. New Taipei City is actually the most populous of the 4, with about 4 million people. It also completely surrounds Taipei City.

The red rectangular blob north of Taoyuan City is the busiest airport in Taiwan, which is where my plane touched down at about 9pm. The first thing I did at the airport was buy an EasyCard and load the equivalent of about $50 USD on it. This allowed me to easily 'tap on' the Taoyuan Airport MRT express train to Taipei Main Station, which took about 35 minutes and cost me the equivalent of just under $5 USD.

My second purchase at the airport was a 30 day prepaid eSIM with a Taiwanese number and unlimited data, for the equivalent of about $30 USD. This would allow me to stay connected and easily navigate around the island.

I'll be honest - I did not really see much of the city that first evening. I couldn't really see much from the express train and the 20 minute walk to my hotel from Taipei Main Station was somewhat uneventful. I did get a sense that this was a modern country, with modern amenities, and that getting around wasn't going to be a challenge.. but beyond that I was way too jetlagged to really focus on anything beyond getting checked in to my hotel room, which I managed to accomplish at about 10:15pm.

 

[Takhisis]

To get straight to the point - I spent 4 weeks in Taiwan and will be documenting what I discovered there in this thread.

(subscribes)

 

[warpus]

Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup (臺灣牛肉麵)

The hotel receptionist recommended a nearby 24h beef noodle soup restaurant (Fuhong Beef Noodles), which is where I ended up walking for my first meal in Taiwan. It was a bit of a hole in the wall, packed almost exclusively with Taiwanese youth, from what I could tell... The seating arrangement was communal in nature and reminded me of what I experienced at Hanoi phở joints. Luckily for me there was one seat available at a table in the back.

Taiwanese cuisine was actually somewhat averse to beef well into the 1970s. Cattle were seen as valuable beasts of burden and were generally not eaten. It was migrants from the Chinese mainland who invented and slowly over time popularized this dish, and along with it the consumption of beef. Eventually Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup became the de facto national dish.

This wasn't phở, but I knew what I had to do first.. I took a slow and attentive sip of the broth. It was delicious! And to think that this whole meal incl. a drink cost the equivalent of $3.50 USD.

Also reminiscent of Hanoi phở joints, each table in the restaurant had an assortment of bowls around, from which patrons were grabbing various toppings to add to their soups. At this restaurant in particular popular toppings included pickled sour mustard, chili oil, black vinegar, raw garlic, tallow, and spiced tallow. I had no idea what it was at the time, but I was a big fan of the tallow. I seem to remember at least 3 different kinds out at my table - I added a bit of each to my bowl! I couldn't really figure out what it was at the time because it was sort of.. crumbly? sort of powdery? I would have never guessed that it's tallow. It added a bit of another dimension to the flavour of the broth. Looking around the restaurant the pickled sour mustard seemed to be a popular option as well.

I've got to say, the friendly staff here helped make this a fun dining experience for me, even though I was so jetlagged and out of it. I felt a bit like a fish out of water first, but one employee there spoke a bit of English and helped me navigate through the options in a super friendly way. My google lens app was also very helpful. When I first sat down I felt like an obvious outsider, not only in culture but also in age, but it wasn't long before all that mattered was the soup.

This ended up being the perfect introduction to Taiwanese cuisine for me. Eating what is considered the national dish right off the bat was a great unplanned move. Eating it with locals, in a local setting and atmosphere, was even better.

If you would like to know more about this restaurant, I found an unrelated article about it which contains additional information & pictures.

 

[sylvanllewelyn]

Can you chopsticks?

 

[warpus]

Can you chopsticks?

Yep! I got my share of practice with them on my travels elsewhere in Asia, as well as practicing occasionally back home.

Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup is basically eaten the same way as a phở - chopsticks in the right hand and a spoon in the left. These were dynamics I was more than used to. Having said that, the two types of soup taste very different, even though they are both beef dishes.

 

[warpus]

Din Tai Fung's Xiaolongbao
Wednesday, November 6, 2024

Din Tai Fung is a restaurant chain that is known internationally for its paper-thin wrapped xiaolongbao soup dumplings with 18 folds. Originally a Taipei cooking oil retailer, the business pivoted to becoming a full fledged restaurant by 1972, with the first international location opening in Tokyo in 1996. Today there are over 160 locations in 13 countries worldwide.

Luckily for me this was going to be my second ever meal and first lunch in Taiwan. A textmode art scene acquaintance connected me with one of his high school friends, who happens to live in Taiwan, and who I happen to share several discord chat rooms with. We decided to meet for lunch at the Taipei 101 location of Din Tai Fung, which is incredibly popular. It's not uncommon to have to wait multiple hours just to get a seat. The plan was that the first person to arrive would grab a spot in line (in the form of a printed ticket), and that we'd meet at the adjacent Starbucks for a coffee while we wait.

Taipei 101 was about 8km from my hotel, but the Taipei Metro (MRT) system made getting around really easy. I already had an EasyCard loaded with a bit of money, so all I had to do was query google maps, walk to the nearby MRT station, tap on, get on the train, get off at the right stop, and tap off. The Taipei MRT has good cell coverage and 6 interconnected metro lines that are well colour coded, so getting around is a breeze. If you are walking down purple stairs, you are most likely walking towards the purple line. The MRT trains also have station and other announcements in multiple languages, vocal as well as visual.

I was really jetlagged, still only just about 14 hours after my flight landed, but I made my way across town to meet my new friend nevertheless. He ended up being really nice and after an hour of waiting and becoming acquainted over some overpriced Starbucks coffee, we finally got a table at Din Tai Fung. I let my friend do all the ordering.

An order of 10 pork xiaolongbao is one of the first things that arrived. This is the dish the restaurant is famous for, and there is a good reason for that - these were absolutely delicious! I did not stop to count and confirm that all the dumplings had 18 folds or not, but it didn't really matter.. These were the best dumplings I had on my whole trip, by far! The super thin dumpling shell and the flavourfull broth were only a part of the magic - the pork filling was really good too. I felt like I was eating masterfully handcrafted designer dumplings.

In the first photo you can also see an order of pork chop fried rice - also a popular choice, according to my friend. And also very good! Additionally, beside it you can see an order of string beans with garlic.

I can't stress enough how much I enjoyed this meal. First of all it was great that everything came together so well and that I was able to connect with someone who has lived in Taiwan for a while and was familiar with it. This was the very beginning of my journey around the island and already I was getting invaluable tips for the days ahead. The meal was more delicious than I could have anticipated as well, and I was still really jetlagged, but was already loving the food in Taiwan.

If you ever have the opportunity to try a xiaolongbao, you should go for it! There are more varieties than just this one Taiwanese kind on display here. Din Tai Fung also sells crab & pork xiaolongbao as well as chicken & carrot xiaolongbao. There are also related xiaolongbao in other branches of Chinese cuisine.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Did you add the dumplings to soup, dip them in sauce or eat them plain?

 

[warpus]

Did you add the dumplings to soup, dip them in sauce or eat them plain?

The traditional way to eat them is to dip them in a mixture of black vinegar, soy sauce, and julienned ginger. That's the dipping sauce you can see in the small bowl at the bottom of the first picture. We might have also added some chilli oil to the mix

 

[Zardnaar]

Looks great.

 

[bene_legionary]

I really love xiaolongbao (not least because some of my Chinese friends and family nicknamed me “xiaolong” after my Chinese name). There’s a little bit of an art to eating it without spilling the scalding soup inside; you have to bite the top off and try to drink the soup from the dumpling. I had some in Toronto on Friday and my cousin couldn’t get the hang of it, he kept dropping it

There is a good Shanghainese restaurant in Christchurch that my mum likes to go to for xiaolongbao. I’ll have to find an equivalent one in Melbourne.

 

[warpus]

Eating our way through Din Tai Fung's Menu

One of my other favourites at Din Tai Fung was the Hot & Sour Soup. Maybe I need to get out more, but this was probably the best hot and sour soup I've ever had.

Another hit were the Shrimp & Kurobuta Pork Spicy Wontons. Great texture, great sauce, and a great mix of flavours.

On top of this we also got mushroom and vegetable filled steamed buns. And that's as much as we could eat..

Before we went our separate ways, I thanked my new friend for taking the time to meet with me and for ordering like a boss. I would have never thought to try some of the amazing things we ate had I come here on my own.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup (臺灣牛肉麵)

The hotel receptionist recommended a nearby 24h beef noodle soup restaurant (Fuhong Beef Noodles), which is where I ended up walking for my first meal in Taiwan. It was a bit of a hole in the wall, packed almost exclusively with Taiwanese youth, from what I could tell... The seating arrangement was communal in nature and reminded me of what I experienced at Hanoi phở joints. Luckily for me there was one seat available at a table in the back.

Taiwanese cuisine was actually somewhat averse to beef well into the 1970s. Cattle were seen as valuable beasts of burden and were generally not eaten. It was migrants from the Chinese mainland who invented and slowly over time popularized this dish, and along with it the consumption of beef. Eventually Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup became the de facto national dish.

View attachment 713851

This wasn't phở, but I knew what I had to do first.. I took a slow and attentive sip of the broth. It was delicious! And to think that this whole meal incl. a drink cost the equivalent of $3.50 USD.

Also reminiscent of Hanoi phở joints, each table in the restaurant had an assortment of bowls around, from which patrons were grabbing various toppings to add to their soups. At this restaurant in particular popular toppings included pickled sour mustard, chili oil, black vinegar, raw garlic, tallow, and spiced tallow. I had no idea what it was at the time, but I was a big fan of the tallow. I seem to remember at least 3 different kinds out at my table - I added a bit of each to my bowl! I couldn't really figure out what it was at the time because it was sort of.. crumbly? sort of powdery? I would have never guessed that it's tallow. It added a bit of another dimension to the flavour of the broth. Looking around the restaurant the pickled sour mustard seemed to be a popular option as well.

I've got to say, the friendly staff here helped make this a fun dining experience for me, even though I was so jetlagged and out of it. I felt a bit like a fish out of water first, but one employee there spoke a bit of English and helped me navigate through the options in a super friendly way. My google lens app was also very helpful. When I first sat down I felt like an obvious outsider, not only in culture but also in age, but it wasn't long before all that mattered was the soup.

This ended up being the perfect introduction to Taiwanese cuisine for me. Eating what is considered the national dish right off the bat was a great unplanned move. Eating it with locals, in a local setting and atmosphere, was even better.

If you would like to know more about this restaurant, I found an unrelated article about it which contains additional information & pictures.

The only use I've heard of for tallow is in making candles. I assume the stuff you ate is nothing like a candle?

That food all looks wonderful.

 

[Samson]

The only use I've heard of for tallow is in making candles.

Tallow usually means beef fat. Before they switched to vegetable oil all McD's chips where made with tallow, and proper Christmas puddings.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Yes it is rendered beef fat/suet.

 

[Samson]

Yes it is rendered beef fat/suet.

It is not quite that simple. Rendered sheep fat is defiantly tallow, and in some situations they call pig fat tallow as well.

 

[warpus]

The only use I've heard of for tallow is in making candles. I assume the stuff you ate is nothing like a candle?

You can see pictures of it in the article I linked, scroll down a bit or do a ctrl-F for "tallow". It's the orange and brown stuff that looks a bit like a grainy paste.

I vaguely remember trying to guess what this stuff was at the time.. I had no clue.. It had a deep savoury umami flavour, and to be honest I did not spend a lot of time trying to figure it out. I was really jetlagged at the time and was mainly focusing on how great the broth was tasting. I made a mental note to try to figure out the toppings later.

Other beef noodle soup restaurants I visited on my trip did not have tallow as a topping. Beef Noodle Soup is a very popular dish in Taiwan though, and restaurants serving it often seem to have their own specific recipe and variant. I had it 3-4 times and noticed variety in the kind of noodles, different toppings, different type and consistency of beef, and a slightly different tasting broth.

It's tough to say how popular beef tallow is as a topping for Taiwanese beef noodle soup. Doing research on this doesn't really yield a lot of results! I wonder if there can be a slightly more nuanced name given to beef tallow in this particular case. I came across this sort of linguistic problem multiple times on my trip - There was some concept that had a Mandarin name that translated to multiple things in English.. But if this concept was a product of Taiwanese culture, there was often not a lot about it online in English.. So all your searches came up flat until you used the more common English translation or searched for the Mandarin directly.

I was able to find this short video highlighting a Taipei restaurant's use of tallow in this dish, so it can't be that obscure. But it doesn't seem super common either, at least as a topping you add yourself. That's something that saddened me a bit later on in my trip - when I got Beef Noodle Soup I looked around for bowls of that magical substance.. but I never saw any again.

The linked video shows you a bit how beef tallow is made. No doubt the candle making process must be a lot different.

 

[warpus]

Taipei 101

The 508m (1,667 ft) tall Taipei 101 was the world's tallest building from 2004 to 2010 and is currently the 11th tallest building in the world. It is considered to be the world's largest green building, with a platinum certificate rating for energy efficiency and environmental design. Other accolades include the world's largest tuned mass damper ball (at the top) as well as one of the fastest elevators on the planet.

This iconic tower sits on top of the largest mall in Taiwan in the middle of the modern Xinyi District - a shopping, financial, and fashion centre of the city. Din Tai Fung restaurant happens to be right at the base of Taipei 101, so after lunch it was only natural that I stepped out and looked up.

My new friend had now departed in order to return to work. I did not really have plans for the rest of the day, but I usually like to take it easy during my first full day in any country. I decided to first explore Taipei 101 Shopping Centre, the largest mall in Taiwan.. which was full of luxury-themed brands that did not interest me..

An impressive enough mall, but not very interesting to me in particular. I was in a very touristy and posh part of the city, but I did not mind hanging around here for a couple hours, casually strolling around and occasionally peeking back at Taipei 101.

There are several other shopping malls and pedestrian walkways nearby, some connected by elevated walkway. Touristy or not, this was a worthy first part of the city to explore a bit on foot.

 

[warpus]

Jimmy's Moon Bus

Just across the street from Taipei 101 is a public art installation based on a Taiwanese children's book by Jimmy Liao.

At first I did not expect to be able to get on the bus, but the door was wide open. Inside I found a cute unexpected little space.

Mellow melancholy melodies filled the space, and there was nobody else there. Just me and the little boy with the moon and all the other references to the book. It felt a bit surreal to be honest, moments ago I was in a giant packed mall and a sea of people walking from the metro to Taipei 101 and to wherever else.. and just across the street here was a weird little space of quiet and calm.

The inside of the bus mesmerized me a bit at first. Some of the quotes up on the wall seemed to speak to me personally, even though no direct or distinct personal meaning was really there that I could point to. Just a vague feeling that made sense to me at the time.

I walked behind the bookcase to find myself in a trippy little space.

I had a good time here! It was good to get away from the crowds for a bit..

I remember feeling like I had connected with Taiwan a bit here, but I didn't really know how. Was I just feeling the effects of the jetlag and possibly the lunch? .. or was there more to it?