Eat in Taipei

I'm not a gourmet, I'm not interested in eating many different food, neither.
But, since I live in Taipei, it's my unshirkable responsibility to talk about food.
Because there are indeed many delicious foods in Taiwan.

Maybe we can find more than 1000 different kinds of restaurants in Taipei, fortunately we can reach those really good restaurant through friend's recommendations.  

For example, I started to try below food after I've got the introduction from my wedding photographer.
This bowl of noodle is truly yummy yummy! A lot of vegetables being put inside, of course the meat mixed in the noodles is also awesome.

I've heard from my wife that the Cantonese food might be the most innovative and stunning food in this world. But it's not easy to find a genuine Cantonese restaurant in Taipei, most of the foods in common Cantonese restaurant are already modified to add more Taiwanese flavor into original taste.

Below picture is a special Cantonese dish, the texture and touch of the noodle is quite different.

Here is another famous Cantonese dish- A kind of fried rice with egg.
The highlight of this dish is its light flavor, smell good but not greasy.

The Cantonese sour sea food soap, I love it very much. I have to praise a lot about the disposal of Cantonese soup, we can really feel its rich nutrition and contents.

Besides eating in a ordinary restaurant, we can also choose a special option in Taipei- Night market.
If you come from US or Europe, I bet you never dinned like this.
Night market usually starts their commercial activities when the evening is approaching.
There are quite a few famous night markets in Taipei, for example, I've been to a night market called as "Tonghua street night market".
When I was near the entrance of Tonghua street night market, it was at twilight time:

Typically we will not expect to eat luxury food in night market, on the contrast, we will expect to experience many different simple foods with unique flavors.
I ordered a traditional Taiwanese food: rice with sliced meat. It is said that this vendor makes this meal really good in Tonghua night market.
And after my personal trial on this meal, yes, I admit it's a really good choice to swallow this bowl of rice.

Not only food you can experience in a night market, but also you can do some shopping in a night market. You can buy many cheap but delicate things in a night market, hopefully you can treat these small things as souvenirs once you're back to your countries.

Of course, you can always get some deserts, cold stuff in a night market.
I tried a ice cream (but no cream inside) with apricot flavor, it's just so good.
I frequently think about this cold desert, even now.

Night market is definitely an attractive spot for foreign travellers.
If you want to try one but you're lack of information or you dare not do it, please feel free to contact me.

City overview: Muzha

Not like many other cities in the US or Europe, Taipei is a crowded city.

There are a few disctricts in Taipei, one of them is called as "Wunshan district".

"Muzha" is a basic administration unit of Wunshan district.

There are not too many tall buildings in Muzha. On the contrary, we have many old apartments here:

The road situation here in Muzha is also different from many roads in other districts.

Here I can show you one example: A road with two lines per direction (As shown in the following picture).  This road is "Siouming Road" and it is already a big road in Muzha.

Because the roads in Muzha is not so wide, we can actually observe a special atmosphere here.
Old buildings constructed along the road while the road forms a "S-shape" curve, it hints that we can live a simple life here. 

But, during the day time or night time, we will still encounter traffic jams because there are no too many substitutes paths in Muzha. And of course, you can always see a lot of scooter riders in Taiwan.  

Below is a major road which connecting Muzha, ShenKeng and Mao-Kong.
Mao-Kong is a famous recreation site for drinking some Chinese teas.
In the shown cross road, to the right we can reach Hsintien; to the left we can reach Shenkeng; to the top we can reach Mao-kong.

This is the same road as shown in the previous picture, we can see so many busy-travelling cars.
Such phoenomenon happens everyday, even it's already a midnight, we can still feel the cars fly by and fly away.

Finally, I really like the picture below. I took this picture from the attic of my building.
I played as an observer instead of a participant of this busy world at that moment.
I live above the worries, at least for that short moment.

Welcome to Muzha !

Weather in Taipei

If my memory is correct, I think the weather in Taipei is usually like this:

That means, a sunny boy should feel depressed most of his time in Taipei.
I didn't make a precise statistic about the weather, but my impression is that we have more than 60% of days in a year, we might encounter rainy situation, in Taipei.

But, maybe that's because I'm living in a rainy region, Muzha.

Sometimes, I'm so blessed to have a sunny sunday (Sabbath day) in my hometown Muzha, then everything becomes attractive to me:

See? In a sunny sabbath day, everything is golden.

And recently I'm so lucky to take shots to record the spectacular sky happened near my home.
It's my pleasure to share these beautiful scenes with you:

High Speed Rail in Taiwan

Above picture is taken at High Speed Rail Tainan station.

If we talk about public transportation system in Taiwan, we have two major successes:
MRT (Metro Rapid Transportation) and HSR (High Speed Rail)

The train of HSR can reach speed level upto 300 Km/Hr, which means we only need to spend 2.5 hours
to travel from the northest station to the southest station in Taiwan.
It definitely brings more and more conveniences to business man and traveller.

Tainan station is the second southest station of HSR.

And in Tainan station, there exists normal train system to connect HSR station with other smaller train station. Below is the normal train which connects Yongkang station with Tainan HSR station. 

Here, we can take a look at the modern-designed shape of HSR train.
It is said that such train kills many birds during its trip everyday. As we can see something disgusting attached to the locomotive (shown in this picture), I wonder if that is blood from one or a few innocent
bird?

Below picture is taken at HSR Tainan station too, but we can see the color of the sky is somehow different. This is because there is a hurricane approaching Taiwan so that the chemistry of sky changes.

During the night/evening time, different light sources show up inside HSR station. I start to feel that I'm in the future because everything seems to be beautiful and stunning to me. It's just like this is a space station, not a land vehicle station.

 

Travelling by HSR, we can usually see Japanese people.

Typically they're here in Taiwan for business trip. When you're near a Japanese, you can feel the difference between a Japanese and a Taiwanese: They're more serious, deligent and proud.

As you can see, there are two Japanese using their laptops for their works during travelling.

Next time when you're in Taiwan, be sure to take HSR as one of your travelling tool.
Sadly the ticket price is not cheap, but it is worth your time if you want to try one of the most advanced technology in Taiwan.

Life is good

Hey~
Are you interested in Taiwan or China?

I'm Bentley Lin, who lives in Taiwan for more than 30 years.
I intend to use my camera and curiousity to show you this world: Taiwan.

Hopefully I will also explore more about China in the near future.

I wish some of you can enjoy the living, scene, story...which is presented to you through my blog.

Maybe you are from US, Europe or even Mars (??), no matter where you're coming from,
I welcome you here, my friend.

Here I show you one very unique bird which only appears in Taiwan:

Whose name is Urocissa caerulea: Isn't it beautiful?