Taiwan Day 6: Taipei

Our last day in Taiwan was as jam packed as the rest of our trip. We had another delicious breakfast at John and Julie's apartment. We ate pork buns that Julie had purchased the night before at a convenience store in the freezer department. I wish they had the selection of filled buns in the U.S. that they do in Taiwan. We also had guava juice, wax apples, tangerines, and custard apples/Buddha's head, my favorite fruit (although the passionfruit I had at lunch (see below) is almost as good but tastes entirely different).


L-R: Pork Buns, Tangerines, Asian Pears, Custard Apple/Buddha's Head, Jujubes, Wax Apples

We headed to the National Palace Museum for the English-speaking group tour at 10 AM. The National Palace Museum holds many items from the Sung, Yuan, Ming, and Ch'ing dynasties. The items were sent from China to Taiwan in 1948 when the political instability caused by the Communists made the museum's directors fear for the items' safety. The items range in date from thousands of years old to 100-200 years old. It is clear that the ancient Chinese were far more advanced than Westerners by looking at the items. One interesting item was a cauldron made around 1000 B.C. In the basin is about 500 characters; they have been very useful to scholars as an example of ancient writing. Also interesting is the Tsung-Chou Bell, made around 1000 B.C. It is a large bell with no ball inside. It was rung by hitting it with some external mallet. It also has numerous knobs on the front which was apparently used to produce different sounds. Our guide said that the bell can produce two different sounds. Modern scholars have been unable to reproduce a bell that can make the same sounds. During the Ch'ing dyansty (1644-1911), jade was carved into a piece of bok choy cabbage with two grasshoppers on to. It is believed that the piece was carved as a dowry gift for Consort Chin to symbolize her purity and offer blessings for many children. Scott's favorite piece in the museum's collection is the Carved Olive-Stone Boat. In 1737, Ch'en Tsu-Chang used a tiny olive pit, not more than an inch and a half long to carve a boat. The boat is unbelievably detailed, with eight detailed people carved onto the boat. Also, the entire text of a poem with more than 300 characters is carved onto the olive pit in miniscule print. A magnifying glass is provded to look at the olive pit. We stayed at the museum for about 2 hours. We easily could have stayed there all day and not seen everything, but there was much else we wanted to do.


Mao-Kung Ting Cauldron (Picture From NPM)

Tsung-Chou Bell (Picture From NPM)

Jade Bok Choy & Insects (Picture From NPM)

Carved Olive Pit (Picture From NPM)

Front of National Palace Museum


We left the museum and drove into downtown Taipei. This is a thoroughly urban area with many tall buildings. It is filled with fancy department stores. We walked through a Japanese department store, Mitsukoshi, that seemed to fill an entire block, although I'm sure it wasn't really that large. We headed toward the restaurant where John had made reservations for lunch. Jogoya is a buffet restaurant with numerous locations around Taiwan; this one located in a mall near Taipei 101. It has a vast array of Chinese and Japanese food. Like most buffets, I doubt the dishes were the quintessential versions of Chinese cuisine, but I thought the food tasted very good. Most importantly, it enabled me to try a lot of different varieties of food. I liked nearly all the dishes. The following are pictures of most of the food we ate.


L-R: Lamp Chop w/Black Pepper Sauce, Southeast Asian Pork, Miso Baked Fish, Thai Style Scallops, Pumpkin Seafood Tofu Stew (Delicious), Garlic Crab, Burning Paste Shrimp

L-R: Fried Shrimp Roll, Turnip Cake, Fried Chinese Yam, Fried Gold Durian (a smelly fruit), Salmon Nigiri

Crab Soup - Really good.

Fried Shrimp Balls - Cute, but not much flavor

Grilled Bamboo - Kind of bitter

Hand Roll w/Shrimp & Asparagus

Tuna Sashimi, Salmon Sashimi, Tomatoes, Pickled Fruit

Pork Filled Dumplings

Clay Pot w/Pork, Beef, and Squid

Open-Mouthed Sea Bass - Very good

Dessert: Chocolate Fondue w/ Marshmallows, Fruit, Macadamia Nut & Chocolate Ice Cream, Japanese Pancake W/ Cream & Red Bean Paste Filling (Yum!); Passionfruit; Rock Chocolate (Chocolate w/cornflakes, I think)

Passion Fruit - Delicious!

At the fondue area, they offered three items to dip in the chocolate: marshmallows, red grapes, and cherry tomatoes! Of all the different dishes I saw at Jogoya, the only thing that I could not get my head around was dipping cherry tomatoes in chocolate. Fish chin, I happily ate...but I could not eat cherry tomatoes and chocolate. It may actually taste good, but the two just don't seem to go together.

After our enormous lunch we walked over to the mall at the base of Taipei 101. On the way, I was excited to see a large sign for Coldstone Creamery. I went inside to see if it was any different. Other than featuring less chocolate-themed ice cream creations, it was basically the same. Even the offered toppings were the same. There was also a cute Snoopy Metlife ferris wheel and a replica of the Statue of Liberty. The Taipei 101 mall was lots of fun. We spent a few hours looking around. It was largely filled with designer shops that were prohibitively expensive. There was Tiffany's, DKNY, D&G, Prada, Gucci, Escada, Louis Vuitton, etc. I think clothes were more expensive there than in the U.S. (based on a comparison of a shirt from Armani Exchange). They also had a large English/Chinese bookstore that I happily looked around. We spent so much time in the mall both because I love looking at expensive clothes and purses (and books of course), but also because Scott wanted to wait until dark to go to the observatory.








Taipei 101

After dark, we ascended to the 89th floor of Taipei 101 to see the sights of Taipei in the interior observatory. Taipei 101 is a 101-floor skyscraper opened in 2004. It is currently the tallest building in the world, but will be eclipsed by a 141-floor building in Dubai in September 2009. It was the first building to be taller than a half-kilometer. Its height is listed as 1,667 feet (Comparison: There are 5,280 feet in a mile). It is designed to resist wind gusts of 60 miles/second and the strongest earthquake in a 2,500 year pattern. The building has a 728 ton tuned mass damper suspended from the 88th floor to the 92 floor designed to offset building movements caused by wind gusts. It is the largest damper in the world. Taipei 101 capitalizes on the damper by having its own mascot, the "Damper Baby." The elevator to the observatory is the fastest in the world. It took us from the 5th floor to the 89th floor in only 37 seconds. We spent a lot of time walking around the observatory listening to free audio guides that told us about the sights of Taipei that we were seeing. I was sad that we couldn't really see the city due to the darkness.










The Mass Tuned Damper

Me and Julie with the Damper Baby

Scott and John with the Damper Baby


To leave the observatory, we had to pass through numerous shops, selling food gifts and jewelry. We fell prey. Scott bought several boxes of cakes to take to work - they had samples of all the different flavors - quite good. And I found a gorgeous necklace of pink coral with a little jade. Taiwan is apparently known for its coral - the shop made sure we were aware of this. I was just happy to find a pretty necklace that ended up being inexpensive with the exchange rate and a little bargaining by John. After spending a long time in the jewelry shops, we headed back down to the main floors and left Taipei 101.

It was getting late by this point, but I really wanted to do one more thing in Taiwan - go to a big grocery store. So we went to one of their large supermarkets called Carrefour. Essentially a combination of a grocery store and a Walmart, this had everything a household could need. We bought a few pairs of house shoes and sandals for about $3 US each. Scott found a backpack for about $5 US. I also found a packet of chopsticks as well as a portable pair of chopsticks that I can fold up in put in my lunchbox for less than $2 each. We did not get to the grocery store portion of the supermarket until just before it closed at 11 PM, so many things had been removed, but I saw the vast array of fruits and vegetables in the produce section. Not surprisingly, they also had a much larger selection of fish than any store in the U.S. After finishing our shopping, we headed back to Julie and John's apartment for the night.