Food!

We cooked and everything was so delicious! Julia, Joyce and I all decided try some new recipes and they all turned out delicious!
Joyce with all the food:

Chinese beef stew w/ star anise

Radish cake (Luo-bo gao)

Beef w/ chinese BBQ sauce (Sa-cha niu)

Baked Maple Salmon w/ pecan crust

And cookies!! (Chocolate chip oatmeal pecan) mmm...

YUM!

v for vendetta

We watched V for Vendetta in movie club today and it just got me thinking about some of the things I learned about the Taiwanese government nowadays. When we went back, it was all people were talking about - that, and the economy. A new president took office in May, and there was sort of a flip where a different party (KMT) took control of office. And whether or not I agree with the KMT's political stance, there seems to have been a gradual but disturbing loss of freedom/liberty since this new government took office. There were a lot of things that I didn't understand; I had a hard time understanding the news, my Chinese is still not that great yet.
The movie raises the question - if your government starts to falter, if your freedoms start to slip - are you willing to stand up and fight against that (even in the face of fear of disaster)? And an underlying question, which I don't think the movie addresses - is how hard do the people need to fight for the government to listen?

Things I learned when I was in Taiwan -
- In Taiwan, most of the media is controlled or monitored by the government. Only one newspaper is privately owned - and it was able to be started because an incredibly rich man funded it and lost money for a long time, but was willing to pay.
- There are only one or two TV stations that are not monitored/censored by the government. When we were there, on the news, there was a large protest because the public educational channel (that is largely funded by the government) was being threatened to be shut down - either they allow the government to screen and censor all their programs, or else the government would shut down their funding.
- A friend of my parents works to collect historical Taiwanese items and had made a mini museum displaying the items, many of them are significant to historical events in Taiwan that many Taiwanese people don't even know about, because they never learned about them in school. They have kept the place hidden, because they are afraid the items will be confiscated if the government finds out.
- When a Chinese official in charge of Taiwan-China relations came to visit the island, people were forcibly forbidden to display the Taiwanese flag. in order to please China? This comment from a blog echos many sentiments I heard: "There are no other ethnic groups on earth would discriminate against themselves besides Taiwanese. Shame on you, my fellow Taiwanese!!"
- I've heard rumors about the political party in control/executive branch of government starting to take control of the judicial court as well.
- The previous Taiwanese president was arrested and handcuffed at 2am from his home. for suspected charges of corruption. About to go on trial soon. Many other officials who had connections with the former president have also been detained for questioning.
- Taiwan had been previously rated as one of the most "free" countries by Freedom House (an international human rights org). Holding clean and peaceful elections, and a high level of politcal freedoms and civil liberties. But it has been flagged by this organization for monitoring because of recent events.

“The latest events appear to signal a disturbing erosion of civil liberties and human rights in Taiwan.”
— from a letter signed by 14 members of the US Congress to President Bush


What can you do? It makes me scared and sad at the same time. Yet I feel as if the people are so powerless. So many people are in an uproar. Yet the government seems to still march on, unhindered because their political party holds the power/control now. The only power that the people have is by the way of the media (gradually becoming more controlled by the government) and through freedom of speech/assembly (being met by more and more police brutality). My dad says that if things keep continuing on they way they are, there's going to be a big riot. But it is true, that many people still remain complacent. That on many issues the Taiwanese are still letting things happen to them (I saw a news report about a gas leak in Gao-Xiong that was making people sick. The gas leak was right near an elementary/middle school. They knew people were getting sick, but kids were still going to school anyway; they only stayed home if they were already sick. And it took them weeks to try to track down the source. why???)
So the only thing I can do is become informed. And remind myself of how thankful I am to be living in a country where we do have a lot of freedoms. In a society that holds those freedoms as our human God given rights, and that I faith will stand up and hold the government accountable if those freedoms start to falter.

More on Taiwan

Some of the food we ate while we were at Ali-san: apparently the cabbage grown on the mountain is quite famous, and it really is delicous! They also served us these bamboo sticks. At first when they came, me and my sister didn't know what they were for--

They're called zhu-tong fan, it's rice stuffed into a bamboo stick, and steamed to eat! Here is my mom demonstrating:

They have a lot of bamboo forests there, and the main kind of bamboo that grows on that mountain is called "Meng-zhong zhu" or Bamboo from a dream. Because there was a legend that there was a son whose mother really liked eating bamboo shoots, and one night he dreamed that she was very sick. And he found that his mother really was sick she wanted to eat bamboo shoots. But it was winter time, so none were growing. So the son cried and then the bamboo grew! This type of bamboo is known for growing bamboo shoots in the winter time. (also the same type that make up the forest in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon).

And one of the stops we made along our trails was to find a special type of bamboo called "Shi-fang zhu" or Four-sided bamboo; you might be able to read the sign at the bottom of the picture. You can't really tell from far away, but the bamboo is really four sided!! we felt it with our own hands!

Here's an upclose picture of a cross section:

Some other cool sights-
Here are some tree roots. What do you think it looks like? reminds me of Princess Mononoke...

This is a vegetable called "Fu-sou gua" or Holding-hands melon.

Another picture from sunset--

Yay Taiwan!! (me and Tiff)

I'm still in Taiwan!

Some more pictures!
At the High Speed Rail Station (it's super fast!! goes 200+ miles per hour, and Taipei to Taichung in exactly 1 hour!) Here is a sign that was at the station, where cars pick up passengers:

Here is my dad, mom and uncle at a local Tainan restaurant-

After visiting my uncle in Tainan, we went to Ali-san, the most famous mountain in Taiwan! Here's a picture I took on the bus on the way up the mountain:

One of the famous points of Ali-san is the little train that was built to transport lumber from the top of the mountain. We took it to the top of the mountain! Here's a picture of the train:

There was a landslide along the mountain, and this is what it looks like now, does the shape resemble anything familiar?

Me hugging a tree that is 1000+ years old!

They had monkeys there!! hehehe, they were so cute. There were a bunch of them along the road~

Sunset at Ali-san. It's famous for being above the clouds, and when they're thick, it forms a cloud sea.

Merry Christmas from Taiwan!

Hi from Taiwan!
Here are some pictures!

Of course at the market! I thought this was a good representation. SOO much food!


This is from walking downtown:

On the subway, so convienent!!


Now some pictures of food:
At a coffeeshop that we went to - this was Tiffany's cake:
A good day is expeched to begin!

We went to a pretty fancy Japanese restaurant with one of my dad's college friends.
This is fish with pumpkin sauce and pumpkin seeds, and that black thing was a cookie.

This is the biggest piece of shrimp i've ever seenn (and eaten!)


And lastly, just want to wish everyone a merry christmas! They don't really celebrate christmas here, but at every subway station they have these christmas themed blow up dolls, so I kept having Tiffany take a picture with them:

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

I'm in Taiwan!

I will try to take some pictures and up load them when i can!
of delicious food (and other stuff too!)

Buenos Aires, day 4

Monday: First, we went to La Boca to see a neighborhood of colorful houses called Caminito. It's a pretty big tourist attraction, so there are a bunch of vendors down (here there were a lot of paintings).

The houses are colorful because when there was a large immigration boom in Buenos Aires in the late 1800's a lot of Italians moved to this area, especially those from Genoa. They came from a city by a port, just as la Boca is along the coast of the Rio de la Plata as well. So they continued one of their traditions which was painting their houses with the left over paint from the shipyard. That's what makes the neighborhood so colorful. This town took it even further and they even started building entire homes out of materials from the shipyard!

Empenadas for lunch! Here is a true picture of what mine looked like :D Yumm! And the Pepsi from the glass bottle.

Ed & Julia

the t(h)eresas
Then we took a walk in the park, just playing around, posing with the statues~


And went to the Japanese garden (largest one outside of Japan!)

Then we headed down to the Rio de la Plata (finally!). You can see the city of Buenos Aires in the distance (right above my head). As a mentioned before it is the widest river or estuary (right where the river is about to meet the ocean) in the world - at least the part where the river meets Buenos Aires. Here's an image of it from wiki:

So even on a clear day you can't see uruguay, I think where Buenos Aires is, it's on the order of the width of lake erie (~ 40 miles wide)!

Then went for a little bit of shopping and dinner at Bar Milion (a resturant bar that was converted from a 3 story mansion). On our way to dinner we passed by the Obelisk, and took a moment to take some photos. What Ed will do for a good photo opportunity: (he had to lay/crouch on the ground in order to get the whole obelisk~)

Buenos Aires, day 3!

On Sunday we went to the San Telmo Flea Market, which is especially famous for the antiques that they sell there and the street performers that gather. I mostly took pictures of the street performers instead of the market itself.

There was some really fun tango dancing at the market, this is a snap shot from a video I took.

I especially liked listening to the tango bands that were out there. Here is one of them. The play very traditional tango music, but I think its the right size ensemble that sounds really good. There was also a cellist, but for some reason he was sitting sort of away from everyone else, so I could't get him in the photo.

And then there was also -- Ed tried to describe what he had read about - that one of the street performers at the market is a guy who pretends like he's in a hurricane. Let yourself imagine what that might be like for a moment....

And this is what we ran into:

the change poses whenever you give them any money. And sometimes just on a whim to get more laughs.

After walking around the square we went to a nearby cafe for a late lunch. Julia ordered Mate, a special kind of tea that Argentinians like to drink in the afternoon. You put the Mate (the green leaves in the cup to the right) into the silver cup with the silver straw and soak it with some hot water. Then add some sugar and drink it through the special straw which has a filter at the bottom so you don't drink any of the leaves. When we were at the cafe, people kept leaning over to our table to teach Julia how to drink and prepare the Mate. :D

For dinner we went to el Mirasol, a really good restaurant (steak again!). The food all got devoured before I had a chance to take a picture. But this is all of us at the restuarant by the time the desert came out.

After dinner we went to las Canitas (the new place to go in Buenos Aires, though it was not too bustling on Sunday night). First, we walked around and found a little park in the middle of the street and indulged our inner child. Teresa especially enjoyed riding on this swinging oil drum :P She got Annie to get on with her - looks like fun, right?

After that we went to a bar where we ordered a bottle of wine and also a pitcher with fruit and sugar - sort of a makeshift sangria. Can you see the fruit in the wine? It was delicious :D, but we had a little bit of trouble getting to all the fruit, hehe: