Day 26: Wanhua & Datong Districts   I had blocked out a short second day in two districts to the west, over by the river. This was a metro day, since I made multiple connections around the two areas of interest by metro.

Wanhua is Taipei’s oldest district, to the west of Zhongzheng. I got off at Longshan Temple station to visit the oldest temple in Taipei, dating from 1738, but rebuilt. It’s on a rather narrow site, as indicated by the width of its magnificent gate. I find that Chinese temples, unlike the often minimalist Japanese ones, often in vermilion, are architecturally elaborate with roofs that are masterpieces of whimsical forms. Beyond the gate, the courtyard to the temple itself, was just as busy as shown here, filled with people praying, including preparing incense and candles.

The Datong District is also on the river, but to the north of Zhongzheng and accessible by the red line. It was for a long time the main commercial district before that shifted to Zhongzheng and beyond. It includes Dihua Street and its street market, where goods used to come from the nearby wharf. I stopped at Bao-An Temple, dedicated to the god of medicine, and one of the most visited, and also the Confucius Temple, with another magnificent roof, perhaps just a bit more restrained than at Longshan Temple. Also visible from the elevated metro line was the Grand Hotel, built in 1973 for dignitaries and as a showplace for Chinese architecture and culture. It has the world’s largest Chinese classical-style roof.

Day 27: Taipei 101   Xinyi Road, where Din Tai Fung is, leads out to Xinyi to the east of Zhongzheng. I took the blue line a few stops out there to visit Taipei 101, built in 2004 and currently the world’s tallest building at 508 m (1667 ft), although soon it will be surpassed by a building now going up in Dubai.

Sitting across the street in a park I could take my time observing the unique shape of the building. I understand was quite an architectural challenge to try to evoke a unique Chinese nature. The lower quarter flares out like a skirt, being a steep, truncated pyramid. Then, between floors 24 and 27 on all four sides are huge replicas of ancient Chinese coins. Above that in an attempt to evoke a segmented bamboo stalk are modules that flare outward and upward, followed by a tower on top. However, this being China, where eight is a propitious number, there are eight modules of eight stories each, each one topped by medallions at the corners and in the center. These multiple modules also evoke a pagoda structure—just think of how many five-story pagodas we’ve talked about. I suppose Taipei 101 brings pagoda building into the 21C. Here it is at night, although I didn’t get to see it that way.

The two Toshiba elevators are the world’s fastest, as certified by the Guinness Book of Records. It takes just 37 seconds to reach the 89th floor when you ascend, which means you travel at 60 km/h (36 mph). That works out to an amazing 1010 m/min (3314 ft/min) upward. Downward, you go at only 600 m/min (1969 ft/min). I assume that’s to avoid queasy stomachs. The elevator cabins are also quite unique. After the doors close, the light dims and the ceiling becomes a blinking starry-night display with comets. On the wall is a schematic of the building showing the elevator’s progress, plus a constantly changing readout showing current height and speed.

Its name says it has 101 floors, although the enclosed observation deck, which can accommodate 1400 people, is on the 89th floor at 382 m (1254 ft). When weather conditions permit (fortunately, not when I was there, or I might have been tempted) there is also an open-air observation deck on the 91st floor for masochists who want to go outside at that height. Although the day was overcast, the near view down was perfect, and the clouds tended to hover just above eye-level, so that they would periodically lift so you could see to the near distance. I particularly remember enjoying spotting the huge pagoda roof of the Grand Hotel clear across town. It was much easier seeing what I wanted to here than it was at the top of the Jungfraujoch last year in Switzerland.

There is a display discussing the world’s ten tallest buildings after Taipei 101. I was rather amazed to see that seven of them are either in Hong Kong or mainland China. #9 is New York’s 1931 Empire State Building at 381 m (1250 ft), 102 floors; #4 is Chicago’s 1974 Sears Tower at 442 m (1450 ft), 110 floors; # 3, in Malaysia, are Kuala Lumpur’s twin Petronas Towers at 452 m (1483 ft), 88 floors. I’ve been in the first two, but at best will get to only see the Petronas Towers from a distance next summer.

You would think that that would be enough superlatives for one sight, but, just like Nara’s Great Buddha also has its spectacular huge hall, Taipei 101 has its wind damper. That might not sound so sexy, but the concept alone is fascinating, and this building is the only one in the world that has one that displays it open to view, and very opulently.

I suppose it works this way. Picture a huge bell tower with one very large bell housed inside its top. In case of high winds, such as a hurricane or typhoon, or in case of an earthquake, if the building moves a bit, the inertia of the weight of that bell might at first slow down the movement, but then as the bell swings back into place, it would definitely help to bring the building back into place as well. It’s my guess that that’s the theory behind hanging a huge ball at the top of high-rises. It mentioned other buildings with wind dampers as well (I noticed in particular the slant-roofed Citicorp Tower in New York), but Taipei 101 is the only one that puts it on display. Below is what you see.

Picture a huge suspended ball weighing 660 metric tons (728 US tons), 5.5 m (18 ft) in diameter. It consists of 41 layers of 12.5 cm (2.2 in)–thick steel plate welded together. The ball hangs from 16 cables—grouped together in four fours—which are 9 cm (3.5 in) in diameter and 42 m (138 ft) long. Below the ball are eight hydraulic bumpers, like shock absorbers, four rising from the floor and four coming from the walls, meant to absorb motion. This ball is suspended between floors 92 and 87. Everything described is painted gold in a black environment, so its technology not only amazes, so does its opulent look. You view it once on a walkway surrounding it when you enter from the observation deck on 89, and see again as you leave, from below on 87.

The wind damper resists wind pressure, and makes the building flexible. It reduces the building’s movement by up to 40%. The ball does this by being able to move, on very rare occasions, up to 150 cm (59 in). That’s a meter and a half, or about five feet. Eerie.

Finally, here’s a real treat I found on YouTube. Every New Year’s Eve since it opened, Taipei 101has become a center of celebration. Remember that it was the Chinese who invented fireworks, although being anywhere in the building during the celebration must be hugely disorienting. Introducing the current year, here are the 2009 Fireworks.

Day 27 (Evening): “Mongolian Barbecue”   There was one more dining experience I still wanted to have, based on what I’d found out in researching Taipei, and that involved the so-called “Mongolian Barbecue”. It remains one of my favorite dinners, one that I’d enjoyed in Vancouver and Samoa before, but I had a particular reason I wanted to have it in Taipei as well. I always knew there was one lie in its name, since it’s nothing like a barbecue and is really a type of stir-fry, but I’d considered that just a bit of hyperbole. But I now know the name consists of two lies, since it’s not Mongolian at all, it’s Taiwanese. The ingredients aren’t in any way Mongolian, and any grilling of meats they may do in Mongolia is nothing like “Mongolian Barbecue”, which was invented in Taipei. It also has a very distant American connection, and therein lies a tale.

We described earlier (2009/42) that it was postwar American influence in Japan that introduced teppanyaki; a restaurant serving teppanyaki usually being referred to as a “Japanese steakhouse”, despite its hidden American origins. We also discussed above the ongoing influence of Japanese culture on Taiwan. In the latter 20C, teppanyaki houses in Taiwan developed a new style, involving a self-service teppanyaki buffet rather than having table or counter service, and they wanted a new name.

Marketing hyperbole, or fudging of the facts (only rarely called lying) has a long history. While Tabasco Sauce is made in Avery Island in Louisiana (2008/3), even though Louisiana has developed a reputation for hot sauce, the McIlhenny people in the late 19C reached to the Mexican state of Tabasco, near the Yucatan Peninsula, for a name for its product, given the Mexican reputation for spicy food. Exoticism works as a marketing tool. So rather than calling it what it was, a large-scale stir-fry buffet, the Taiwanese evoked the exotic (for Taiwan) American word “barbecue”, and rather than calling it Taiwanese, they evoked instead the exotic steppes of Mongolia. Of course, these were ethnic Chinese evoking Mongolia, and half of ethnic Mongolians live within China, making it all less exotic, but let’s not go there in a search for logic—this is marketing technique.

The reality of it is that it should perhaps be called Taiwanese Stir-Fry Buffet for the sake of accuracy, although the more romantic name “Mongolian Barbecue” will continue to stick. Anyway, it’s a marvelous meal—but now becomes obvious why I wanted to have one in Taipei, where it originated. It’s a matter of selecting various meats, then vegetables, then sauces (the sauces!) in a bowl and handing them to the chef, who stir-fries them, usually more than one at a time, on a huge round grill up to 2.5 m (8 ft) in diameter. Although other places might also include noodles, I read, and also found, that noodles are not part of the meal in Taiwan.

After Taipei 101 I worked for the rest of the day in the hotel room, and set out in the early evening for my “Mongolian Barbecue” adventure, and an enjoyable adventure it was. I’d located two restaurants, one right near a metro stop, but was more intrigued by the online reviews of Tang Kung Barbecue, which involved a walk beyond the metro. Using the blue, then brown lines to reach my station, I then set out for a walk through a middle-class neighborhood to the restaurant. My slightly out-of-date map showed I should walk along Chin-chou Street, which I saw is now styled Jin-chou Street, so you have to know your Pinyin. It was a contemporary commercial street that I enjoyed walking along. I had found that the 7-Eleven convenience stores had a huge presence in Japan, and also in Taiwan. As I walked for about 15 minutes, I passed no fewer than FIVE 7-Elevens on Jin-chou Street alone. I sometimes think that if 7-Eleven ever went out of business, it would drag down the East Asian economies with it.

As I reached the intersection with the major Sung-Chiang Road, now Song-Jiang Road, I was there. I knew the restaurant was not at street level, but one flight up, so up I went, truly a Westerner having an adventure in China.

The huge dining room was packed. When traveling, I don’t pay attention to weekends, but it turned out to be a Friday night, and there were wall-to-wall people, mostly at large family-sized tables for eight, with only a few small tables, all busy. I saw one other Westerner, but he seemed to be the guest of a Chinese friend. So it came down to being a matter of les Chinois et moi, a cultural experience just the way I like it, and it worked out parfaitement.

I talked to the two ladies behind the counter taking reservations (there were people already waiting in the hall). One spoke enough English to let me know that maybe it would take a half-hour, so I walked around in the organized chaos to check out the place. The buffet was right at the entrance, and there was also a dessert buffet, but it seemed that most of the tables had in their center a hot-pot, like the Japanese shabu-shabu, where you cook your meats and vegetables in boiling water. They apparently used the buffet only as an appetizer. I considered that sacrilege, but to each his own.

I enjoyed the organized chaos while I waited. A din of spoken Chinese of people enjoying themselves, waitstaff swooping back and forth to the tables carrying boiling hot-pots, someone refilling meats at the buffet—it was a hive of activity and of life, and almost über-authentic.

After about 40 minutes, my little lady had a plan. She would seat two parties at one large table for eight, something I only understood as it happened. They removed three chairs, seated me at my half of the large table, and seated four young Asians around the other half. We greeted each other, and sat down.

The young people were all about 18-20. One couple was too shy to say anything in English, but the other guy spoke up after a while. It turned out he was a visiting Japanese, and apologized needlessly for his very-good English, so the third Japanese on this trip that I had a bit of a conversation with was actually in Taiwan. The young woman with him was Taiwanese, and did communicate a bit, but he did most of the talking. I wonder if it looked around the room like a Western professor holding court with Asian students across the table. They had a large hot-pot in front of them for later, but we all went for the buffet first, with me going later for seconds. A nice Taiwanese beer accompanied my meal.

I had also read that Tang Kung included sesame rolls with the meal, and these were exquisite. They were tubular and about the size of your hand, totally covered with sesame seeds, which, as I’ve said, Asians do so well with. You use your pair of chopsticks to poke into the end of the roll and spread it open, then fill it with stir-fry. It’s MUCH easier than it sounds.

To the bemusement of one waiter, before I left I stood at the buffet and made a list of everything on it, which were clearly labeled in both Chinese and English. First came the meats, already in bite-size pieces, and I’d taken pork, beef, and chicken; I passed by the mutton and venison. Then came the veggies, with several kinds of greens, also onions (!!), peppers, sprouts, tomatoes, and carrots. There was chopped garlic (!!), red chili, and pineapple chunks, which fit in far better than you may imagine. But the essence of this meal—literally—comes from the sauces. There was soy sauce, ginger sauce, lemon water, white cooking wine, shrimp oil, chili oil, and sesame oil (!!). These sauces “made” the meal, and I used them all. You then hand your heaped bowl (the veggies will cook down) to the chef, who’ll return it to you in about a minute, cooked, in a fresh bowl. The grill can be flat, or, like the wok it’s imitating, slightly concave in the center (we learned that character! It’s 凹!). Curiously, the grill at Tang Kung was slightly convex (凸) in the center; I suppose the bulging shape helped both maneuvering the food and cleanup.

This picture of a “Mongolian Barbecue” grill shows the usual large size of the grill, big enough for several chefs to cook several patrons’ dishes at once. The chefs are also using sword-like scrapers to move the food around. This YouTube video of a grill in Vancouver (but not the one I went to) shows a smaller grill, but the single chef is using the monster chopsticks they also used at Tang Kung. His perfect maneuvering is fantastic, and his final pickup is so perfect, you’re not sure what happened, so you’ll want to see it again.

Day 28: National Palace Museum   My last full day and night of the four weeks of this trip was another simple one, with only one destination. Although I haven’t always been a fan of Asian art, Taipei’s National Palace Museum (Photo by Peellden) is unique, and I spent several enjoyable hours there, leaving time to relax on this last day before the flight home. But it’s a quirk of modern history that makes this art museum special. It had been housed in 1925 in Beijing, but during WW2, the best of the best in the museum collection was crated and put away for safekeeping. But after the war, before anything had been uncrated, the Nationalists were fighting the Communists, and eventually Chiang Kai-shek ordered the crates sent to Taiwan. There is still a Palace Museum (two words) in Beijing, but the best of the collection is in Taipei. The present Taipei building was built in 1964 and has 650,000 permanent artifacts and art works covering 8000 years of Chinese history. They display 5000 items at a time, rotated in three-month cycles, but it will take 32 years to display the whole collection. In 2008 it was the 15th most-visited museum in the world.

The metro has not yet been built out to the museum, which is north of downtown, so, from the Shilin station on the red line, I had to take a bus whose last stop was the museum. I’m wary of buses whose routes I’m not sure of, but had checked out this route long in advance, and it went well.

There was calligraphy, scrolls, furniture, cloisonné jewelry. I liked the early Chinese bronze cooking pots, tiny snuff bottles painted on the inside, all the porcelains (remember that not only fireworks, but paper and porcelain comes from China), the so-called openwork vases, where the porcelain has a pattern of lacy openings. There was an ivory concentric ball, another of which I’ve also since seen on the Antiques Roadshow. A large piece of ivory was intricately carved into a grapefruit-sized ball, then through the larger openings an inner, second ball is intricately carved, until a total of 17 balls, one layered inside the other, is reached—and they all revolve. In the painting area the difference was shown between earlier Chinese painting and then the introduction and incorporation of elements of Western art in the mid-1700’s, such as using shading techniques for a three-dimensional quality. Also, Western-style flowers started to be used then.

On the top floor were the minerals and gemstones, including jade going back to the earliest periods. It showed how hunters would hollow out animal bones, cut them to size, and then string them, to be worn as necklaces to show their hunting prowess. The next step was to take pieces of jade of the same size and shape and prepare and wear them in the same way, and thus, jade necklaces were born.

Jade ‘n’ Jasper   It is in the gemstone area that two of the museum’s most famous masterpieces are located. People swarm just to see these two pieces, and the museum shop swims with pictures, other representations, and (not-really-convincing) replicas of these.

What we call jade can be either one of two minerals, nephrite or jadeite. By far the most famous piece in the museum is the Jadeite Cabbage (Photo by Peellden), which represents a stalk of Chinese cabbage, also known as bok choy. It’s close to life size, about the size of a stalk of celery. The first thing that amazes is the fine carving and detail. Then you’re further amazed when you find out that this piece is not painted. The craftsman found a piece of jadeite that was naturally transitional from green to white and used this natural coloration to his, and our, advantage. But that’s not all. This bok choy is being eaten. In two places.

It’s devilishly hard to see in reality, even a short distance away, and harder still in a photograph, but look closely at the vertical center strip on the green area. That is not bok choy you’re seeing but a large, dark-green locust or grasshopper. At best, you might be able to make out its legs. Then look to the left to the highest point on the piece. That’s also not bok choy, but a light-green katydid, also chomping away. The Jadeite Cabbage is the Mona Lisa of Taipei’s National Palace Museum, which is why I relented and, in the museum shop, bought a thick, ceramic coaster with its image on it.

If you find a bok choy Mona Lisa a bit commonplace and mundane as a subject, then the second most famous piece in the museum will surprise you even more. It’s not made of jade, but of jasper, which is a form of agate, and it’s the Jasper Meat-Shaped Stone. It represents nothing more than a fist-sized piece of stewed pork cooked in soy sauce, but the clearly defined layering of lean, fat, and skin is remarkable. These three layers are cleverly fashioned out of the natural strata of the jasper, with carved texturing, especially of the “skin”. However, although I’m sure the jasper was brown to begin with, I understand there is a certain degree of dying in this piece. Both these carvings date from the Qing Dynasty, China’s last dynasty, but since that dynasty ruled for over 2 ½ centuries, from 1644 to 1911, that information isn’t too precise.

Flight Home   The return took place on the following partial day, but a partial day that went to 17 hours from takeoff in Taipei to landing in New York, including ground time while making connections in Tokyo. I set the alarm at 5:00 the next morning, and, since the executive lounge wasn’t open yet, they sent me at 5:30 a “breakfast box”. I was glad I’d bought my return bus ticket to the airport, but I’m always wary about dawn connections, such as the two I made earlier this year in Christchurch to catch early trains. I stood on the absolutely deserted corner on an overcast Sunday morning in Taipei hoping nothing would go wrong, and then, sure enough, right on time at 6:20, my bus swung around the corner. I lost an hour on the 3h5 flight to Tokyo-Narita, and made good connections. I had thought that Tokyo-New York would be 12h40, but the flight had been rescheduled to leave 20 minutes earlier, so it took exactly 13 hours instead. It remains as my second-longest nonstop flight, corrected below on the list published in 2009/35.

While the westbound flight had stayed over North America as long as possible, cutting across the Yukon and all of Alaska, leaving Alaska to the west, and then hugging the Asian coast, the return flight was mostly over water. We crossed the Pacific flying east out of Tokyo and didn’t even approach Alaska. We made landfall in North America right between Vancouver and Victoria, then continued above the US/Canada border until cutting down gradually in an arc toward New York.

As to the time, we left Tokyo at 2:45 PM Sunday eastbound, while that clock-hour left Tokyo westbound around the world. After 13 hours, it was already 3:45 AM Monday Tokyo time to us on the plane, but in New York still only 1:45 PM Sunday, almost a full reversal of a clock dial. Since we got to New York from the west one hour before our departure time from Tokyo of 2:45 PM arrived from the east, you could say we “arrived one hour before we left”. All those hours starting at 5 AM in Taipei, through Tokyo and across the Pacific and North America were all Sunday for me, and I still had hours of Sunday left in New York starting from my early-afternoon arrival. It was what you call a long day. It had taken several days in Tokyo to adjust to the fact that noon was midnight and vice-versa, but I adjusted quickly. In this direction, after a week and a half of odd sleeping hours I’m still waking up far earlier than I usually get up, and still want to doze off in the evening, but things will adjust. The eye-opening trip to Japan and Taiwan was certainly worth it. Still, as I always say, westbound long-distance travel is superior to eastbound, and round-the-world (RTW) is better still, westbound of course.