For my mom

My mom asked for some pictures of the beachfront close to our house. She visited us a few months back, but unfortunately it was winter time and we only went to the beach once or twice with her. The beach itself is a black sand beach made from either shale or some volcanic rock. Unfortunately it's not the most popular beach so it isn't very well kept, meaning it is frequently littered with plastic, vegetables and other trash washed out of a nearby river mouth. It's popular with fishermen and a pack of feral dogs.

Sunrise at this time of year is at 5am, so we had to get up at 4:50, I think Renalda was up before that making me some coffee. I was not really compos mentis, but it was great to be there, Renalda had the camera, otherwise there would have been no photos!

Enjoy!

Fried rice, zhongzi and Taiwanese neighbors

We have some wonderful neighbors. There is an oldish couple who live next door, we say "Ni Hao" to them whenever we see them. Every now and then they will walk into our house and give us something. I say walk in because there is a different sense of privacy here in Taiwan. People knock and walk in, we often lock our door for a different reason now.

We have received fresh vegetables from them often as they have a large allotment close by where they grow all sorts of fresh veggies. In fact a few months back we got so much we couldn't eat it quickly enough and it went bad. We often feel like our thanks and expressions of gratitude, with our very limited Chinese, is just not good enough, but as we learn Chinese we will try to be better at it.

These are our sweet zhongzi, given to us by our neighbors

Last weekend was Dragon Boat festival and the thing to eat around that time is zhongzi (sticky rice pyramids wrapped in bamboo leaves). One day we were minding our business when Ama (grandmother) came and gave us 6 pork zhongzi, yummy! Then I walked outside one day and she was cooking fried rice on her veranda, which I try not to eat, but couldn't resist when she offered me some. So I got a bowl from home, a reasonable sized one and she filled it till it was overflowing. Renalda and I shared the bowl for a tasty breakfast.

 A few days ago she came again to give us some more zhongzi but this time they were of the sweet variety. Well not really sweet, rather mildly flavored, to be dipped in sugar or honey. Also very good. Renalda and her got "talking" and she offered to show Renalda how to make "them". We misunderstood and "them" turned out to be pork fried rice with mushrooms.

It was arranged that Renalda and her would go buy the ingredients on Saturday morning (today)  and we think she waited until 9am before she tried to walk in the door. Renalda was able to say "shi fen" which means 10 minutes from our Chinese lessons... awesome! They went off to a morning market close by which we didn't know existed to "mai" (buy) the ingredients. Then came some more misunderstanding. She had examined out kitchen and noticed our bread maker which looks very similar to a rice cooker. The amount of ingredients she bought was for that size rice cooker, which meant she had to rethink the amounts of ingredients.

Then another disaster struck! Our small rice cooker clearly hadn't been used for ages as the aluminium rice bowl had cooked through. Ama had to go and get one from her kitchen so that we could use our tiny rice cooker.

Finally the rice was cooked all ingredients were ready and she made us a huge bowl of very yummy fried rice in our wok. Now we know how to make Taiwanese fried rice. The secret ingredient? We think it's MSG... heehee.

We suspect it's MSG, if someone can translate, much appreciated!

The rice paddies of Yilan

Growing sticky rice funTastic!!

Being in the Republic of China (Taiwan) you expect to see a lot of rice eaten and grown. In DaJia, where we first lived in Taiwan, there were only a few rice paddies and lots of taro plantations. We worked so hard and our commute was short and through the town centre, so we didn't see much of the rice. Here in Yilan there is rice everywhere and we have enjoyed watching the life cycle, every morning we drive a few kilometres through numerous ever changing paddies.

Through the rainy winter months the rice paddies looked like big square dams of black water. The water levels rose and fell depending on the rain. Sometimes they were just mud patches, other times they were overflowing. Then as spring arrived they planted furiously. Rice is planted in perfectly neat rows with an automatic planter, something like a tractor with a seed sowing attachment. This tractor has special wheels that allow it not to sink in the mud, they look like water wheel paddles.

We then watched the little seedlings grow at light speed into big plants, changing the landscape in a few weeks from a black water world into large fields of green. The farmers often staggered the planting so that the rice ripens a few weeks apart, you can see the result now, as the harvest is coming in. Some fields are still green, others are golden yellow, sagging with heavy sheaths of rice, others have already been harvested.

Almost ready to harvest

This is farmland in Taiwan, with power lines and 5 story buildings far in the background.

You can see fields of short cut rice plant stumps with bales or stacks of rice straw on the dried out paddies. The surface looks like dry caked mud, but the water table isn't far down, here and there, tractors have broken down into the mud below. There seems to be some disagreement about what to do with the straw. There are different methods of baling or stacking it, some farmers burn it, others put it on a huge heap.

This is one method of collecting the rice straw after the harvest

Another way to bale rice straw

Some older paddies already have the second growth of the rice coming up. Rice can be harvested twice in a season, so we will watch the second half of the life cycle from now on. 

I guess this paddy was harvested 2 weeks ago, note the second growth beginning to show

In South Africa agriculture is something that is done on farms far away from the cities. In Taiwan there is so little arable land that it is necessary to use all available space to the max. This means that even in towns and cities land is cultivated and we now live in "rural" Taiwan, so vegetation is everywhere.

Scootering through the fields, note the raised freeway in the background

Toucheng and Waiao - 21 June 2015

Some friends came to visit this weekend from Taipei. I'll include some pics of Derek and Joy in a later post because we didn't take any photos with them today. We got our quite late, about lunch time and took the train to Toucheng, intending to see the Wushi Harbor and perhaps the Lanyang museum and hopefully get in some swimming in too.

We started off walking to the Toucheng Old Street where there were some old Japanese buildings. An interesting mix of old and new and the ever present shrines and temples of course.

They don't build like this here anymore.

A charming little temple/shrine at one end of old street.

I think this used to be the old Toucheng general dealer in prosperous days gone by

Taking in some shade, it was quite a hot day, what summer day isn't ;)

Renalda finally gave me the camera ;)

I think this is to hold your roof down during typhoon season!

The Wushi fishing harbor from the hardworking side

The Lanyang Museum, we will have to go here another day

The not so hardworking side, with the tourist boats, this was the calm before the thunderstorm

Waio surfing beach, we managed to get in a swim, one of the surf companies allowed us to change in their tent

We ended up getting pretty wet in the rain, but it was a good day out. We found later that we could have caught a bus to where we walked, but we needed the exercise anyway :)

Dragon boat racing and boiled eggs - 20 June 2015

This past weekend was Dragon Boat Festival where we got to eat sticky rice dumplings (Zhongzi - pronounced something like Jongtzi). Derek and Joy had come out from Taipei. Joy, Derek's  Taiwanese girlfriend had also never seen a dragonboat race! We were quite surprised, she just laughed and said she always watched on TV. We stayed and watched for about half an hour, it was quite exciting.

Some of the races were heats and others were division finals, I think we watched the high school boys team finals which were quite impressive.                                                                                                                                       The competition is a knockout the first two teams in a race go through to the next race, the other two are knocked out. It looks like the boat is steered by a "professional" who is not from the team. 

We made bets on who would win, red, blue, green or yellow

They raise their oars when they are announced

When teams get close to the finish line they have a guy in the bow who leans forward to catch a flag which determines who won. Some of the races were extremely close.

Very well timed strokes

Teams grabbing their flags

We then took a ride up into the mountains to cook our lunch of eggs and mielies (corn) in a basin of boiling hot slightly sulfurous water. My first experience of geothermal cooking. The place is at the same location as a failed geothermal power plant, but it doesn't have an industrial feel at all.

Here I am busy cooking the mielies

Derek cooking the eggs

The eggs were soft boiled in about 10 minutes. They then have cold water basins so that you can cool the food off before eating it. Very well thought out. They had even tapped the water into pools so you could sit and warm your feet. The best part of all, you didn't have to pay a cent!

After lunch we drove around in the mountains and then headed back towards Yilan for supper. On the way Derek spotted a field full of sunflowers, we stopped and found there were a number of fields full of flowers. It was a good place for some photos, so we took many.

Renalda smelling the orange flowers

I must have said something funny

Some people offered to take this pic

Then they recommended all kinds of poses, their English was good

I'm not sure what they smelled like, my nose is perpetually blocked

Renalda insisted on taking these picks... guess who is the better photographer!

We then took a long ride down to the Yilan night market for some supper which consisted of random snacks, and went home to be in bed by 10. Joy and Derek went to the beach to watch the stars and discuss Tsunamis.

Daytrip to Meihua Lake - 14 June 2015

I'm hoping to start writing more frequently again, it seems like we have a little more time, even thought we are still very busy. Renalda and I started to study Chinese at a local university as self study doesn't work with a busy schedule. We only go once a week for two hours so progress will be slow, but at least we will make progress.

We went scootering up the valley to see what we may see, we hadn't intended to go to Meihua (Plum Blossom) lake, but we had heard of it. It's nice for a quiet afternoon, there are a few snack stores and tons of bicycle rental places where you can rent a single, tandem, side-by-side, or 4 person bike all with or without a battery and motor, there were even Segways! We opted for good old man power with 2 person side-by-side 4 wheel bicycle.

There are a lot of nice paths to walk around and a one way bicycle road...yes it gets that busy. Lucky for us it was rather quiet. When I looked through our photos I noticed we don't have a picture of the whole lake, just of the surrounds.

A covered path around the lake

Lots of overhanging branches keeps it cool

Nice to be away from the hustle

They use tons of fireworks at the temples

Great place to have a temple

We took a boat ride around the lake... at light speed so very few of my photos came out

Such a tiring ride that Renalda took a nap with the teddies

It was nice to get out, and it's only 20 minutes from home.