Taiwan, Day 1, Long Shang Temple and Liaoling Street Night Market

Got into Taipei last night, July 30th, 2016, from Singapore (who's airport bookstore, by the way, had a stock of Harry Potter, The Cursed Child, under protective netting ready for today's big release). By the time we got from the airport to the Taipei Westin, i was wiped. Room service was all i can manage before succumbing to fatigue and passed out.

This morning we awoke to the prospect of 38*C weather. However, since we are in Taipei, we figured we should go out and about and take a look at what is out there. Because of the crowds Google suggested might be at the National Palace Museum, we decided to put my favourite museum off till tomorrow. So, we decided on Long Shang Temple, literally meaning a Buddhist Temple of the Dragon Mountain. According to various guide books and websites, the temple has stood on the current site since the Qing Dynasty (specifically 1738).

Long Shan Temple, the "fog" is due to my lens fogging up when i went from a cab with a/c to the outside environment

The Temple has had various renovations and rebuilds after "effects of men" (which i interpret as more violent mannish effects). The temple has three deities attributed to it, that of Guan-Yin, Mazu, and Guan Yu. Guan Yin is the Buddha of Mercy and one of the most popular buddhas in the buddhist pantheon. Mazu is a very Taiwanese goddess of Maritime safety. She is generally prayed to for good fish harvest and safe return of those who work the oceans around Taiwan. Guan Yu was a general to Liu Bei in the Three Kingdoms era of China's feudal period.

The central doorway of the temple

Interior of the central roof

Made famous in folklore and captured in "The Romance of Three Kingdoms", he is thought of as the epitome of a perfect scholar warrior and the pinnacle of manly honour. The temple itself sits in "Old" Taipei and has since been surrounded by tall apartment buildings and a MRT (Rapid Transit) station/park has risen across the street from it. A piece of the Taipei past captured and frozen in the midst of modern Taiwan. The entry gates open up to a courtyard approach to the Temple grounds. Walking into the center gate (there is a gate on the right labeled "Entry" and a gate on the left labeled "Exit", but majority of the folks enter through the middle gate, straight into the midst of the Temple activities. If one enters through the "Entry" gate, one passes a stand that offers each visitor three joss/incense sticks. One can also purchase offerings of fruits and flowers, candles, and even more joss/incense sticks. If one enters through the center gate like we did, one is deposited into a throng of incense wielding worshipers and a long table of offerings.

Interior courtyard, side view

Nothing like lit incense ticks around eye level to keep you watchful of your fellow human's meandering progress. The temple is in a classic style.

Inner courtyard, from the side/front hall

The roof is festooned with decorative figures and artistic tiling. Dragons and figures of temple guardians are replete. The main roof of the temple entrance is flanked by two rearing dragons with a center "dragon ball" in the form of a red glass orb. The interior of that central roof is also highly decorated. Artistic geometric wooden decorations culminating in a Chinese symbol of 8, a traditional rendering of the natural order in 8 three lined pictograms.

A phoenix (upper tier) and dragon (lower tier) roof decoration

Passing through the entry all, one arrives at the inner courtyard, which houses the central temple, dedicated to the Long Shan Guan Yin. The entire temple ground is laid out in a rectangle surrounding the central courtyard and central temple. Covered halls serves as the front perimeter. Side walls contain small, more specialized temples. There is a rear courtyard which ends in the third major temple hall, this one dedicated to Mazu. Through out the temple, the air is choked with incense smoke.

A man blessing his prayer beads
(fellow before him blessed his wallet)

There are large incense holders in each of the major courtyards and worshipers congregate around them to plant their incense sticks or, those of smaller stature or afeared of incense burns, simply throws their incense in and hope for the best. There are also folks "blessing" their personal possessions by running their item of choice through the billowing incense smoke. We toured the entire temple grounds before visiting the visitor center to pick up our allotted three incense sticks. We then proceeded through the temple to offer our prayers before visiting the souvenir stand (most temples sells charms and talisman for the visitors to purchase, these items often contain ashes from the incense burners and the proceeds goes toward the upkeep of the temple and of the temple's monks) for some Long Shan Temple specific souvenirs.

After the Long Shan Temple, i passed out again. i guess i am just a bit more run down from a week in Singapore than i gave myself credit for.

a quiet Sunday Liaoling St. Night Market

However, i did awake and revive with enough wherewhithall for a visit to a nearby night market district. It was 7PM, it was 29*C out. The Liaoling Street Night Market. It is a small night market, made smaller due to the fact that it is a Sunday night here. However, judging from the number of stands that were shuttered, it is normally quite a hopping place. Tonight, however, it is mostly just locals out for a quick dinner or take out for those at home. We wandered down the stretch of the Liaoling street to take stock of what is available and survey the fare that is offered before deciding on food for dinner. The first stall we stopped at was advertising "Golden Fried Chicken".

Golden Fried Chicken

Fried Cuttlefish Balls

Fried chicken wings, fried cuttlefish balls, fried chicken steak (no idea what this is, will have to find out tomorrow), fried boneless chicken pieces, and fried sweet potato (which she was out of but more will be available in 30 minutes).

two chicken wings

The wings are 78 cents (today's rate) and an order of three cuttlefish balls are 63 cents. One can have all the items just salt and peppered or with added "spicy" chili powder (it wasn't very spicy, but a nice chili flavor nonetheless). The chicken was juicy and crispy. The salt and pepper gave it a nice zip and a desire for more, if nothing else, i think tomorrow night there will be another visit to the "Golden Fried Chicken" stall. The fried cuttlefish ball was another delightful flavor of home that i have missed. Crispy on the outside and filled with a pop and a squeak from the texture of the cuttlefish paste formed ball. The next stand we hit provided us with what the Taipei folks called "Tien Bu Lah", or "Sweet, not Spicy Hot", or the Mandarin bastardization of the Japanese word "Tempura" though it looks nothing like it.

The stall of goodies

What it resembles is a Japanese dish celled "Oden", which is actually what the same "Sweet, not Spicy Hot" is called in Kaohsiung, except that it is written out with the characters "Black" and "Wheel".

Go figure. The dish consists of root veg cooked in a light soy flavoured broth with pieces of fried tofu, fish cakes, fish balls, and a Taiwanese classic, pork blood rice cake (first lightly fired than boiled). It was, in a word, delicious!

The Taiwanese rice
bowl cake (top). A cup of soup, gratis.

At the same stand, we also picked up a Taiwanese rice dish (can't really come up with a translation, it is sticky rice traditionally packed into a section of bamboo and cooked over fire, the rice contains fried shallots and meat and shiitake mushroom) and a

The "Sweet, no Spicy Hot"

Taiwanese Rice Bowl Cake (take a bowl, drop in some items of marinated meat, a soy sauce braised egg, and mushrooms, cover with glutinous rice paste and steam up into a pie, pour over it some sweet soy sauce and a heaping helping of very finely minced garlic for good measure).

The untranslatable Taiwanese rice dish

We sat down at a rickety table and stools and waited for the food to arrive and to pay the lady of the stall. The entire meal was 140 TWD, or 4.38 US. The untranslatable rice dish was another flavour of home that i have missed. The sauce is, again, slightly sweet. The rice is glutinous rice, but not cooked down to a soft sticky form. It is still slightly hard and satisfying.

Today's fresh ingredients

There is a piece of lean pork contained within and the fried shallots gives it a huge fragrant flavour. Lip smacking good times. The rice bowl cake. The rice bowl cake is made by the minced garlic sauce and the sweet soy sauce. The glutinous rice paste serves as a lid, and once you break through, you find the treasures within. The eggs, the meat, and the mushroom. i'd show you

Oyster omelette, in full sanitary glory

Oyster omelette being made

what i did with it if it was suitable for public viewing... it was a bit primal and a bit disturbing how fast i ate the darn thing. Finally, we visited the stand serving the Taiwanese Oyster Omelette. This was another childhood favourite that you just can't get stateside. A handful of oysters thrown over corn starch on a flat iron with an egg cracked over it and scrambled. The mixture is cooked through and flipped over a heap of water spinach. A second flip wraps the egg/corn starch/oyster mixture around the water spinach. The completed omelette is dressed in a sweat and

Another stall of goodness

Fried tofu goodness!

spicy sauce and served on a

rice noodle soup!

plastic bag covered plastic plate (for your healthy and for sanitation). It was very delicious. So much so that i had one to go. Something about the egg, the chewy corn starch, the sweet and spicy sauce, and the burst of oyster flavor and the flavor of the water spinach. Before we went back to the hotel, we decided also to supplement with a bowl of noodle soup (to go), and two fried tofu (to go) as they are Jenn's all time favourite foods.
All and all, i think it was a good night out and much was consumed. It is good to be back in Taiwan. Now, the question is, how is my GI track tolerating that special Taiwanese flavor? But that is something we worry about on another day. Tonight was a good night of food memory catch up indeed.