My mother's college classmate's son, who is (a darling and) helping me with my Chinese, took me to a night market a couple nights ago. "Hen hao wan!" What a great time. There are a lot of night markets in Taipei. The one we went to was in the southeast area of Taipei, near National Taiwan University.
This particular night market was a long alley where hundreds of shops and stands opened their doors to nighttime shoppers and sold packaged foods, raw foods like meat and fish, clothing, shoes, ready-to-eat-and-drink goodies---almost anything you could want was there, and for cheap. I bought a fun-looking shirt-dress-thing (hello, studio 2009) for NT $100 yuan, which is about US $3.00. I also bought a little package of dried peaches to bring home to my grandparents for about NT $50 yuan, which was about US $1.50. We drank tea and I ate a miniature hamburger as we browsed the shops, stepping in and out to take peeks at countless candies, clothes...and kitties! Guess who loves to frequent the pet shops at night? EVERYONE. There were a dozen people in the pet shop, cooing at baby kittens and rabbits, taking pictures with their phones.
On the way back to the car, we saw a woman on the street giving another woman what looked like some strange facial. The expert was dancing a long piece of thick string across the other's face, which was covered in white lotion. I asked my friend what was going on and he said that what they were doing was ancient Chinese medicine, supposed to slough off dead skin. Cool.
As all of you know, China (and more specifically, Taiwan) is a big part of my heritage. My mother was born in China but raised in Taipei, Taiwan. (FYI, my father was born in Philadelphia but raised in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. So kind of the same.) All of my mother's immediate family still resides in Taipei: my grandparents, my aunt, my uncle, their children and their children's children. I'm going to Taipei this summer for seven full weeks (from May 28-July 15) to live with them, become familiar with their Taiwan lifestyle and finally learn to speak some Mandarin.
No comments:
Post a Comment