A hidden gem of a teahouse

17 May 2012 Leave a comment

by twgurl54 in Foreign Food, Travel Tags: , , , , , ,

A friend of mine just opened a teahouse, THÉ Beauté , (French for beautiful tea) and invited me to come check it out. He describes it as a “not traditional Taiwanese style,  more like a modern afternoon tea house”. Hmmmm, not sure what that means so I’ll just have to find out for myself…
If you think you know tea, you haven’t met Victor Yang! After a successful career in the high tech arena, he decided to make a change and has spent the past 5 years becoming a tea guru. Recently he opened a lovely shop, creating a tea experience where each little detail has been thoughtfully considered. His shop is sleek and elegant, every item custom-made: from the gorgeous menus, to the porcelain tea cups and hourglass timers for perfect tea temperature, to the tables and chairs covered in tea-colored velvet (what else?). What I love most about THÉ Beauté  is the education that comes with each cup of the world’s rarest tea. My favorite selection so far is called “Moonlight”. Picked only at night on a Sri Lankan mountain top, during a full moon in Spring, this brew smells as wonderful as it tastes! And there are only 5 venues in the world with access to these amazing leaves! If you’re hungry, try some of the locally-made tempting treats. (The fruit cubes are simply a little piece of sugared heaven!) A visit to THÉ Beauté promises not only a relaxing environment, but also tidbits of information about teas you may never have known existed. Enjoy!
The closest Metro station is brown line (文湖線) at Dazhi (大直) station, exit no.3. For detailed information (in Mandarin) see http://www.kireikan.com.tw/ .

Qigong Center

14 Apr 2012 Leave a comment

by twgurl54 in Foreign Food, Taiwan Tags: , , , , , , ,

Each month, I select one of the places I’ve visited in Taipei to “recommend” to the readers of Centered on Taipei magazine. This month, one of my co-workers introduced me to a delightful vegetarian restaurant; we had such a positive experience, I wrote this:

 

As much as I love Taiwan, I still sometimes get a bit overwhelmed by Taipei’s fast pace (okay, that’s mainly the taxi drivers), the constant barrage of sights and sounds, and the enormous variety of everything, available 24/7! Wouldn’t it be lovely to find a peaceful environs, just off the beaten path, where you can have a wonderfully delicious meal, served in zen-like surroundings, soft music playing? And after your meal, you could wander through a modern gallery, perusing museum quality works of art, or browse a selection of colorful east-meets-west clothing? If a thoughtful, peaceful haven is what you seek, then I highly recommend the Meimen “Life Cultivation” Center. The staff at this haven are welcoming and friendly. The food at the restaurant is prepared according to the Chinese philosophy of Five Colors, Five Tastes, and Five Elements. The Qigong area offers both physical and spiritual rejuvenation. Interested in flower arranging, calligraphy, or attending a special tea ceremony? Needing a one-of-a-kind handcrafted wooden tea caddy? You’ll find all that here, and more. Enter with an open heart and leave with a lighter spirit. Meimen Culture Center, 42 Lishui Street (just off of Heping, near Shida), Taipei 106 +886 0223 216 677 www.meimen.org

 

Birthday in Taipei

14 Apr 2012 Leave a comment

by twgurl54 in Daily Life, Taiwan Tags: , , ,

For my recent birthday (39 again –  hah!), I tried to keep it under wraps, hoping that if no one remembered it, I would not age. Word got out and my work mates feted me with a lovely tiramisu cake. Several friends took me out for dinner, one came over for dinner bearing gifts, another took me to my favorite pizza place (fifteen pizza!) and gave me a beautiful artisan tea set. My assorted friends, “adopted” children, and friends of friends threw me a party at a local vegetarian buffet (and wow, what a spread it was!). Thanks everyone for taking the time to wish me well….

Taiwan National Lottery

04 Apr 2012 Leave a comment

by twgurl54 in Daily Life, Taiwan Tags: , , ,

When you make a purchase in Taiwan, you will receive a receipt, on which is printed a “uniform receipt number”: several letters and eight numbers, and a 2-month date range. These “lucky” numbers are used as lottery numbers and every other month, a list of winning numbers is published online. Lottery prizes range from 200NT (~8 USD) for matching the last three numbers in a series to 2 million NT (67K USD) for matching all 8 – gee, wouldn’t that be nice to win?!

On the 23rd of each January, March, May, July, September, and November, the government’s lottery website is bombarded. Then, on the 6th of the following month, winners show up at their local post office to claim their prizes. How do I know this? Because I was recently a “winner”!!

I save my receipts, put them in numberical order (according to the last 3 numbers), and check the numbers every other month. Finally, last month, a receipt for a 249NT purchase at Shengli paid off: I matched 4 numbers and won 1000NT! woohoo!

At the post office on the corner of Anhe and Tonghua, I marched my receipt upstairs to the post office bank, took a number and when my number was called, presented the receipt with my ID and walked out 1000NT richer (ok, I had to pay 2NT to process the ticket but I still WON!). And this month again, I won: 200NT. Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick! Can the 2mil be far off?

Tomb Sweeping Day

04 Apr 2012 Leave a comment

by twgurl54 in Culture, Taiwan Tags: ,

Today, in Taiwan (Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday in China) is reserved for families to clean and spruce up their family’s tomb. Everyone looks forward to the time off, but interestingly, most of the young people I spoke with were not looking forward to the manual labor in the rising heat. They do acknowlege that the day is for remembering ancestors and seemed surprised  that we don’t have anything similar in the States. Does Grandparents Day count? <smile>

CNY 2012

29 Jan 2012 Leave a comment

by twgurl54 in Culture, Shopping, Travel Tags: , , , , ,

Xin nian kuai le (shin knee-en coo-eye luh) Happy New Year!

You gotta love it when an entire country literally takes a week off to celebrate the lunar new year. Festivities abound and firecrackers are in the air! The color red (one of my favorites for any occasion) and dragons are seen EVERYWHERE!  Everyone is in a good mood: the people who have time off are happy and those that don’t are typically in service industries (transportation, food, retail) – they’re happy too ’cause they know they’ll make a ton of money. Stores are having HUGE sales and despite the chilly weather, a warm, inviting atmosphere prevails.

I was invited to Yingge to spend an evening with the family of my Melaleuca upline. She told me the “rules” for observing CNY with your family. Unmarried children go to their parent’s home for at least the first 3 days (Sunday, Monday, Tuesday) of CNY. Married children, spend the first few days with the wife’s family and the next few days with the husband’s. Parents give their small children hong bao (red envelopes) filled with money. Sometimes, the older children give their parents hong bao (I haven’t figured that one out yet….). It’s a sign of respect and, as far as I can tell, more of a symbolic gesture than a means to pad ones bank account. I think I shocked the nice people in the Temple below my apartment by handing them a red envelope. It wasn’t much; just a way to say “thanks” and to help towards the cost of updating their interior, which looks amazing.

Lots of people take  extra time off in conjunction with the national holiday so I’m sure the party feeling will continue…

Preparing for CNY 2012

18 Jan 2012 Leave a comment

by twgurl54 in Culture, Travel Tags: , , ,

It’s the “Year of the Dragon”, y’all! In preparation for the Chinese New Year, red, black, nd gold decorations are being hawked in nearly every store and street corner. The selection is mind-boggling: dragons in every size, “blessings” and wishes for health, wealth, and happiness. Red velvet and brocade “firecrackers” on a string. Hong bao (red envelopes) waiting to hold gifts of money to share with loved ones.

Chinese New Year decorations

At work, they hired three members of a local calligraphy club to create personalized red banners for each of us, to be placed above and next to our apartment doors. The ancient ones labored for many hours to share their “gift” with us. We had 60 different sentiments to choose from. Mine are in place – I’m really not sure what they say or even that I placed them correctly (for all I know they could be upside down!). A local business placed a wish for “heavenly blessing and protection” in our mailboxes.

The Temple downstairs has been busy renovating half of it’s interior with incredible bas relief tableaus carved out of stone, statuary, and other architectural elements I don’t the names of! Everyone is preparing for a week of celebrations with family and friends. My Chinese teacher is headed to Shanghai to visit her parents. Wellcome has aisles and aisles of specialty foods. I’ve been invited to several parties which I’m guessing are mainly about eating but I’ll find out soon enough…

Yingge take 2

12 Jan 2012 Leave a comment

by twgurl54 in Culture, Taiwan Tags: , , , ,

I met up with 3 friends at Taipei Main train station, headed to Yingge. I have been wanting to see the Ceramics Museum; Yingge is famous for it’s pottery. One 30 minutes train ride later, we were walking with our hostess (my Melaleuca upline) to the museum. NOTE: despite the fact that rain was predicted, it was a balmy day. Not a cloud in sight, slight breeze, mildly warm. The museum is a gorgeous, modern glass-and-cement building housing a beautiful display of Asian celedon ware.

Admission is FREE, as are the guided tour headsets. We started on the top (3rd) floor and made our way down the sloping ramp, looking at gorgeous and amazing anatique vessels in every shape and size glazed in colors ranging from a delicate robin’s egg blue to a deep jade green.

Old Street map painted on ceramic

No trip to Yingge would be complete without a visit to Old Street, a pottery buyer’s dream come true! On the way from the museum to Old Street, we passed a street merchant selling his paintings. (Hadn’t we seen the old white man with the long beard on the train from Taipei?)  After looking through his art work, I selected three modern-style paintings – and began bargaining! I ended up with all three  for 1500NT (50USD). I asked to have them signed by the artist (who had gone walkabout) and was asked to come back for the signed paintings “later”. Okay, so here’s one big difference between Taiwan and the US: in the States, the artist and his helper would have been long gone (with the art AND my money) by the time I returned a few hours later. Not here. My art was signed and rolled up, ready for me to take home, have framed, and hang!

Election time in Taiwan

12 Jan 2012 Leave a comment

by twgurl54 in Daily Life, Taiwan, Travel Tags: , , , , ,

This weekend Taiwan holds elections for the country’s president and vice-president. I don’t know much about politics here; I purposely try to stay neutral (read: uninformed). It’s safer that way. I figure: whatever this country is doing seems to be working.

The enthusiasm of the Taiwanese for voting is epic. Folks literally fly BACK to this little island from all over the world just to vote. No absentee ballots. Then there are the banners. No little ugly plastic rectangles stuck into all of your neighbor’s lawns. No. These banners are colorful 6′ tall flags on even taller poles bearing the beaming faces of the candidates, spaced evenly along the street medians along with the national flag. And get this, Taiwan’s president may soon be a WOMAN. No kidding.

Busses and MRT cars all over Taipei (and presumably all over Taiwan) carry photos of all three partys’ candidate pairs, smiling  with fists clenched, held high, in apparently victory.

"vote for us!"

Small trucks, draped with giant banners of one set of candidate likenesses, slowly troll the streets, sharing the candidate’s canned thoughts via loudspeaker.

The Taiwanese are so mannerly, I doubt any of the potential presidents mount any type of “dirty” campaign. I know that one party is called the “blue” party and one is the “green”. One is pro-unification (with China) and one is for independance – but I don’t know which is which. And I don’t know what the third party is….Happy voting Taiwan!

Daily life….

08 Jan 2012 Leave a comment

by twgurl54 in Daily Life, Taipei Tags: , , , ,

I wake up at 9am most days. It’s cold at night now and there is no central heat in most apartments. I use two portable heaters (used, found on Tealit) to heat my bedroom and living space. I get up, have some hot tea, make my lunch (usually a chopped salad and fruit). NOTE: my two new favorite fruits are the rose apple and passionfruit. I shower, dress, and get ready to leave. Often that means I am packing all sorts of stuff (lunch,  stuff I have to take to work, workout clothes for after work). I have to leave two windows open for ventilation and am out the door. I walk downstairs and to the little store next to the temple where they make me a mocha protein shake and fill a GIANT pitcher with guarana tea. Then, depending on the weather, I either walk 17 minutes to work, or take the 235 to the Anhe street stop. At work, I hit the ground running – there is ALWAYS something going on, not always strictly related to work! I take a lunch break maybe once a week. Today one other vegetarian and I went to the “Green House” on Heping where I had a vegetable soup, pesto rice (yum!), and roselle tea (made with some flowers I have yet to identify but turns the water a lovely deep ruby color and tastes a bit sour). Total for lunch: 209 NT (<7USD). After work, I go to yoga, eat dinner (mostly I fix something on the one-burner stove) and then relax (read, watch TV, play Words with Friends). On the weekends I sleep in, shop, do laundry (when it’s humid outside it can take DAYS to dry), clean the apartment, and dream of warmer weather…

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As for me, I will take the road less travelled…