According to 2006 statistics, the percentage of days in Taipei with “good air quality” was only 41.3%. It’s common to see people on scooters wearing SARS masks to avoid breathing the appalling traffic fumes. But Taiwan is an island 394 km in length, 144 km across its widest point, packed with 22.8 million people. This is a density of 635 people per square kilometer. For comparison, Canada has about 3.2 people per square kilometer. So of course this place will be a stink hole. The thing that really surprises me about the environment though is how eco-friendly the default lifestyle is here.
Homes
There really aren’t many houses in urban areas. I was in Taipei for three months before I happened to take a bus into a rich part of town where I saw about 30 houses. Everyone lives in an apartment. Most rented apartments come furnished, often with a washing machine. Wet clothes are dried by the sun. Heat also comes from the sun, and lacking sun in the depths of winter, you are simply cold all the time. No central heating. All the light bulbs in my place are the energy efficient LED sort, and I suspect there aren’t any incandescent bulbs left in the Taipei area.
Recycling
Recycling is also made very convenient. My apartment building has sorting bins outdoors in a kind of courtyard. If you don’t sort everything properly, the ancient security guard who wears two pairs of glasses at a time will sort it for you. It’s pretty humiliating, so I have four bags taped up against my wall: one for drink containers, one for paper, one for plastic, and one for non-recyclable stuff. This was a big change for me because in Canada I couldn’t recycle anything without access to a car. I have never lived anywhere where taking out the recycling was as easy as taking out the garbage.
My school also makes recycling easy. The students have the option of dumping stuff into the recycling bin, the garbage bin, or the food scraps bin. Paper food boxes, drink containers and scrap paper go into the recycling bin, and staff use both sides of white paper before it’s recycled. About 492,000 tonnes of material from Taipei City were recycled in 2007. Schools in Taipei City recycled 6,469 tonnes of material in December 2007 alone. It makes you wonder why we have to test run blue box programs in Canada before they can even be considered being made widely available. Recycling is way too complicated back home. Why is that?
Transportation
Taipei City has a phenomenal public transit system. The MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) is extremely efficient, timely and convenient. It is a very popular way to get around. Besides the MRT, the buses are also quite efficient in their own way. Buses in Taipei will hold as many people as possible, and then 11 or 12 more. Nobody ever asks when the bus arrives, because the answer is always “in five minutes.” In fact, five minutes may be the longest I have ever waited for a bus. Even though public transit is very popular, and it’s a treat to be able to sit down, not everyone relies on it. Trains and buses stop running at midnight, so that’s a huge downside to the system.
At the end of 2006, the number of registered motor vehicles in the country totaled 20.31 million. That’s a lot, but 13.56 million were motorcycles/scooters and only 6.75 million were automobiles. Scooters here are often criticized for being high polluting, but there’s no way they pollute even half as much as a car. And scooters here do the same job as a car – I have seen families of four on a single scooter with toddlers and dogs riding in front of the driver’s feet. Maybe the efficient use of space goes too far sometimes, but on the whole, Taiwan makes many admirable green efforts.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Monday, February 18, 2008
How's the Food?
“Engwen ma?” I say as I point to the menu.
“Yo,” says the employee as he searches through the stack of menus to find the English version.
Today I want fried rice, and I know this restaurant has it.
Speed reading through the oversized laminated menu for foreign dummies, I find chicken fried rice, shrimp fried rice, pork fried rice, and squid fried rice.
“Su de chaofan ma?” Vegetarian fried rice?
The employee doesn’t understand.
“Wo chi su,” I try again.
“No meat?” Another employee says in English.
“Yes! No meat!”
They point to the part of the menu that features shrimp, fish, and frog. I tell them that I don’t want any of it. They show me a plate of whole shrimp, and I tell them “bu yao,” or “don’t want.” A group of three or four people is now perplexed by my actions.
“Do you speak English?” someone asks.
They think I don’t understand the English menu because I don’t want meat. I see a pricey eggplant dish and go with it. After a few minutes my order arrives – with pork inside.
Being vegetarian in Taiwan is most often frustrating. If the restaurant doesn’t have an English menu, or pictures, you best just move on. However, there are some places where eating becomes as easy and natural as… eating. There are magical places in Taipei where you don’t have to order the only vegetarian dish on the menu, and you don’t have to try to negotiate meat out of the deal. These restaurants have dozens of 100 per cent vegetarian items, and many options for protein. To find such a haven of tranquility, just follow the swastika.
Swastika Food
Lonely Planet says the symbol on Taiwanese restaurants is actually a “backwards swastika,” but upon further research, I learned that there is no such thing as a backwards swastika. Buddhists use both the right-facing and left-facing swastikas in their scriptures, and Nazi’s also used both symbols since their flags were through and through. To be fair, Nazi’s more often used a right-facing swastika at a 45 degree angle, and Buddhists will more often use a left-facing one at no angle (flat across the top and bottom). Now you know.
On a restaurant, the symbol indicates that the food is safe for even the most hardcore of Buddhists. Unfortunately, this means there is no garlic, onion, shallot, leek, or chives in the food; these are the “Five Acrid and Strong Smelling Vegetables” that must be avoided. Wontons, fake seafood of all kinds, and various gluten-made meat alternatives in noodles, rice and soup make up the bulk of the selection. One day, I sat down to a huge bowl of rice noodle and fake seafood soup, which included fake squid, lobster, crab, and shrimp for only NT$65, or $2 CAD.
The definition of “vegetarian” in Taiwan is unbelievably varied. It ranges from not being able to eat potatoes or garlic, to being able to eat fish and pork.
Yo ro ma? Have meat?
Street food is a staple in Taiwanese cuisine, especially if it comes on a stick. Everything comes on a stick: whole squid, chicken skin, pork, fish dough, octopus tentacles, vegetables, tofu and rice. Fruit doesn’t come on a stick, but it comes in a bag and you eat it with an oversized toothpick. I like to get barbecued mushrooms, green peppers and tofu, but I also like to be conservatively adventurous. So, when I see something that looks meat-free, I point to it and ask “Yo ro ma?” I did this on one occasion when I saw a bar of black rice that was up for a grillin’. The vendor said it had no meat, so I went for it. The bar was alright. It was just gummy rice with no real taste other than the sauce and spices it was grilled with.
A couple weeks later, I was perusing the grocery store when I saw the same black rice. I had already eaten it twice. I looked closer to see if the secret ingredient, either seaweed or molasses, would be revealed. The English caption said “Rice in pig’s blood.” I could have fainted. But, maybe I’m immortal now.
I have been a vegetarian for about 10 years, and I have never heard of a pork eating, pig’s blood ingesting vegetarian. Luckily, grocery stores tend to be more reliable than street peddlers.
Wellcome
Wellcome is a popular 24-hour grocery chain that makes my life much easier. It has two vegetarian sections – one refrigerated and one frozen. That’s not to say that I can buy the staples I was used to buying in Canada. There aren’t any buns, tortillas, bagels, pickles, minute rice, cans of beans or perogies. Pasta sauce is very expensive when they have it, and cheese is also insanely expensive for just a small chunk. But I can get frozen dumplings and fried rice, and even fake shark-fin soup if I want it. Fake shrimp and various styles of fake chicken are pretty cheap and actually taste really good. While eating out is very inexpensive, in this particular neighbourhood, it is just not worth the frustration.
So, to answer the burning question, “How’s the food?” my official answer is “Alright, I guess.”
“Yo,” says the employee as he searches through the stack of menus to find the English version.
Today I want fried rice, and I know this restaurant has it.
Speed reading through the oversized laminated menu for foreign dummies, I find chicken fried rice, shrimp fried rice, pork fried rice, and squid fried rice.
“Su de chaofan ma?” Vegetarian fried rice?
The employee doesn’t understand.
“Wo chi su,” I try again.
“No meat?” Another employee says in English.
“Yes! No meat!”
They point to the part of the menu that features shrimp, fish, and frog. I tell them that I don’t want any of it. They show me a plate of whole shrimp, and I tell them “bu yao,” or “don’t want.” A group of three or four people is now perplexed by my actions.
“Do you speak English?” someone asks.
They think I don’t understand the English menu because I don’t want meat. I see a pricey eggplant dish and go with it. After a few minutes my order arrives – with pork inside.
Being vegetarian in Taiwan is most often frustrating. If the restaurant doesn’t have an English menu, or pictures, you best just move on. However, there are some places where eating becomes as easy and natural as… eating. There are magical places in Taipei where you don’t have to order the only vegetarian dish on the menu, and you don’t have to try to negotiate meat out of the deal. These restaurants have dozens of 100 per cent vegetarian items, and many options for protein. To find such a haven of tranquility, just follow the swastika.
Swastika Food
Lonely Planet says the symbol on Taiwanese restaurants is actually a “backwards swastika,” but upon further research, I learned that there is no such thing as a backwards swastika. Buddhists use both the right-facing and left-facing swastikas in their scriptures, and Nazi’s also used both symbols since their flags were through and through. To be fair, Nazi’s more often used a right-facing swastika at a 45 degree angle, and Buddhists will more often use a left-facing one at no angle (flat across the top and bottom). Now you know.
On a restaurant, the symbol indicates that the food is safe for even the most hardcore of Buddhists. Unfortunately, this means there is no garlic, onion, shallot, leek, or chives in the food; these are the “Five Acrid and Strong Smelling Vegetables” that must be avoided. Wontons, fake seafood of all kinds, and various gluten-made meat alternatives in noodles, rice and soup make up the bulk of the selection. One day, I sat down to a huge bowl of rice noodle and fake seafood soup, which included fake squid, lobster, crab, and shrimp for only NT$65, or $2 CAD.
The definition of “vegetarian” in Taiwan is unbelievably varied. It ranges from not being able to eat potatoes or garlic, to being able to eat fish and pork.
Yo ro ma? Have meat?
Street food is a staple in Taiwanese cuisine, especially if it comes on a stick. Everything comes on a stick: whole squid, chicken skin, pork, fish dough, octopus tentacles, vegetables, tofu and rice. Fruit doesn’t come on a stick, but it comes in a bag and you eat it with an oversized toothpick. I like to get barbecued mushrooms, green peppers and tofu, but I also like to be conservatively adventurous. So, when I see something that looks meat-free, I point to it and ask “Yo ro ma?” I did this on one occasion when I saw a bar of black rice that was up for a grillin’. The vendor said it had no meat, so I went for it. The bar was alright. It was just gummy rice with no real taste other than the sauce and spices it was grilled with.
A couple weeks later, I was perusing the grocery store when I saw the same black rice. I had already eaten it twice. I looked closer to see if the secret ingredient, either seaweed or molasses, would be revealed. The English caption said “Rice in pig’s blood.” I could have fainted. But, maybe I’m immortal now.
I have been a vegetarian for about 10 years, and I have never heard of a pork eating, pig’s blood ingesting vegetarian. Luckily, grocery stores tend to be more reliable than street peddlers.
Wellcome
Wellcome is a popular 24-hour grocery chain that makes my life much easier. It has two vegetarian sections – one refrigerated and one frozen. That’s not to say that I can buy the staples I was used to buying in Canada. There aren’t any buns, tortillas, bagels, pickles, minute rice, cans of beans or perogies. Pasta sauce is very expensive when they have it, and cheese is also insanely expensive for just a small chunk. But I can get frozen dumplings and fried rice, and even fake shark-fin soup if I want it. Fake shrimp and various styles of fake chicken are pretty cheap and actually taste really good. While eating out is very inexpensive, in this particular neighbourhood, it is just not worth the frustration.
So, to answer the burning question, “How’s the food?” my official answer is “Alright, I guess.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)