Visiting the country where my family is from with my family has been eye opening but mostly stomach expanding. Taiwanese culture is centered around food. In fact, my parents greet their friends by asking if they’ve eaten yet “jia ba me.”* While my parents were excited to show me around and I got to see the places where they used to live, they were also excited to be back in their home country and to eat dishes not readily available back in the states with me. I felt like I was getting hazed from the amount of food we ordered throughout the day.
It started at a street restaurant for breakfast (you tiaou, soy milk, green onion pancakes with egg).* Then, after visiting a family friend, we had a stop at another street restaurant between breakfast and lunch (oyster noodles, minced pork rice, some meat jelly thing, tempura, and stinky tofu).
We then visited another family friend and I got to catch up with a friend I grew up with who I haven’t seen in years. He took me to get boba which, if you didn’t know, originated from Taiwan.
I had wanted to visit the original Din Tai Fung, which was awarded a Michelin star back in the day but when we got there it was closed for a company dinner. Instead, we ate at a restaurant next door (some sort of baos, water lily stems, fried shrimp).
From there, we headed to the Taipei 101 tower – former title holder for tallest building in the world before Dubai built theirs and former title holder for the fastest elevator in the world until Shanghai built theirs. You could feel the g force as it shot you up into the 85th floor. The night view from there was insane.
Of course, we had to end the day with another meal. This time it was at a buffet. Normally, I’d thrive in this environment but I was already so stuffed from the meals earlier that I felt overwhelmed.
My uncle drove us home. Being on the roads in Taipei is one of the sketchiest experiences ever with scooters zipping around the aggressive taxi and bus drivers. I felt like I was in that pod racing scene in Star Wars. Luckily, I was in a state of stupor from fatigue and food coma so I was chillin.
*I don’t know how to translate some of these so I used English sounds to approximate the Taiwanese.