My guide and I started the day off by visiting an authentic tea house in Maokong, an area on top of a mountain where there are a lot of tea farms. The gondola ride up was out of service due to a recent typhoon, so we took a taxi to the top.
From the tea house, we had a great view of the city -
We also had a view of this huge temple.
Legend has it that if couples go to the temple together, they will break up soon after. It has something to do with the god being jealous.
At the tea house, we ordered traditional Chinese tea which you brew yourself in a tiny tea pot and drink out of tiny cups.
The miniature size of everything made it feel like we were at a kid's tea party (I told my guide this and she thought it was really funny; you never how some of this humor translates culturally).
We were given a tea pot with water on a hot plate to continually refill the mini teapot. The water soaked in the mini teapot with the green tea leaves for less than a minute before we transfered it to another container where it waited until we were ready to pour it into our shotglass-esque tea cups.
My guide also gave me a quick Chinese lesson. She explained to me that Chinese was originally based on picture representations of people, animals, and other things. Over the years the language has morphed so that most of it is no longer picture-based, but with some characters you can still see the image of what is being represented, such as with "farm" and "horse."
Inside the teahouse, I found this sculpture made entirely from the exoskeletons of lobsters (click on it to make it larger) -
After Maokong, we went to Din Tai Fung for lunch, which is famous for their dumplings and xiaolongbao (pronounced vaguely like "shalombot.") Xiolongbao are similar to dumplings but have a different shape and a different sort of filling.
Din Tai Fung is a chain restaurant (there's even one on the outskirts of L.A.) and is inside of a mall, however in 1993 the New York Times voted it as one of the ten best restaurants in the world!
The wait was an hour long and we needed to be back at the theater for a screening of Butch Jamie, so we dined in style by getting an order to go and eating it on a bench in the mall. The xiolongbao we ordered had a really excellent flavor. I'm not sure how it compares to the Din Tain Fung restaurant out here, but I plan to go someday to compare.
After lunch, we went to the screening of Butch Jamie. The Women Make Waves Film Festival scheduled three screenings of the film, however there was only one while I was in town.
The screening went well - people seemed to enjoy it and I took a lot of photos with fans and signed autographs.
Afterward, we gathered in a separate room for a Q&A. Sitting next to me is the translator.
After the Q&A, we went to two of Taipei's famous night markets. I took a lot of photos at the markets, so I'll be back soon with part two!
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