Back to School Ramblings

It’s the first weekend since classes have started… and this semester is looking to be pretty great 😀 I had the best winter break anyone could’ve asked for – three weeks filled with lots of rest, good food, time with my parents and time to myself. I fell in love with Taiwan and experienced the joys of discovering/exploring a new country in addition to being reunited with my mom and dad and feeling at home right away. For three whole weeks, I was truly on vacation mode and it wasn’t really until I got on the plane back when I realized school was about to start in a few days, and the typical back-to-school questions started creeping into my head…what classes am I taking and am I ready for whatever Cornell will throw at me this year etc. Spending the weekend in NYC before coming up to Ithaca gave me time to meet up with a few of my really close friends who had graduated and are now working in the city. The question, “How do you feel about the upcoming semester?” inevitably came up in our conversations. Catching up, hearing about how they had been for the last half of the year, sharing with each other what we were thinking and looking forward to for the next few months really helped me put everything into perspective. It was such a treat to hang out with my brother and chat with these friends whose relationships and pieces of advice I value and treasure so so much. I didn’t finalize my schedule/ course load until right before I got onto the bus. The storm of activity and uncertainty clouding my mind gradually settled with every meal and conversation during that weekend, and cleared as I sat on the bus, peacefully staring out the window, watching the blur of city buildings whiz past blend into the vast, blanket of white snow and bald, spiny trees of upstate New York.

Five days in and I can confidently say that it feels good to be back and I am SO EXCITED for this semester! This is my last semester before the big senior year. All the more reason to embrace everything Cornell has to offer and enjoy the student life! This semester is different because for the first time, more than half of my classes are outside of my Hotel major. I’m enrolled in Hospitality Facilities Management (required Hotel course), Consumer Behavior (Hotel marketing elective), Intro to Environmental Psychology (“Human Environmental Relations”, through Cornell’s Design and Environmental Analysis department), Social Psychology, and Stats II. I’ve only had one lecture for each class so far but I love them all so far! The readings and lecture touched on interesting topics and I’ve learned insightful things about human behavior from their interaction in both a physical and social setting such as:

(“DID YOU KNOW??” hahaa)
– Social psychologist McCracken actually sought out to study and define “homeyness” – what makes a home feel like a home, how does a homey home build or break down the family dynamic, homeyness and it’s contribution to individual development of identity.
– Marketers (and anyone, really) should care about consumer behavior and not only focus on the immediate phases before and after purchase, but recognize direct and indirect opportunities to influence people’s decisions
– Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac – people who feel powerful are more likely to engage in aggressive, sexual behavior – and also increases the person’s likelihood to judge others more harshly for committing unethical acts whilst being blind to their own immoral conduct

Lots of reading, one major group research project for marketing and weekly Stats homework…(I can already imagine my future self reading this post and shaking my head at the present-bright-eyed-bushy-tailed me) it’s going to be fun and I’m not being sarcastic, I swear!

So thankful for the hilarious and awesome sisters I get to live with and all the friends at Cornell running this race with me. One perk of having all Hotel classes in one building and a small major is that you are always bumping into people you know. My apartment building is also saturated with friends so there’s never a lonely moment unless you want solitude. The first week back was socially overwhelming, but I really mean that in the best way possible. It was great to see so many familiar faces and hear about how everyone’s break was.

One of my goals this semester is to enjoy every moment – I know it sounds terribly cliche but after being in Cornell for two and a half years, I have a better understanding of what makes the difference between having good and bad semesters. Besides picking classes I’m genuinely interested in, I am so stoked to spend time with my friends and Christian fellowship! Serving in a business/professional development-interest club called Cornell Undergraduate Asia Business Society and Chinese Bible Study’s worship band has been a blessing because I feel continually encouraged and inspired by people in these communities. They teach me so much about myself and I hope to be able to really savor all the times we spend, be it memorable or mundane. Everyone I meet at Cornell is very driven and motivated to pursue whatever they are passionate about. I love learning about what people like to do and seeing their determination materialize into worthy work. I got to attend the church I joined last summer right before coming back to Cornell and the pastor’s sermon on the importance of a Sabbath was an apt reminder for me to “live” this semester  meaningfully as well as spend time in reflection and thanksgiving! An interesting comment he made was that God wants us to “work from rest, not rest from work”. God took a Sabbath after he created the heavens and earth, day and night, etc. Genesis 2:3 says “So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.” I learned that both work and Sabbath are God’s gifts to us. We were created for work, to work for His glory with everything that can only be His blessings to us, thus glorifying him with our work. Taking a Sabbath means resting and reenergizing ourselves by enjoying God’s awesomeness, thinking about our relationship with God and dedicating the day to just pray and worship God in the little things! It’s pretty sweet!

And in the same vein of this blog post’s random, rambling ramblyness, I’ll end with food picures! Here’s a saliva-inducing picture of oh-so-beautiful brie oozing out of my cranberry-turkey sandwich! Boom.

ONE DAY IN HUALIEN (part 2) | Incredible, breathtaking, stunning Taroko Gorge and Taroko National Park

(continued from my last blog post)

Magnificent, awe-inspiring mountains. There are plenty of gorges in Ithaca and we even have a few on Cornell’s campus. The Taroko Gorge is way bigger, and the forces of the river currents push downwards so this gorge will continue to deepen throughout the years. I loved that there is a lot of greenery on the marble mountains – something I think makes Taroko very Asian-looking; unique to the mountains you see in North American national parks like Yosemite or the Grand Canyon.

There were many suspension bridges, walking trails and tunnels, waterfalls and temples within the park. As you can see, the scenery is overwhelmingly beautiful…the scale of it all is unreal, indescribable.

ONE DAY IN HUALIEN (part 1) | Incredible, breathtaking, stunning Taroko Gorge and Taroko National Park

One day in Hualien.

Oh, where do I begin? Taroko (tai ru ge in Chinese) is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been to.

Hualien county is on the east coast of Taiwan. Lots of mountains, water and a fantastic gorge. A quick Google search and skim through Wikipedia tells me that Hualien county is about “4,628.57 km² and occupies one eight of Taiwan total area yet despite its vast area, only 7% of the county area occupied by people. The remaining area is occupied by rivers (7%) and mountains (87%).” (Wikipedia, ‘Hualien County’) This is a place I hope to be able to come back many more times in my life.

Our grand adventure began with a ticket on the Taiwan Railway to Hualien (the ride is only 2 hours on the Puyuma train!). In true backpacker style, we carried nothing more than a few days worth of clothes and some Taiwanese jujube fruit (pronounced mi zao, deliciously sweet, juicy and crispy) as snacks. No prior reservations made – we were travelling after New Years Day after all, and the public-holiday vacationer crowd would’ve died down. We stayed in a hotel near the train station and set out around 8:30am the following morning for Taroko with a cab driver to take us to the different sights in the national park for the whole day. We were blessed with the best weather of Taiwan’s winter!

I tried my best to capture my favorite moments.

On the drive from Hualien city to the entrance of Taroko National Park, there was this vast field of wildflowers growing on the side of the road. It was so so pretty, a moment made all the more magical by the fact that the flowers were just by the roadside. Oh, Taiwan, you beauty.  We got out of the car and soaked in the sight for a good ten minutes. As we drove away, I wondered how many massive tour buses had passed this stunning miniature meadow.

The Cingshui Cliffs, ocean cliffs that were formed by a geological fault between coastal areas Heping and Chongde, along Cingshui mountain. Ahh, the view truly takes your breath away. The water is so clear and BLUE. Varying light shades cobalt blue waves are sandwiched between the coastline and fluffy marshmallows in the vast blue sky, framed by the massive, sloping, mountain of marble. This is God’s creation!

Our first pit stop in Taroko National Park.

Walking inside the Swallow Grotto tunnel. I love the blend of swirling blue river waters and high contrasting layers on the marble slab, with small pockets of shrubs poking out in the former homes of swallow birds.

Wufenpu 五分埔 Wholesale Clothing Shopping Area

Welcome to Wufenpu, shopping paradise for young girls who love inexpensive, trendy clothing and the thrill of finding a great deal. Wufenpu is Taipei’s “largest garment wholesale area”.

Just a few minutes walk from Houshanpi MRT station, there are well over a hundred stores in this area. I had heard about this place from my friends before arriving in Taiwan and was excited because I didn’t know what to expect. The best comparisons I can think of would be street markets in Bangkok selling cheap girly clothes or the shopping “lanes” near Central HK MTR station that sell scarves, tights, hair accessories, etc…multiplied by 50 times! 

The shops in Wufenpu can range from being large, open rooms stocked with all the trendiest outfit pieces (like in this picture shown) or smaller shops only specializing in one item category, like printed socks and tights. However, all of them share one characteristic: wholesale selling. The shopkeeper will inform you that the buckets/piles of clothes featured outside the store front are reserved for wholesale buyers, so if you are just shopping with yourself and some girlfriends, you can only browse through the hanging clothes on racks. This is actually a blessing in disguise because the sheer amount of clothing to sift through is overwhelming! I was personally thankful that this was one way of ‘narrowing’ my search, albeit the fact that the amount of clothes “available” was still way out of my physical ability to properly and systematically sort through. I resorted to focusing my attention on only the sales racks outside the storefront, within a specific budget. Because the supply of clothing are largely reserved for wholesale buyers, the pieces on the racks are in a way, one of a kind – there’s only one version of that clothing item. I’m guessing that the pieces are extras leftover from a bulk order or a factory outlet sample. Clothing is very reasonably priced.

Most of the fun comes from “the search” for a good bargain! I’m not a huge fan of branded goods, I admire girls who pull off the cool, trendy Asian street style and I love browsing when I’m in the occasional shopping mood so I had a really good time here. I saw that a lot of the clothing had Korean and Japanese labels. Even if you’re not interested in buying anything, Wufenpu makes for “something to do” in Taipei merely for an interesting walk. I assure you’ll have a couple of good laughs at some of the ridiculous “fashions” and cute/funny misspellings on clothing, inevitably to be found in an Asian market. Shopping is mostly suited for young girls.

I have no idea how anyone can possibly cover the entire market! I think I walked around a quarter of it before I was ready to head home. I am very satisfied with my purchases: long, suede-y unstructured jacket and ombre sweater! 🙂 Both were less than $10USD each. I think a LOT of retailers get their supplies from Wufenpu, which is to say most of the clothing you find in boutiques or department stores in Taipei city have been marked-up significantly. 

Let’s go to Maokong 貓空

Another day trip exploring Taiwan’s stunning attractions. Maokong 貓空 will win over your heart easily. Maokong is located on Getou Mountain in Taipei’s Wenshan District and can be reached via an MRT ride to the Taipei Zoo and a lovely gondola/cable car ride from the station. Many tourists come here because of its stunning scenery, tree plantations and traditional teahouses.

If you want to get tickets for the gondola ride seamlessly, I would suggest avoiding weekends and public holidays. Unfortunately, we weren’t so smart, so waiting in line for the cable car took about an hour versus a few minutes. Before you get to the cable cars, you’ll take several escalators up the building…brave yourself for the most Hello Kitties you’ve ever seen in your life. I guess no one loves Hello Kitty more besides the Taiwanese (except maybe Japan, because that is where she came from…) because the government sure took advantage of the mao (貓 means cat) in Maokong. Surrounded by Hello Kitty stickers, wall murals, Hello Kitty and friends life-sized dolls…even stamps and Hello Kitty notepaper for the little kiddies to take, when you finally get to the gondolas, it would be a shock if the cable cars aren’t Hello Kitty themed. (They are).

 For NT$50 (less than $2 USD), you can enjoy a 45 minute ride over the stunning mountain and view of Taipei city. It is really beautiful. With every dip and peak in the cable car ride, you get a different glimpse of the mountain, be it the combination of trees and textures of the forestation or the angle of the sun hitting different colored leaves. It was like I was in a Chinese painting, where the mountains are brought to life with strong sloping brush strokes, black-blue-gray clouds, and smaller, jagged flicks for the trees. We were lucky to come here on a sunny day, though I can imagine this gondola ride would be a completely different and equally mesmerizing experience on a cloudy day. 

Once you get off the cable car, there are a few things you can do to explore this mountain. We decided to grab a late lunch and came upon this restaurant with a huge window…FANTASTIC VIEW.  Afterwards, we walked around some tea plantations (don’t know how anyone can possibly cover all the sights because we took up a whole 2 hours just wandering around in a small section between some temple and the restaurant).

 Before you leave, try the ice cream sold in the cafe facing the gondola station. The tea flavor is really strong!

Yummy Meals in Taiwan | Small, tasty dishes, Taiwanese beer and trendy vibes

I’ve been in Taiwan for about three weeks now and I’ve never had a bad meal! Writing about every meal is impossible so I’ve decided to highlight only the meals that were particularly enjoyable – a challenge, to say the least. This was dinner at a cool restaurant in the Xinyi shopping district.

The restaurant: dimly lit space, small squarish wooden tables, funky R&B in the background…hipster vibes all around. The waiters are dressed in all black, each with their own individual style showing through their hair color or accessories. One casually shows us our table with the flick of her wrist before coming back with the menus. The menu is a large A3 laminated sheet – to order, you use a soft crayon to circle items directly on the plasticky sheet. Think Asian tapas – the flavorful dishes come in small portions. We ordered four or five of these plates – Taiwanese cabbage, beans, clams, chicken…

Rice is self-serve, courtesy of a big rice pot located in the middle of the restaurant. There is also a long table with a great array of sauces and condiments for you to create your own special dipping sauce. When in Rome, do as the Romans do! I saw other diners add spring onions and soy sauce into their rice so I did the same. Yummmyyy!

Tasty bites, fashionable people, cool music, and light local Taiwanese beer (now, one of my favorite types of beer!). (Y)

Charming Afternoon Tea in Marshall Zen Garden 少帥禪園, Beitou 北投

Beitou is north of Taipei city and the famous home to hot springs in Taiwan. Like everywhere else in Taiwan, travelling to this beautiful district is super easy thanks to the country’s great public transport system. Beitou is a 30min ride from Taipei Station (take the MRT Red line to 北投 Beitou Station, then change trains for the final stop 新北投 Xinbeitou).

Besides the natural sulphur hot springs, Beitou also attracts tourists and locals alike for its many historical attractions and gorgeous scenery. Walking up the mountainside to the “Marshall Zen Garden” cafe (少帥禪園), I soon realized that a one day trip is definitely not long enough to experience all Beitou has to offer . Surrounded by lush greenery, shops and resorts boasting hot springs and spa services, it was hard to keep my eyes on the trail in front of me. Moreover, every spot is picturesque! Only a few seconds from stepping out of the MRT station, I find that there’s a small stream, giving life to a bank of teeming shrubbery by the pedestrian pavement. I experienced a feeling that has become very common since my arrival in Taiwan – unadulterated awe at the indescribable beauty of Taiwan’s nature, an unmistakable evidence of my God’s breathtaking creation. I want to take so many pictures, make a mental copy and hold onto this picture so I can paint it in my mind many years later. But it’s impossible because this literally happens multiple times every day I explore Taiwan.

Trying hard to keep my picture-taking to a minimum (trying…), we venture up one side of the slope in Beitou towards this cafe.

Marshall Zen Garden 少帥禪園 is where the famous military general Zhang Xueliang was held under house arrest for 40 years during and after the Chinese Civil War. His home, with the amazing mountain view overlooking rising hot springs steam, is now a historical site, restaurant and cafe. Some links with more info about Marshall Zen Garden: http://www.escape2taiwan.com/blog/marshal-zen-garden/ ; http://english.taipei.gov.tw/ct.asp?xItem=1100470&ctNode=30282&mp=100002

Afternoon tea set was NT350 per person (about $12 USD); well worth the view and experience! After we ordered our tea, we decided to walk around before our food arrived. The garden surrounding the restaurant deserves it’s “zen” name – peaceful is the best description for its atmosphere. Mismatched cutesy props and flowerpots are littered throughout the garden, bringing a cohesive ADORABLE look to the place.

Below the cafe is a restaurant open for fine dining at night. There is also a public foot bath for you to soak your tired soles and some photographs of General Zhang Xueliang plus educational/informational signs.

View from the cafe – see the steam rising from the sulphuric hot springs in Beitou…So peaceful and beautiful…but imagine being held captive here for 40 years, without ever knowing when you will be released.

Sipping on a hot chocolate whilst soaking in the view as the sun slowly set was an undeniably memorable experience. 🙂

DIVINE DESSERTS…燒仙草 Fairy Grass Jelly and 汤圆 Tangyuan

There is so much good food in Taiwan.

My parents brought me to their favorite dessert stall last week. The very same wetmarket where we go to buy our groceries during the daytime is transformed into a smaller yet still lively market selling noodles, soup and Taiwanese street food at night. The mix of hawkers is pretty unpredictable – some shops only open on certain days of the week, during certain seasons of the year. So interesting!

Anyways…you guys MUST TRY these desserts: 燒仙草 (pronounced shao xian cao, translates to Fairy Grass Jelly) and 汤圆 Tangyuan! This uncle only sells hot desserts in the winter and shaved ice and ice cream in the summer (makes sense…but unfortunate when your seasonally-independent tastebuds are just CRAVING some yummy tang yuan in the late summer).

Fairy Grass Jelly is a traditional Taiwanese dessert. Grass jelly (仙草) is common in a lot of Chinese desserts – it’s added as a topping to bubble tea drinks, shaved ice, or in one of my favorite Singaporean dessert drinks, cinchao. The texture is smooth and slippery, so it glides down your throat and produces a pleasant cooling effect in the summertime. Even though I had listened to my parents rave about this dessert many times. this was my first time having Taiwanese Fairy Grass Jelly and when the dessert finally arrived,  I was curious to see what all the fuss was about this bowl of…pure blackness. The jelly is heated and melted into a thick liquid, so this is all you see at first:

 You are given the option to add three toppings into the grass jelly – there was a wide selection including red beans, green beans, tapioca balls, different types of nuts and jellies. We chose mini-tang yuan (glutinous rice balls), sweet potato and yam. The dessert comes STEAMING hot, and has a subtly sweet taste. The texture is still completely liquid.

About 10 minutes later, you can see that the texture is clearly solidifying. It really is special – the experience of drinking something soup-y from your spoon, and feeling a soft quasi-jelly slide down your throat. The chewy toppings add diversity to the texture and breaks the monotony of just drinking a sweet dessert soup (like tong sui, Hong Kong desserts). The rapid cooling of the Fairy Grass Jelly is exponential! I actually like the jelly consistency much more than liquid, so I wish I had let the dessert cool and solidify more at the start. As you can see, there wasn’t much left by that time...

This was one of the best 汤圆 Tangyuan I’ve ever had in my life. It is 100% handmade (down to the filling inside of it!)  We ordered tang yuan filled with sesame in simple, ginger flavored soup. What a treat! The tang yuan were on the bigger size, one ball taking up the entire curve of the soup spoon. One bite transports you onto Cloud Nine! The glutinous rice dough(?) is soft yet oh-so-chewy. The black sesame filling is not sickeningly sweet at all; it’s grainy flavor is enhanced by the warm, syrupy ginger soup. Everything – flavor, texture, temperature – mingles perfectly in your mouth! Divineee

Yummy Meals in Taiwan | I Love Hot Pot!!!

Hot Pot is simply the best! Imagine my glee when my parents took me to this hot pot place where each hot pot is considered an individual serving and costs only NT100 (less than USD$4). The picture above features three flavors of soup (starting from the left): clear vegetable, spicy with pig’s blood cake and kimchi. My kimchi hot pot was brimming with Taiwanese cabbage, tofu, fish cake, fish balls, meat balls, pork, different types of mushrooms, clams, squid, vermicelli noodles, an egg and, of course, kimchi. There’s even an option to add MORE food if that isn’t enough for you! Oh, I forgot to mention the complimentary bowl of rice and ice cream dessert. Can you believe it?

SOSOSoso satisfying!

This place puts all the hot pot places I’ve been to in the US to shame.

Yummy Meals in Taiwan | Cold Shredded Tofu Salad and Guo Tie! (Fried Dumplings 鍋貼)

Shot of our meal before our dumplings arrived.

My dad usually just grabs a quick meal with his colleagues so I felt extra special that he wanted to take a lunch break out of his busy schedule to eat with me. We went to a small street-side eatery near his office for some delicious guo tie (fried dumplings)! Even though it was a hot day (20 degrees Celsius! woohoo summer weatherrr 🙂 ), dumplings are always welcome in my belly.

One guy stood in the kitchen by the entrance, watching over neat rows of dumplings sizzling on the hot metal plate, as a couple of women sat in a corner diligently wrapping dumplings, their deft fingers expertly pinching the dough and spooning filling from a mountain of raw meat. Inside the eatery were three large round tables for communal dining, where the menu was painted in bold, red characters, on the white wall tiles. The humid air was filled with an overpowering smell of dumplings. Ohhh, so good! I didn’t mind if the smell stuck on my clothing.

Small pre-prepared cold dishes are often displayed at the front of Taiwanese restaurants –  not listed on the menu, you can pick as many as you please and these appetizers will later be added to your receipt. We got a plate of cold shredded tofu salad and cucumber with chili salad. Shredded tofu salad is becoming one of my favorite dishes here! This light appetizer only uses a handful of simple ingredients to complement the tofu: carrots, red peppers and cucumber for color, and sesame oil, salt and maybe sugar for seasoning. So easy to make and the end result is super tasty! I can’t wait to make this when I’m back at school.

We ordered two plates of guo tie with pork and leek filling. Each serving has 10 dumplings so we were obviously feeling very ambitious. As the server set down our glistening, sizzling guo tie, all my prior inhibitions vanished and excitement bubbled within me…
..Mmmm I was in dumpling heaven…