On the way back to the house, we run across a "ba4 wan3" place--Taiwanese for "meat circle" (mm, meat circle). The outside is some glutinous stuff, sorta like mochi, but slipperier, the inside is pork and shitake and bamboo shoots, topped with a sweet-ish sauce and garnished with cilantro. I'm used to having it just steamed, but here, they steam first, then toss it into a wok full of oil. And it supposedly originated in the...Qing Dynasty. 
Yeah, that's right, bitches, my culture's older than yourn.
And my mama, she actually lets me have one, despite her already near-constant haranguing about my weight. And about my refusal to bundle up (the average low for winter in Taiwan is 68 degrees). And my refusal to wear a face mask, against the pollution.
[wah wah]
Time we get back, it's...dinner time. And, so:
Lo4 ba4--Taiwanese stewed ground pork (with shallots, shitake) usually ladled over rice, which then makes it lo4 ba4 bng1.
And two kinds of fishies:
But this, I don't know what it is:
And four kinds of vegetables:
And fried eggs for the kids. Look how fuckin' orange that yoke is, meaning old school organic, this chicken's been free-rangin', eating a real diet, as opposed to U.S. cages the size of an A4 sheet of copy paper, eating GM foods, blah blah, soapbox, high horse.
Despite the fact that I can't remember the last time I've slept, I decide to take my cousin Patrick up on his offer to go to the Yuan Lin Night Market. These places are typical to medium-sized to major cities in Taiwan, and happen on a daily (er, nightly) basis. There tends to be a prevalence of students because of the low cost of the street food (not that food is necessarily that expensive anyway), and I imagine the fact that it's happening in the evening helps to beat the incessant, tropical heat of the day. I have this one distinct memory of clutching a bag of hard-boiled quail eggs, made Chinese tea leaf style, the fluorescent lights and bugs circling them, and crowds milling around food stalls, and my small self, nine years old, in the middle of it. And my mom telling me to stop eating all of them. [grin] It never changes.
And, voila, the Yuan Lin Night Market:
But then, you look closer and find
By the time we've made our meager round, I'm quickly flagging, so despite my greedy gazing at oyster omelettes, also popular in Malaysia, and the takoyaki, and o-a-mi-sua, an oyster, rice noodle with fried garlic/shallots, I'm down for the count, full from dinner, tired from the flight. Patrick promises that we'll go to another night market in a neighboring town, with the famous takoyaki.
Before we go, he buys a bag of roasted chestnuts for his mom. They come with this nifty little plastic gadget that helps you peel 'em. Ingenious:
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