Yesterday's Daytrip

was to Jeou Fen (also spelled Jiaofun, and Chioufen) in pouring rain - just beyond Keelung (also known as Ji-lung) a mountainous area near the seaside. When we made the final turn up the mountain pass and I realized where we were, I was surprised and delighted. In 1998, when my folks sent me on the DPP Taiwan tour with 25 other young and motley ABCs, one of the first places they took us on our tour of Taiwan was this same mountain town. But back then, we didn't have solid interpreters and the itinerary was skeletal, so after trucking all over Ilan to dead people's tombs, watching propaganda films, and seeing the 228 park, I remember being deposited outside of the 7-11 on the corner of the entrance to the Chioufen market, completely disoriented. And it was raining then too.

So Chioufen is known for it's rice cakes made out of taro paste which is cooked up with red beans and mung beans in a sweetened soup, or served cold over ice.

As we walked up the cobblestone-like path, I recognized the food shop that I had taken photographs of 7 years ago - at the time, I was shooting in color and had been attracted to the plastic gloves filled with water hanging over the food stall.



I never did find out why these gloves were decorating the restaurant, but having spent time in New Mexico, I guessed that they were acting as fly repellants - when the fly sees himself magnified one hundred fold or so in the water, he freaks out. Not that you're going to get many bugs in the cold of Taipei winters, but....there were no gloves hanging from the signs this time - but it can be an amazing thing to revisit the places from our past, which reminds me that now, would be a good time to start working on "A Gathering at the Orchid Pavilion" part deux from my return to the Art Institute in 2004.