According to my collaborator, Yu-an, moon festival originally celebrated the successful harvest and involved showing thanks to the moon, but now you just eat mooncakes and bbq with family. I giggle. He points out the drift is not unlike celebrating Memorial Day in the states. True, Yu-An, true. He leaves me moon cakes hanging on my office door. The packaging is as beautiful as the cakes which are small buttery pastries, some with whole egg yolks in the middle!
We took a 1.5 hour bus ride to Jiufen, with the cousins, for the long moon festival weekend. Jiufen is a fishing village that hangs off the side of a mountain on the northern coast of Taiwan. The bus drops you at a breathtaking bus stop above a temple overlooking the sea in the center of Jiufen.
The main "old street" is a narrow alley lined with red lanterns and food vendors. A stand plays the Ornica, a tiny ceramic flute. Newly discovered food includes: "large sausage hugs small sausage" which is a sausage wrapped in packed rice stuffed into sausage casing. There are many many (elbow to elbow) tourists, mostly from Japan and Korea, but the town quiets at night when the daytime visitors leave on buses and leave room for quieter strolling.
We stayed in a no frills bed and breakfast (minus the breakfast), complete with Winnie the Pooh decor and a karaoke machine. Jean and I wandered one night through the quieter parts of the village, up winding stairs and between narrow buildings, where locals gathered on patios and tiny coffee shops closed for the night. Originally a mining village, there were tunnels built into the sides of the winding streets and alleys in the town.
We spent our second day exploring the wharf and elephant rock. The rock formations looked like pockmarked mushrooms, and the cool breeze off the ocean was welcome, as were fresh seafood snacks of "one-bite crab", clams, shrimp cakes, and fishball soup.
Our final night we celebrated Kerai's 13th birthday at a local tea house. We gifted him a push up board (he does 100 push ups daily), and the kids joked that "poof" he would sprout a mustache with his new teenage status. Jean learned from the server the intricate tea serving process and we did our best. It involved first heating the tea cups with hot water from a kettle before then adding tea until the leaves fully absorbed, and then pouring and enjoying. -- Kim
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