14052011 Setting foot in Taiwan

More than over a year ago, I had applied and did a 6 weeks long internship in Beijing. While I had originally applied to go to Taiwan back then, we did not receive any news nor feedback saying that they were interested, so in a last minute sort of decision, I went to Beijing instead. This year when the chance to go for an exchange came up again, I was a little persistent in insisting that I wanted to head to Taiwan. After a few rejections, finally this internship at China Productivity Center came up. Originally I had applied to do it at Pingshi, but the person in charge was looking for a Japanese, so they introduced me to the alternative, which was Neiwan. I took the offer and the rest was history.

In less than a week, I booked my tickets, packed my luggage, as I would be staying up to 2 months in Taiwan, applied and received my visa, and I was all set for a life of two months on an island country, in a secluded village far up on a mountain which I’ve never heard of nor been to.

My parents left me at the airport alone as they had work. So after breakfast, I made a line for the departure area and soon we were walking out to board the flight which would bring me to Taipei. The flight took about 6 hours long before landing at Taoyuan International Airport.

After retrieving my baggage, I headed out to the arrivals but was unable to spot the representative who was supposed to be here to get me. Since I had no idea how she looked like, decided to ask the information counter to help me contact her through the mobile phone number given to me. Turns out she was waiting with my ‘boss’ at the other exit, and they soon came to get me.

Bundled our heavy luggage into the van and soon set off on our way to Neiwan! It was raining heavily when we got here, so our boss made light of the dreary situation by saying that we brought ‘fortune’ along with us to Taiwan, which is a good sign, or so he says.

After more than an hour long drive along the highway, followed by narrow winding road which seems to keep going uphill, we arrived at our destination. our first stop was to place our luggage at our hostel, which was going to be the place where we would be staying for the next 6 weeks, and I got my very first glimpse of Neiwan.

Our boss then bundled us back into the car, to bring and introduce us briefly to the place where we would be working at, and to the people who manned shops here. Passed by this uncle selling popsicle and he gave us a few to try.

Stopped by a tour guide’s place too and was introduced to his cheeky cat over hot Chinese tea. Turns out he works as a guide, bringing visitors and foreign tourists alike to places around Neiwan and also Jianshi, which is the neighbouring village.

Got off the car and did more of exploring on feet under umbrellas to keep out the rain. Our next stop was a dumpling shop, and people kept shoving food into our face.

Most of the shops were built along the main street of the Neiwan town, peddling mostly traditional snacks. By the time we reached the end of the streets, my tummy was already bursting, and my hands were full of food packed in plastic bags, because most of the sellers insisted that we bring some of their food back to try later when we told them we couldn’t eat anymore.

Then, my boss said, we should go for dinner. This gluttony would not end just yet. Our dinner was to be in an old cinema, which was now turned into a Hakka restaurant, which was surprising yet intriguing. We were allowed inside and to take pictures of the restored cinema while having our dinner.

Patrons of the restaurant would get to watch movies which were being played on the big screen while having their meals. One way to know that the retro movies were authentically Taiwanese, was that the subtitles were being read from right to left, instead of the standard left to right format. It did give me quite a bit of headache there.

Took lots of effort to finish the meal, which consisted of mainly traditional Hakka dishes, and the mua chi (or chi ba as we Hakkas call it). Best thing was the rice served with dollops of pork oil and soya sauce over it. Artery clogging, but worth every bit of it.

Finally was allowed to head back to our hostel after a very long day, only to find out that we had no soap powder to do our laundry, so we headed out to the 7-11, which was on a hill from where we were staying.

Looking forward to so much more hikes up the hill from now onwards.