The whole month of March is Women's History Month and International Women's Day was Friday, March 8th. That night, my daughter and I watched the award-winning Netflix documentary, "Period: End of Sentence".
The next day we went to Taipei for a much long overdue reunion with one of my oldest Taiwanese friends Alisse and her niece Angela. Alisse was dating my then-roommate 19 years ago when I was living in Tamsui. When I got pregnant in the UK 5 years later, she came out to visit me and support me in the early, turbulent months when I was in grad school and breaking up with my kid's father. It was wonderful to have an old friend for support. She's a deep lady, and also well traveled.
So, on Saturday after big hugs, we walked to the Ama Museum, which has been on my list since it recently opened. I did not want to miss their Anne Frank exhibit from Amsterdam, as it left last weekend. My daughter recently read her famous diary, so it was educational too. The exhibit really was thoughtful and Alisse and I were amazed by how mature Anne was for a 13-year-old, such acute observations of herself and the world. Anne Frank knew herself better than most adults do today.
After the museum, we were walking around looking for someplace to eat and sat at an open-air cafe behind the market. We ate a huge plate of Taiwanese appetizers, stewed tofus, intestine, hard-boiled eggs and a small boat of rice with a pork ball. Next was finding a tea house. I had wanted to check out some of the older, more popular ones, but we stumbled into pleasant enough one.
We were all peckish after our lunch, as the rice bowl was small, so stopped at a gourmet Imagawayaki stand (known as wheel cakes 車輪餅 in Taiwan). Alisse and I took sweet potato, Angela took tarot. In the shop behind were crystals and jewelry in a historical building built in 1925, and originally a rice mill, with an inner plaza with a new teahouse, The Ivy Palace behind it. The whole building is not only beautiful, but a functional shared arts space. The Ivy Palace was cofounded by a curry chef was mentioned recently in the Taipei Times.
In the adjacent hall between the front shop and tea house was an art exhibit on the waste from fast fashion made from 2nd hand recycles, discarded shoes and jeans. The artist made masks attached to skateboards as well as puppets. I appreciated it.
We spent the rest of the rainy afternoon drinking tea, and laughing a lot. As we were walking back to the MRT, we passed a traditional medicine shop, and bought my daughter a treatment for growing taller. It would take the herbalist half an hour to make so we window shopped. I bought some goji berries and had to exercise self-control in not buying all the cool teas and nuts. Some of the shops tragically sold weird animal parts, like deer testicles, horns, sea-horses. The shop we bought my kid's herbs, didn't have anything that funkythankfully. It cost 1,200NT for 3 large packets of herbs to make 3 large pots about 4 bowls of chicken soup each. We made one batch last week and will do another this weekend.
Comfort Women Ama Museum (阿嬤家-和平與女性人權館) Daqiaotou Station
opens 10am, Dihua Street Daqiaotou Station (Orange Line), exit 1. Cross Minquan West Rd. and west four blocks to the north end of Dihua St. or Take MRT to MRT Shuanglian
Station(捷運雙連站). From exit number 2, walk west down Minsheng W. Road(民生西路)
15mins to reach
Some Tea Houses in the Dihua area on my list:
Xia Hai CChen ,
Wey Teahouse (臻味茶苑)
ASW Tea House.
City God Temple
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