In the emerging yuppie city of Zhubei I never expected to see a night market. As one of the stations stops for the coming high-speed rail high-ceilinged California eateries and wood-toned Japanese sushi spots line the wide built-for-car streets. There is none of the wreckage, or charm, of history, as in Hsinchu’s narrow arcade-lined streets. Brick colonial facades are covered over in huge signs there, but it is still a crotchety infrastructure, jammed with shoppers squeezing past rows of parked scooters, in and out of the motley arches. I saw the glow of lights above an open space and rode toward it with my ex-girlfriend Giselle.
Was this where everyone headed after their espresso shops closed? People shouldered past one another down gauntlet after gauntlet of stands, tables, and truck-beds-turned kitchens. There were ears of corn roasted on the truck bed with a secret sauce; there were large drink dispensers with salty-sweet plum juice; there were plastic cups with limes and chunks of watermelon ready for blending; there were roasted peanuts in a big wok and another full of devilish-looking roots; there were cases of chicken wings and legs on hooks, rotating before a flame; there were rolled crepes with sprouts, ground peanuts, pork floss and other goodies; there were potstickers, their thin skins showing the green of scallions inside. At that we paused. “That looks good,” she said. “Yeah,” I said, but I’m not really hungry.” “Maybe if we walk around 8 more times we will be ready.” We moved off. A fat little boy sucked on an oily sausage and Giselle patted his head. She laughed. “Over there is a guy selling sweet potato fritters with his own brand name: Bald-Headed Lin’s Fritters. He doesn’t seem to mind much,” she said as we peered at the man’s head, then his facial expression.
That corner of the market was mainly food, but next to the fritters was a table piled with socks and bras. There was a table stocked with hand-ground scythes, hoes, and hatchets. I hear tell 20 years ago Zhubei was all farmland. There must still be a few holdouts from the million dollar payouts of the real estate developers, to judge by this tool vendor. A table of cockroach-killing wafers in among food stalls threw us for a loop. We paused to taste a “salt water mushroom,” delicately deep-fried, and moved past a table of men’s boxers. “Oh, yes,” I said, “These are perfect!” “The uglier to you the better,” Giselle sneered. A huge red ant crouched, claws out menacingly, right on the crotch of one. Others featured collages of dragons, dice, and piles of gold coins, or kung-fu masters leaping and chopping.. I quickly picked out a droopy-eyed panda one for Rob, and one with kung fu masters for Scott. A rather enigmatic pair with 2 black ants holding up a huge old coin with a square hole in it, I bought for my self. Its inscription read, “The road is for people to go out on. steel is for ants to bring in money on.” on the back were what seemed to be various valuables – pearls, gems, rings – walking along on little ant-like legs. It was perfectly baffling; I had to have it.
Down at the other end of the field it was mostly games. One was an elaborate set up of bottles in rows interspersed with prizes – a trash can shaped like a fat bird, a bottle of laundry detergent, a stuffed picaccio. The further back, the higher up were the bottles and the bigger the prizes. People stood behind a low board barrier and tossed wooden rings, trying to loop them over the bottle necks. A little girl of 5 or so roamed the back rows collecting fallen rings.
Another vendor ran a row of pachinko machines, the Japanese game of steel balls jiggering down through rows of pins. If the ball went in a hole, lights would flash and more steel balls would clatter into the pan at the bottom. The player simply feeds the balls in and sits, entranced at the clack clack clack of the balls bouncing downward, at the red lights, at the triumphant hoots of the machine. In the middle of the vertical board (decorated gaudily with horn-playing clowns and such) was a small screen with 3 video wheels spinning. We saw a boy get 3 in a row. There was solemn music of congratulation; there was a cartoon dignitary on the screen applauding and saying, “Great job!”; the whole board flashed with the music; metal balls spewed out the bottom. Giselle clapped her hands excitedly, and the little boy was grinning.
A little further down were tiny pinball-like machines for kids, but without paddles. Kids of 3 or 5 sat and pulled back the lever and let it go, the silver ball arcing up and around, and pitter pattering through the pins and down. If it rolled across a little trigger with a red light, the machine announced it with a beep. One boy got all 4 red lights, and balls spat out at the bottom.
There were tables set up in squares for a bingo like game, except using mah-jong symbols. A woman moved about in the center with a mike headset, calling out the next symbol. People, mainly middle aged, sat quietly in the cacophony perusing their cards. They sat on plastic stools, gnawing an ear of corn or smoking, plastic cups and wood shish kebob skewers underfoot.
We passed lonely games with no players, water balloons hung on a board below little stuffed animals. An attendant stood with baskets of darts. “you could stick the thing you want to win,” I reasoned. “But they are stuffed animals,” she replied. And I could not argue. We came to a lively scene. People sat around 4 plywood tables in a U shape holding slips of paper with 5 numbers. The middle was piled with toys – huge fuzzy pigs, toy jeeps, and the like. A man inside the circle with a headset held a big wheel mounted on a pile, and moved from person to person. He acted as MC, and hectored the contestants, “OK, what number ya got there?”
“Uh, thir – thirty,” said the man.
“So, you was gonna start to say 30 and add a number if you hit 36, right??” he cracked, and people laughed. He spun the wheel, marked by numbers like a roulette wheel, and stood back. The man flung his dart. It slowed. The MC looked. “Oh, very close!” he said, “If you’d’a just picked 42,” and pulled out the dart and handed it to the next man. Even though plenty of women sat in the glare of the lights, almost all the ones throwing were men. One could say men grew up throwing things more, but could one really say men throw more luckily, from a distance of 4 feet, at a spinning wheel? There is something about such games – half shows, performances, with banter from a host, with goofy prizes, that draws couples. Are such games a play version of the typical married relationship? Woman wishes for a fuzzy turtle stuffed with cotton; man sets out to win it for her with his (now puny) spear. In any case, what person, in solitude, would pine for a lumpy spider man or an action figure on a motorcycle? It can only be under the shared madness of a relationship that spiderman takes on that mysterious aura called “fun” which turns absurd trifles into pleasures. It could be that it is this same acquisitive madness which drives married couples to buy as many electrical appliances as possible – in any case, to buy far more than double the each of them previously owned when single. I do my wash in a bucket every couple of days, but somehow I doubt that if I ever marry 2 buckets is gonna cut it with my wife. (but is it likely a man content to do laundry in a bucket is going to attract a wife?)
leaving the game show we passed a big puffy thing with kids jumping inside, an inflated spiderman sticking out the top. At the far corner a section of asphalt had been roped off. Kids rode little cars around. The cars had headlights, and the hood and rear glittered with sparkling, changing lights. They rode double. A boy and his dad tailed a little boy and his sister and the 2 laughed delightedly at the chaos, faces lit by the headlights. Little boys turned steering wheels and backed up, absorbed in this game of being a powerful one, an adult. I stood and laughed, and remembered how much I had loved the bumper cars as a kid, the metal paddle scraping noisily across the electrified screen above, the machine wheeling left and right with a touch, or spinning in place, the shock of collision, the look to see if it was a friend or stranger; the pursuit; the eyes of people outside on you. The joy of cartoonish violence and recklessness, bumper-padded selves moshing in little cars. I last did bumper cars in Mexico.
Finally we were ready to eat. At tables at the stir fry place, chilled case displaying pig hearts, octopus, fish, and greens, men and women revelled red-faced and beery in the night heat. We bought a bag of sour salted plum-flavored guava slices. “No Bag,” said Giselle. “No extra deluxe bag?” said the man. “How about a deluxe toothpick?” he offered. We crunched them as we ambled toward the exit. Somehow the seasoning brought out the juice. We bought 10 of the thin skinned dumplings. A tired woman plucked them up and put them in a plastic container. “Spicy?” she asked. “A little,” I said. The CD and DVD sellers were gone as we walked back toward the scooter. They must have been selling pirated stuff. When I had looked over their wares on the way in, they had been nervously packing it all up. The monk was gone when we walked out. He had stood there in brown robes, a charitable phrase written on his bowl held out before him. A lonely figure in the light and heat of the night market. We sat next to a bridge and skewered our dumplings, and she joked I didn’t love her enough to stay in Taiwan. She was smiling, head tilted mischievously, eyes stroking my face. A little boy pushed a toy race car along the sidewalk behind us. “Where is your mom?” asked Giselle.
An auction was going on at a picture gallery across the street from the night market, and some people were already sweeping up the now half-empty field, covered with cups and bags and bones and all the detritus of public pleasure. And I was in Taiwan, and I did love her – no matter where I would be next week.
Showing posts with label taiwan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label taiwan. Show all posts
Thursday, May 24, 2007
turkish ice cream man
Kending is Taiwan’s Hawaii, with palm trees and beaches and volcanic rock. Located at the very southern tip of the island, no plane is needed to get there. I went there with my cousin last week, visiting from Korea. As we both teach English, our conversation together in those days alternated between tales of our students, good or bad, and heads-up over pretty women walking our way. After asking for room rates at places like “Hotel California” and “Happy Dream Hotel,” we settled on the place run by the Catholic Church, which was cheaper by a whole 10 bucks. There was no TV in the room, but we were provided a crucifix on the wall free of charge, and the AC worked well. Outside our room was a profusion of bushes, some fragrant, and a place to hang laundry done with hand soap on the bathroom floor.
We rode a scooter and rode double to some of the more famous beaches, such as Baishawan (White Sand Bay). There Roger threw himself under frothing waves and emerged wobbly. The undertow was vigorous. I hung back, and it churned at my knees. Another day we rode up the east coast, and got off where the land fell away and showed us a craggy, Irish coast velveted here and there in green. A vigilant but endlessly playful dog found us there and crouched at our every move. We figured she must’ve lived at the military radar station. We sat and chewed betel nut, spitting the blood-red juice on the ground. Roger said he didn’t feel anything. He recorded the sounds of the birds and breeze with his MP3 player. Overhead I saw a jet come over in a straight line from the northeast and curve slightly west, maybe Hong Kong bound.
At night we showered and went out to the main strip where masses of people walked along. All there was to look at were kabob sellers, dart and water balloon games, and shop after shop selling flowery flip flops and swimsuits. One soft serve ice cream vendor played a short recorded message so repetitious that even Roger picked it up: “liang bing bing,” he grumped. Or we sat in restaurants and gave each other heads up when pretty women came near. It was exquisite fun.
One night we strolled along and bumped into a crowd. It was a big-bellied man, not Chinese, a portly Sylvester Stallone, wielding a long-handled scoop with the dexterity of a cheerleader with her baton. The sign above his stand read, in English and Chinese, “Turkish Ice Cream.” He was scooping ice cream, but the service was full of tricks and traps. I stepped forward bravely and asked for one. The scoop stuck to the metal of the spoon. He simply stuck the cone onto the ice cream and held it out to me, dangling like that from the spoon. I reached for it and the cone spun around – and, I thought, onto the ground. But with another flick of his hands the cone reappeared again before me. I reached more quickly, and was able to touch the cone before it disappeared again. A third time, the spoon with ice cream attached fluttered out of my grasp and clashed with a set of cowbells hung from the sign. Finally he relented and let me have it. “Xie xie,” I said smiling. How odd it was to speak Chinese with this man.
Another time he held out the cone on the spoon to a girl. She kept taking cones but was left each time with an empty cone in her hand. She would pull one off and he would slip another one on. We all guffawed at his repertoire of tricks, at the flummoxed look on people’s faces. Or he would hold out the cone with his hand, but at the last moment it would roll backwards along his palm – and forward – and back again. Then the cone would flip upside down. And the customer’s hand would be hanging there like a bashful pigeon. Once he dug in his scoop and the entire blob of ice cream would come flying out in our faces. He hectored us, shouting out “Ah --- la – la – la – laaaa!”
“Ganmaaaa?” (whaddaya waaant?) shouted a girlish voice and he echoed her with his own whiny “gan ma?” A boy timorously reached out for a cone, and the most shocking trick of all was for him to hand him the cone slowly, his eyes trained fiercely on the boy’s in some inscrutable, unbearably suspenseful message. Nothing happened, and we all roared at the torture of our own expectations. But he kept his brow furrowed in that look, letting on none of the crowd’s delight. Which incensed our delight even more. Another boy got a poke in the privates with his own cone.
A little girl and her older brother of 8 or 9 ordered. The girl took the cone but the ice cream stayed on the spoon and she stood there looking at her mother. The boy was a model of older brother determination, and when the cone finally stopped flopping and flipping he seized it with grim resolve. After the boy had bought 2 cones this way the big man, shirt now pulled up over his belly, noticed the little girl still standing there with the empty cone. He dug up another scoop and held it out to her. Aware that she had been played, her child’s sense of injustice bubbled over. She looked at her mother, lower lip puffed out, and then she was flailing about, cone rolling on the ground, carried from the scene by parents who could hardly resist laughing through comforting words.
Later we returned to his stand, after the grilled bacon and scallions, after the darts and balls and bungee trampoline, and he was there but deflated, without the sustenance of the crowd. One or two people looked at him curiously, as if sensing something lingering there, some peculiar possibility, but he seemed utterly bereft of genius, or mischief, this perspiring clown. He sat down in the shadows of the shop, a long way from Anatolia, subsisting on the money of the Taiwanese bourgeoisie but no less an enigmatic stranger. When Roger saw him later in the coin-drop net cafe and hailed him with a loud, “Hey, Turkish ice cream man!” he raised his hand in a dismissive wave, resigned to this second skin that earns him money, but ever so weary of the performance that lights him up and leaves him empty night after night.
We rode a scooter and rode double to some of the more famous beaches, such as Baishawan (White Sand Bay). There Roger threw himself under frothing waves and emerged wobbly. The undertow was vigorous. I hung back, and it churned at my knees. Another day we rode up the east coast, and got off where the land fell away and showed us a craggy, Irish coast velveted here and there in green. A vigilant but endlessly playful dog found us there and crouched at our every move. We figured she must’ve lived at the military radar station. We sat and chewed betel nut, spitting the blood-red juice on the ground. Roger said he didn’t feel anything. He recorded the sounds of the birds and breeze with his MP3 player. Overhead I saw a jet come over in a straight line from the northeast and curve slightly west, maybe Hong Kong bound.
At night we showered and went out to the main strip where masses of people walked along. All there was to look at were kabob sellers, dart and water balloon games, and shop after shop selling flowery flip flops and swimsuits. One soft serve ice cream vendor played a short recorded message so repetitious that even Roger picked it up: “liang bing bing,” he grumped. Or we sat in restaurants and gave each other heads up when pretty women came near. It was exquisite fun.
One night we strolled along and bumped into a crowd. It was a big-bellied man, not Chinese, a portly Sylvester Stallone, wielding a long-handled scoop with the dexterity of a cheerleader with her baton. The sign above his stand read, in English and Chinese, “Turkish Ice Cream.” He was scooping ice cream, but the service was full of tricks and traps. I stepped forward bravely and asked for one. The scoop stuck to the metal of the spoon. He simply stuck the cone onto the ice cream and held it out to me, dangling like that from the spoon. I reached for it and the cone spun around – and, I thought, onto the ground. But with another flick of his hands the cone reappeared again before me. I reached more quickly, and was able to touch the cone before it disappeared again. A third time, the spoon with ice cream attached fluttered out of my grasp and clashed with a set of cowbells hung from the sign. Finally he relented and let me have it. “Xie xie,” I said smiling. How odd it was to speak Chinese with this man.
Another time he held out the cone on the spoon to a girl. She kept taking cones but was left each time with an empty cone in her hand. She would pull one off and he would slip another one on. We all guffawed at his repertoire of tricks, at the flummoxed look on people’s faces. Or he would hold out the cone with his hand, but at the last moment it would roll backwards along his palm – and forward – and back again. Then the cone would flip upside down. And the customer’s hand would be hanging there like a bashful pigeon. Once he dug in his scoop and the entire blob of ice cream would come flying out in our faces. He hectored us, shouting out “Ah --- la – la – la – laaaa!”
“Ganmaaaa?” (whaddaya waaant?) shouted a girlish voice and he echoed her with his own whiny “gan ma?” A boy timorously reached out for a cone, and the most shocking trick of all was for him to hand him the cone slowly, his eyes trained fiercely on the boy’s in some inscrutable, unbearably suspenseful message. Nothing happened, and we all roared at the torture of our own expectations. But he kept his brow furrowed in that look, letting on none of the crowd’s delight. Which incensed our delight even more. Another boy got a poke in the privates with his own cone.
A little girl and her older brother of 8 or 9 ordered. The girl took the cone but the ice cream stayed on the spoon and she stood there looking at her mother. The boy was a model of older brother determination, and when the cone finally stopped flopping and flipping he seized it with grim resolve. After the boy had bought 2 cones this way the big man, shirt now pulled up over his belly, noticed the little girl still standing there with the empty cone. He dug up another scoop and held it out to her. Aware that she had been played, her child’s sense of injustice bubbled over. She looked at her mother, lower lip puffed out, and then she was flailing about, cone rolling on the ground, carried from the scene by parents who could hardly resist laughing through comforting words.
Later we returned to his stand, after the grilled bacon and scallions, after the darts and balls and bungee trampoline, and he was there but deflated, without the sustenance of the crowd. One or two people looked at him curiously, as if sensing something lingering there, some peculiar possibility, but he seemed utterly bereft of genius, or mischief, this perspiring clown. He sat down in the shadows of the shop, a long way from Anatolia, subsisting on the money of the Taiwanese bourgeoisie but no less an enigmatic stranger. When Roger saw him later in the coin-drop net cafe and hailed him with a loud, “Hey, Turkish ice cream man!” he raised his hand in a dismissive wave, resigned to this second skin that earns him money, but ever so weary of the performance that lights him up and leaves him empty night after night.
alley of food wonders
The alley of food wonders on Chongqing Road south is the kind of place where time is said to stand still, caught in a time warp 40 years ago and hardly changing since. While the rest of the city has built shiny new buildings and fast food places, this old alley has curled up in a ball like a porcupine and refused to move. It is frozen in time, such an observer would say. One need only look at the ages crusted on a black pot on a fire there to note this.
I beg to differ. As far as existing in time, I would say it is the buildings and restaurants attempting to be modern that dream of stasis, eternity, frozen. It is this secret alley that has continues to float with small changes. Modernism is a revolutionary doctrine of radical breaks with the past followed by total transformation. One need only look at any of the modern buildings in Taipei to know that modernism is about erasure. You could not guess if you life depended on it what used to be where that McDonalds now stands. But once that change comes about, thats it, goes the dream of modernism, no more. It is a break, and then a freeze. But since permanence is an impossible dream, the McDonlad’s will age. Someday that shiny Taipei 101, highest building in the world, will show signs of age. And there is nothing more melancholy than to see a building meant to withstand the sands of time slowly succumb –like an old woman of many face lifts, unable to run any longer from the facts, wearing shades and high collars and low-brimmed hats.
The magic alley, on the other hand, shows you all the shifts in the sands of urban time. The old is patched by the new. When I sat with Sara once to eat at the MaLa heaven, I could scarcely find an even spot for my 3 legged stool! One leg was always slipping into some cavity of the patchwork asphalt or another. I looked down and saw the motliest rag-bag of pavement I have ever seen. The owners of these businesses huddled up against the alley walls are so miserly with their one bag of cement each that theu must haggle with each other over who will repair what, pulling out measuring tapes and saying, “Look, its 4 cm closer to your closest table!” Whether or not they go to such extremes, it is clear that they would rather scavenge construction sites for broken cinder blocks or bricks to fill in holes than to measure out a whole quarter bag of the precious cement bought during the Japanese occupation and passed down the family line. . .
All the times gone by are plastered in bits and pieces there under the eater’s feet, or slopped there in uncountable bowls spilled there by thousands of careless elbows. The quilt of time in this alley is so ragged that one knows the patching will go on. Improvisation is the modus operandi. And I must admit that even this critic of modernism is so thoroughly brainwashed to it that I look at the mess under my feet and think, “Haven’t they ever thought of all pitching in and paving it once and for all?” But every change is visible; every gouge and every patch is there.
From the other side of Chongqing Nan Lu, alley 43 is invisible. The next block is a massive bank building. One can walk down the arcade sidewalk, skirting magazine hawkers and rows of parked motorbikes, without seeing it, a narrow opening between two shops, slip by. There si no name posted at the mouth of magic alley, just the alley number and a couple of fliers for apartment rentals and electrical work. One passes a couple of bicycles propped against the walls, stacked boxes of celery and carrots, and as the alley widens out a bit, the sky disappears behind a makeshift of tarps and corrugated tin. On the left one passes a woman at a sink, scrubbing a cutting board next to a tiny niche in a wall as deep as a phone booth where 2 very slim people fill plates with appetizers and pull noodles out of the boiling water.
Raising your eyes, the alley has turned into a teeming, steaming corridor, tables huddled up along the edges and people rushing through. Some establishments have space inside; the rest are run fully under the tenuous cover of tarps stretched across the alley; gas burners and cauldrons plopped right there at a wide spot, a few tables clustered about. The amazing thing is that many of the customers are white collar corporate employees, eating in places with no names, no waiters, no checks, no bathrooms, no doors, and very easy-going health inspectors. Is such a place really so different from New York delis serving pizzas, sandwiches, and salads? Normally customers get food to go in brown paper bags at such places. But even the humblest such pizza joint has been imprinted by the state. Just because most people here tend to support such regulation – even those supposedly favoring “smaller government” – doesn’t mean their imprint is not huge. Even vendors in NYC are heavily regulated, and dare not put out a single stool for customers to rest.
The magic alley businesses are as primordially connected to that place as mollusks in a crevice of rock. I wonder if they pay taxes. The smells that sweep over you as you nudge through the crowds are not always pleasant. Wastewater and food scraps are tossed aside to wash down a drain. The men at the Sichuanese pulled noodle place are burly, tank-topped, and glistening in the fog rising from their cauldrons. While most of the businesses seem to be typical small businesses with men and women working side by side, the Sichuanese place is a gruff fraternity. The two men making the noodles are at the center of the two, the one behind the big table of sauces and broths and toppings and appetizers seems to be the king, the wielder of a dozen spoons, a blue flame roaring under a black pot encrusted by decades of fire. The table is an awe-inspiring collection of concoctions, with the secret recipe broth and the rich stew or gravy meat sauce steaming at the center, surrounded by chilli oils, a bowl of MSG, bowls of pickled vegetable mixtures, and several pots containing I don’t know what. On the inside end of the table are stacked the tea eggs, the pork intestines, the tripe, and the pig ears that serve as appetizers. On the end toward the alley are crowded the bowls being filled with noodles by the vice king, who wields big chopsticks, pulling up the chewy braids of dough and coiling them in a sieve like scoop, which drops them in bowls. The sauce king takes over then, scooping spoon or dipper full of various sauces over them, or picking up individual bowls and flipping magic juices into them as fast as a dealer at a poker table, and his face says just as little. 2 or 3 scruffy men serve as all-around helpers, shouting orders back to the king, packing take out orders on a little table, clearing bowls, putting bowls down, pointing out empty stools for newcomers, refilling condiments on the tables, or taking payment. (add in about primordiality of food in china?)
I found the alley thanks to a flaky psychotherapist who took a hundred dollars to see me, in a tea house, and then stood up my girlfriend the next day, claiming later that he had been unable to get through the demonstrations around the presidential residence. He had told her that he would meet at a tea house, of all places, so I went up to Taipei early to make sure I could find it. Having found the teahouse ok, I happened on an alley which led back to the magic alley and decided to get a quick bite before the session. Then I spent 2 hours with Dr. Chen in the empty tea house, explaining my childhood in Chinese to him (and the cashier, 10 feet away, behind a screen). I had a right to be afraid, a right to be depressed, he said, and tried using methods of the “Narrative School” to help me. For example, he asked me what it was I wanted and led me question by question to the conclusion that it was all as easy as could be – and furthermore, many people only came to him once or twice and felt fine. I said I thought I would need more time – except the price was a little high, to which he says What is money? This is not a thing I can control. If you don’t pay me within a few days, what can I do? I am serene. Which I found a little disingenuous.
The next day I rode with sara up to taipei for her first appointment. I had left all the breakfast at home in the rush to leave, and she was still mad at me when we got off the bus. I pulled her into the alley, and she chose the same place and same table I had sat at the day before and came to life a little under the sway of tasty chilli oil dumplings and sour soup. She was nervous. I walked her up to the teahouse and left her, sitting in the park and strolling about. 2 hours later I returned to find he had never showed up! A couple weeks later we contacted another therapist and made appointments for Thursday night. But half way to Taipei we realized we would not be able to make it nearly in time. We called to him to apologize and he asked why we had not showed up the day before. Anyhow, they were out, so we made new appointments for Friday night, and made our way to his place to make sure we could find it. Before heading home we decided to stop by the magic alley, and there we tried the all male revue noodles for the first time: it was their last bowl, they said, so we shared a bowl of zhajiang noodles so chewy and luscious I gobbled up all the sauce. I had strange dreams that night. Somehow, the magic alley had become intertwined with failed visits to psychotherapists! But all in all, sucking up noodles was good consolation, and even missing out or messing up a session we still came with the mindset to confront ourselves head on, so the magic alley became the scene of some wide ranging conversations.
We did make it to see Dr. Gao the next night, an hour or two later than expected due to ridiculous traffic, but he changed out of this t-shirt and obligingly saw us until 11 pm. He even gave me some bread while I waited in the living room for Sara to finish. When we got back to the station the last bus and train had left long before, so we spent an unexpected night in the glorious Paradise Hotel with its peeling walls. The next morning we awoke to a chanting of female voices, which Sara concluded must be some celebrity fan club up early to see their god or goddess. We saw the magic alley before heading home, carefully finding a level spot for our stools and slurping down fiery pork chop mala noodles. Then we moved over to a female run spot for soup to cool us down.
I beg to differ. As far as existing in time, I would say it is the buildings and restaurants attempting to be modern that dream of stasis, eternity, frozen. It is this secret alley that has continues to float with small changes. Modernism is a revolutionary doctrine of radical breaks with the past followed by total transformation. One need only look at any of the modern buildings in Taipei to know that modernism is about erasure. You could not guess if you life depended on it what used to be where that McDonalds now stands. But once that change comes about, thats it, goes the dream of modernism, no more. It is a break, and then a freeze. But since permanence is an impossible dream, the McDonlad’s will age. Someday that shiny Taipei 101, highest building in the world, will show signs of age. And there is nothing more melancholy than to see a building meant to withstand the sands of time slowly succumb –like an old woman of many face lifts, unable to run any longer from the facts, wearing shades and high collars and low-brimmed hats.
The magic alley, on the other hand, shows you all the shifts in the sands of urban time. The old is patched by the new. When I sat with Sara once to eat at the MaLa heaven, I could scarcely find an even spot for my 3 legged stool! One leg was always slipping into some cavity of the patchwork asphalt or another. I looked down and saw the motliest rag-bag of pavement I have ever seen. The owners of these businesses huddled up against the alley walls are so miserly with their one bag of cement each that theu must haggle with each other over who will repair what, pulling out measuring tapes and saying, “Look, its 4 cm closer to your closest table!” Whether or not they go to such extremes, it is clear that they would rather scavenge construction sites for broken cinder blocks or bricks to fill in holes than to measure out a whole quarter bag of the precious cement bought during the Japanese occupation and passed down the family line. . .
All the times gone by are plastered in bits and pieces there under the eater’s feet, or slopped there in uncountable bowls spilled there by thousands of careless elbows. The quilt of time in this alley is so ragged that one knows the patching will go on. Improvisation is the modus operandi. And I must admit that even this critic of modernism is so thoroughly brainwashed to it that I look at the mess under my feet and think, “Haven’t they ever thought of all pitching in and paving it once and for all?” But every change is visible; every gouge and every patch is there.
From the other side of Chongqing Nan Lu, alley 43 is invisible. The next block is a massive bank building. One can walk down the arcade sidewalk, skirting magazine hawkers and rows of parked motorbikes, without seeing it, a narrow opening between two shops, slip by. There si no name posted at the mouth of magic alley, just the alley number and a couple of fliers for apartment rentals and electrical work. One passes a couple of bicycles propped against the walls, stacked boxes of celery and carrots, and as the alley widens out a bit, the sky disappears behind a makeshift of tarps and corrugated tin. On the left one passes a woman at a sink, scrubbing a cutting board next to a tiny niche in a wall as deep as a phone booth where 2 very slim people fill plates with appetizers and pull noodles out of the boiling water.
Raising your eyes, the alley has turned into a teeming, steaming corridor, tables huddled up along the edges and people rushing through. Some establishments have space inside; the rest are run fully under the tenuous cover of tarps stretched across the alley; gas burners and cauldrons plopped right there at a wide spot, a few tables clustered about. The amazing thing is that many of the customers are white collar corporate employees, eating in places with no names, no waiters, no checks, no bathrooms, no doors, and very easy-going health inspectors. Is such a place really so different from New York delis serving pizzas, sandwiches, and salads? Normally customers get food to go in brown paper bags at such places. But even the humblest such pizza joint has been imprinted by the state. Just because most people here tend to support such regulation – even those supposedly favoring “smaller government” – doesn’t mean their imprint is not huge. Even vendors in NYC are heavily regulated, and dare not put out a single stool for customers to rest.
The magic alley businesses are as primordially connected to that place as mollusks in a crevice of rock. I wonder if they pay taxes. The smells that sweep over you as you nudge through the crowds are not always pleasant. Wastewater and food scraps are tossed aside to wash down a drain. The men at the Sichuanese pulled noodle place are burly, tank-topped, and glistening in the fog rising from their cauldrons. While most of the businesses seem to be typical small businesses with men and women working side by side, the Sichuanese place is a gruff fraternity. The two men making the noodles are at the center of the two, the one behind the big table of sauces and broths and toppings and appetizers seems to be the king, the wielder of a dozen spoons, a blue flame roaring under a black pot encrusted by decades of fire. The table is an awe-inspiring collection of concoctions, with the secret recipe broth and the rich stew or gravy meat sauce steaming at the center, surrounded by chilli oils, a bowl of MSG, bowls of pickled vegetable mixtures, and several pots containing I don’t know what. On the inside end of the table are stacked the tea eggs, the pork intestines, the tripe, and the pig ears that serve as appetizers. On the end toward the alley are crowded the bowls being filled with noodles by the vice king, who wields big chopsticks, pulling up the chewy braids of dough and coiling them in a sieve like scoop, which drops them in bowls. The sauce king takes over then, scooping spoon or dipper full of various sauces over them, or picking up individual bowls and flipping magic juices into them as fast as a dealer at a poker table, and his face says just as little. 2 or 3 scruffy men serve as all-around helpers, shouting orders back to the king, packing take out orders on a little table, clearing bowls, putting bowls down, pointing out empty stools for newcomers, refilling condiments on the tables, or taking payment. (add in about primordiality of food in china?)
I found the alley thanks to a flaky psychotherapist who took a hundred dollars to see me, in a tea house, and then stood up my girlfriend the next day, claiming later that he had been unable to get through the demonstrations around the presidential residence. He had told her that he would meet at a tea house, of all places, so I went up to Taipei early to make sure I could find it. Having found the teahouse ok, I happened on an alley which led back to the magic alley and decided to get a quick bite before the session. Then I spent 2 hours with Dr. Chen in the empty tea house, explaining my childhood in Chinese to him (and the cashier, 10 feet away, behind a screen). I had a right to be afraid, a right to be depressed, he said, and tried using methods of the “Narrative School” to help me. For example, he asked me what it was I wanted and led me question by question to the conclusion that it was all as easy as could be – and furthermore, many people only came to him once or twice and felt fine. I said I thought I would need more time – except the price was a little high, to which he says What is money? This is not a thing I can control. If you don’t pay me within a few days, what can I do? I am serene. Which I found a little disingenuous.
The next day I rode with sara up to taipei for her first appointment. I had left all the breakfast at home in the rush to leave, and she was still mad at me when we got off the bus. I pulled her into the alley, and she chose the same place and same table I had sat at the day before and came to life a little under the sway of tasty chilli oil dumplings and sour soup. She was nervous. I walked her up to the teahouse and left her, sitting in the park and strolling about. 2 hours later I returned to find he had never showed up! A couple weeks later we contacted another therapist and made appointments for Thursday night. But half way to Taipei we realized we would not be able to make it nearly in time. We called to him to apologize and he asked why we had not showed up the day before. Anyhow, they were out, so we made new appointments for Friday night, and made our way to his place to make sure we could find it. Before heading home we decided to stop by the magic alley, and there we tried the all male revue noodles for the first time: it was their last bowl, they said, so we shared a bowl of zhajiang noodles so chewy and luscious I gobbled up all the sauce. I had strange dreams that night. Somehow, the magic alley had become intertwined with failed visits to psychotherapists! But all in all, sucking up noodles was good consolation, and even missing out or messing up a session we still came with the mindset to confront ourselves head on, so the magic alley became the scene of some wide ranging conversations.
We did make it to see Dr. Gao the next night, an hour or two later than expected due to ridiculous traffic, but he changed out of this t-shirt and obligingly saw us until 11 pm. He even gave me some bread while I waited in the living room for Sara to finish. When we got back to the station the last bus and train had left long before, so we spent an unexpected night in the glorious Paradise Hotel with its peeling walls. The next morning we awoke to a chanting of female voices, which Sara concluded must be some celebrity fan club up early to see their god or goddess. We saw the magic alley before heading home, carefully finding a level spot for our stools and slurping down fiery pork chop mala noodles. Then we moved over to a female run spot for soup to cool us down.
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