People often ask, "What is life like in Taiwan." I usually don't have a good answer, but while walking back from 7/11 yesterday holding an umbrella, bottled water, and iced coffee, I found the answer. This is a life of beverages. In America I predominately drank water. It was plentiful and drinkable from the tap. But in Taiwan, you'll find me more often than not with a 700ml cup of tea in my hand, or an iced coffee from a cafe around the corner. My favorite and most ordered has to be a bai xiang lu cha, da bei, wei tang, shao bing. Thats a large passion fruit green tea, a little sugar, and less ice. Once in a while I enjoy a Zhen zhu nai cha, or pearl milk tea.
Taichung, my home in Taiwan, claims to be the birthplace of pearl, or bubble tea. Tea shop menus here are huge. My only limit is my lack of language skills. I can only order what I know how to say or read, unless a Taiwanese friend is with me. I do miss tap water. Carrying jugs down the stairs to fill up with drinking water from a machine on the street feels like an unnecessary burden in a modern country. I have no real reason to trust that the water from the machine is potable. Come to think of it, I've never actually seen anyone else getting water from it. To the tea shop!
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It must be a full moon, because I smell like burnt ghost money. All of the shops have offering tables complete with incense and instant noodles outside of their shops. I don't actually know when people burn their ghost money and put out their offering tables, but many people seem to do it at the same time, and it seems to correspond with the full moon. Either way, I smell like a campfire after taking a short drive around town.
