I met three of my fellow schoolmates:
A German in an advanced class who lives in my dorm
An Argentinian who's Taiwanese parents sent her to Taiwan to improve her Chinese
A Slovenian woman who is also in my class
We all have better English than Chinese, haha. Their English is much better than my Chinese. I am definitely the oldest there, I doubt there's a single student over 30. Classes start Monday, oh boy.
There are lots of bars around Tainan but this on near the campus has a familiar name. I think it has nothing to do with the TV serial "Cheers" and more to do with Boston being famous in Taiwan for Harvard and MIT. But who would expect to get to Harvard or MIT by way of a bar?
I did go to a bar near the Boston bar and ordered a beer. It came with a full ice bucket and a small drinking glass. The ice is for the beer maybe one or two cubes per small glass. The beer is 4.5% alcohol and has a good taste so two cubes don't effect the strength or taste much, but does keep it cool in a hot climate.
Drinking without some snack is just not normal in Taiwan, even if it's only peanuts. Usually a bar will have a lot of small dishes to go along with the drinks. I saw the owner cooking this fish on a grill and ask for it. He called it Qing or Saba, Saba is the Japanese name for mackerel. It is an oily fish but one of my favorites from my time in Liberia.
I did a good job on the Saba and ordered another beer. With the second beer they brought a carrier for the empties to the table. This way the vendor and the customer knows how many beers are drunk. This probably avoids disputes. Usually you pay at the end of a meal or a session. Paying as you drink just doesn't happen. I stopped at 2.
Here's another variation on the same theme. Saba is quickly displacing Pai Gu Fan as my favorite meal. And fish ball soup is coming up strong.
3 comments:
It looked like too much fun for you! Saba was your faverite fish when you were here. Now you can eat it to your heart's content!
I am glad that you start to get to know your classmates. You can practice your German. You should go out with them to have a drink even though you are older. You can just act like their big daddy.
To Taiwanese, it is important to have food to go with the alcohol. This way, you can drink more. It is believed empty stomach gets you drunk quickly. Fish ball soup is one of my favorite. Each restaurant has its way of making the fish ball. The import ingredient is the fresh fish.
Mike,
I went to see a Taiwan movie today, it is very good, and very Taiwan smell. It names "帶我去遠方” (Somewhere I have never travelled), which talking about a little girl with color blind, so, she see things differently as others. It's a very good movie, I recommend, but they talked in Taiwanese in some of part. It was took in South of Taiwan..
It's good to hear about your student life. I hope you get along well with your classmates. You are getting a real international perspective. Do they have trivia challenges in bars there? Do many people smoke? Is the atmosphere in bars in Tainan the same as in Bellevue or Seattle?
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