Hakka village

The students' blogs are so much more important than the teachers, but we had such a wonderful unique experience today I wanted to share it with you. The Hakka people of Taiwan have lived in the hills around Hsin Chu for many years. These mountain people were for years very poor so the Taiwanese government built a small market area in the town to celebrate this unique group of people and to help bring Taiwanese tourists to the area enabling the Hakka people to sell their traditional wares and foods.

Our first stop was at a tea house because of the rain. In a large stone bowl a mound of peanuts, seeds, and grain millet had to be hand crushed with a smooth wooden pestle. It took all of us taking a turn to get it crushed enough for soup. We were given a spicy crispy cracker, a gelatin sweet ball, and a meaty cracker to snack on with the soup. We poured hot water and rice over the misture and created a wonderful soup. After the rain stopped, I ate my way from one end of the market to the other -- if I knew what all I had eaten, I would tell you. Sometimes my host would say "You should try this, but you shouldn't eat it" and would hand me a small sample the vender was giving away. I ate it. I had cold green mush drink from two different venders vying for our business, a small piece of dried fruit, a piece of pickled something, and a fabulous hot dumpling filled with a crunchy meaty substance.

One of our hosts was Hakka and telephoned her grandparents and asked if we could stop by -- what a fabulous treat. She spoke a Hakka dialect with them and then would have to translate into Mandarin and English. We entered through a small gated court yard into what misleadingly seemed like a small house. The entrance area was about the size of a small bedroom with stucca type walls and split timber ceiling. The floors looked like polished mahagony but may have been a deep stained bamboo. A large dark wood altar covered one entire wall. We walked through a small adjacent room and saw the long, narrow kitchen. On the other side of the entry room were many more small rooms that seemed to stretch in a C formation. Our host said that the back wings were for her uncles when they came back home. The grandparents were very hospitable to let us traipse through their home like that.

We left and met with our van on one of the streets near the edge of the town. The streets in this village were narrow and not conducive to cars. We then went to the mountains to see a lake and a large Buddha statue. The lake was high up in the hills and mist had settled in. This beautiful area was tranquil and just like the postcards -- speaking of which, I have not seen any postcards for sale. I do not think we are in an international tourist area. I do think we are visiting areas that are holiday spots for Taiwanese much like we enjoy going to the hill country around Austin.