Offering a rich blend of innovation, tradition, creativity and originality, a market in Taipei featuring Aboriginal gourmet, farm produce, millet wine, handicrafts and other items was inaugurated yesterday.
The Naruwan Indigenous Peoples’ Market is located not far from Longshan Temple (龍山寺), a popular tourist attraction in Taipei City’s Wanhua District.
Although the market only has 10 shops at the moment, one tour is enough to showcase the rich culture and creativity of Aborigines.
PHOTO: LIAO CHEN-HUEI, TAIPEI TIMES
“When you come here, don’t just shop,” Taipei Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) told a crowd of Taiwanese and foreigners during the inaugural ceremony yesterday afternoon. “Rather, you should try to understand the stories behind these vendors and their culture.”
“There are people who came to Taipei decades ago selling things or serving food on the side of the street — they finally have a storefront. There is a single mother who was struggling to raise her kids and there is a husband who is working to feed his cancer-stricken wife because he remembers the vow he made in church,” he said.
Tseng Chun-yu (曾春玉) is that single mother.
An Aborigine of the Amis tribe, Tseng has had several jobs in the past 20 years since she moved to Taipei from her hometown in Hualien.
She now runs a small coffee and juice bar with her brother and her brother’s two daughters.
“Coffee and juice may not be anything special, but all the fruits I use are grown in Aboriginal areas,” Tseng said. “The coffee beans that I use are also from Aboriginal townships.”
The Haliwan coffee comes from Taitung, the Makutu is from Pingtung and the Pangcah is from Hualien.
“I make very good Pangcah coffee — you have to try it,” Tseng said, smiling.
Next door, an Atayal cook prepares stir-fried wild boar “a l’Atayal” and egg pancake with makau — a spice often used by the Atayal.
Further down is a small Bunun food stand, an Aboriginal handicraft store that offers do-it-yourself courses, a shop selling “sparkling millet wine,” a shop offering organic vegetables and fruit grown by Aborigines, and high-mountain tea from Alishan (阿里山).
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
US climber Alex Honnold is to attempt to scale Taipei 101 without a rope and harness in a live Netflix special on Jan. 24, the streaming platform announced on Wednesday. Accounting for the time difference, the two-hour broadcast of Honnold’s climb, called Skyscraper Live, is to air on Jan. 23 in the US, Netflix said in a statement. Honnold, 40, was the first person ever to free solo climb the 900m El Capitan rock formation in Yosemite National Park — a feat that was recorded and later made into the 2018 documentary film Free Solo. Netflix previewed Skyscraper Live in October, after videos
Starting on Jan. 1, YouBike riders must have insurance to use the service, and a six-month trial of NT$5 coupons under certain conditions would be implemented to balance bike shortages, a joint statement from transportation departments across Taipei, New Taipei City and Taoyuan announced yesterday. The rental bike system operator said that coupons would be offered to riders to rent bikes from full stations, for riders who take out an electric-assisted bike from a full station, and for riders who return a bike to an empty station. All riders with YouBike accounts are automatically eligible for the program, and each membership account
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
RSS