Tails of the Kirin

I had a visitor from Utah this last weekend. It was good to see a familiar face, enjoy the comradery of friendship, to tease in English and have someone tease back. The Chuang family was also an absolute delight to stay with as well. They treated us to the most delightful weekend of food and travel. One day I hope that I can be as hospitable as they were to us.

We went so many places: the TaiNan flower festival, the TaiNan salt farm, AnPing, the tree house, and countless restaurants.

I also got to cross off another place from my list of places to go this weekend as well. Fire-Water cave, which turned out not to be a cave at all but a place where natural gas came out of the rocks and the water and has been burning for the past 300 years. The legend says that once upon a time there was a Kirin (a mythical creature that can walk on grass with out disturbing it. It has the body of giraffe scales of a fish, the head of a horned deer and the main of a lion. Some can also be on fire as they walk around.) that took a liking to the people of GuanZiLing and stayed to rest, bringing good luck and fortune to the people. Where the head of the Kirin laid, now continues to burn with a never ending fire. So it wasn't a cave like I hoped but the legend of the mud volcano made up the difference.

While walking around TaiNan I met Alexander from Serbia, a well-known local history professor in Taiwan. He was selling a desert called Tasty Cakes. As the story goes he was digging around a Dutch archive when he found the favorited cake recipe of a Dutch captain that helped settle TaiNan before the natives retook the city. Reviving the recipe and giving it a living breath once more the 'Tasty Cake' was on a fast swing for becoming the newest fad in TaiNan. When I asked him more about the history of the cranberry and walnut laden sweet bread he responded in his rich Serbian accent "Is joke" as a cheeky grin spread across his face. We had a good laugh as he told me more about the story and his scintillating scheme to convince the locals of his tale.

I have a final shout-out to the old janitor singing his soul into a cardboard tube to some locally preformed music.