Taiwanese Innovation: Magic Click Shoes

The other day a friend of mine showed me a shoe that she designed and created herself.  I was amazed because I’ve never been the artistic type.  I can’t draw.  I don’t even try to sculpt, and the only thing I’ve ever painted has been the occasional wall.  So when she brought out this great pair of “kicks” and told me she designed them and made them herself, needless to say I was impressed.  (The only things I’ve ever made that were beautiful were my daughters, and even at that my wife did most of the work.)  She said, “You can make shoes, too.”  Then she whipped off her shoe and took it apart and made another one…in about 30 seconds.

It turns out that her father had an idea a while back and that idea has now blossomed full-grown into Magic Click Shoes.  He’s an inventor and apparently is interested in shoes. So he created and developed a shoe sole, on which you can change the uppers and have other designs.  Let me give you a scenario. 

Say you’re at work, and you’re wearing a comfortable pair of sandals, but that night you have plans to go somewhere.  You’ve brought a change of clothes, but rather than a different pair of shoes, you just reach into your purse pull out a new design and change the upper part of the shoe…it’s magic.  For men they can change from a comfortable beach sandals to a pair of dress shoes with only a few clicks.  What a cool idea.  The shoes aren’t just open toe sandals, they’re also fully enclosed dress shoes.  They make shoes for kids, too. 

The way they work is this:  You pull out the insole, through the back of the shoe.  Then you click off the upper, by pushing it in toward the center of the shoe.  Then click on the new upper by pushing outward toward the outside of the shoe.  Put the insole back in and like magic you have a new shoe.  The design is so simple that you’re children will have fun redesigning their own shoes.

The shoes are re-usable and can be changed hundreds of times.  They are also comfortable and attractive.  And best of all because of their unique design it makes owning a lot of different styles of shoes economical and space saving, they take up a lot less space than would be required for the same number of pairs of regular shoes. 

Finally, this is a great green design.  The amount of material necessary to make two pairs of these shoes is substantially less than would be required to make two pairs of regular shoes. 

If you are interested in the shoes you can contact Jing Yang at aliceaykimo@hotmail.com or telephone at Taiwan country code 04-2656-1115 or through me at cbanducci@gmail.com. 

Here's a video so you can watch how quickly the changes can be made, and you can have a new pair of shoes.

And finally, there's this:

Merry Christmas from the Taiwan Adventure

Merry Christmas from  Emily, Brenda, Elizabeth and Chris

Taiwanderful - Taiwan Best Blogs 2011

Local Color:  The Colors of Yingge

Ah, the month of December.  December is a good month for me, usually.  It’s Christmas month.  The weather is starting to get colder.  The rain is starting to fall a little more often.  During December I’m glad I’m in Taiwan and not some frozen white place in North America.

But not only is this Christmas time and wintertime, it is also time for the Annual Taiwanderful.net Taiwan Best Blog contest and once again the Taiwan Adventure is participating.

Last year, we finished eighth in the popular vote for our category, but I think our performance has been enhanced this year.  The blog seems a little more professional and has a lot more readership.  I’ll start crunching numbers for the Pathetical Analyticals post for 2011, pretty soon.  That’s the way to really tell if we’ve improved. Of course, after last year efforts we can only get better.

Eating My Way Through Taiwan:  The Stink of Adventure

One of the many good things that have happened to us this year is that we have become a "Featured Blogger," for We Blog the World.  This is a fantastic opportunity for us.  Readership has skyrocketed to about 3,000 readers a month.  Many of the other blogs may think this is a small amount but we actually improved from an average of 1,090 readers/month to 3,000 readers per month. From 1,764 unique visitors to 10,463. 

The nice thing about the Taiwan Adventure is the diversity of posts.  They range from Taiwanese Traditions to Traveling with M13 to Eating My Way Through Taiwan.

Some posts you may want to check out:

Eating My WayThrough Taiwan:  The Stink of Adventure

Taiwanese Traditions:  the Dragon Boat Festival

CulturalUnawareness:  You Scratch My back I’llScratch Yours

Local Color:  The Colors of Yingge

Traveling withM13:  Custom Scooters of Taiwan

RandomAsianess:  Oh Sure, Now We Decorate

Taiwan Travelogue:  The Cross Island Highway

So how do you vote?  Here’s a link:  Taiwanderful.net Taiwan's Best Blogs Contest just put an 'x' in the square next to The Taiwan Adventure Blog.

Traveling with M13:  Custom Scooters of Taiwan

Voting begins on December 11th and runs through the 30th. You can vote once a day for as many blogs as you like.  There are a number of excellent, informative and fun blogs and I would encourage you to browse around a little and vote for some of the others that you like as well.

Some of the other excellent blogs featured on Taiwanderful:

Random Asianess:  Oh Sure, Now We Decorate

Taiwanese Traditions:  The Dragon Boat Festival

The Daily Bubble Tea

David On Formosa

Bamboo Butterfly

The Wild East

My Kafkaesque life

Vote as often as you like.  Thanks for stopping by the 

The Taiwan Adventure.  Please Vote!!  Chris

Taiwanese Tea: Union Tea Company

The weather is finally starting to turn towards winter.  In Taiwan, it’s hot from April until about the beginning of December, sometimes even longer.  But here we are in the last week of November and the weather is starting to become like winter weather.  That means it’s time to start brewing hot tea again.

Cha Li Wang the Tea of Kings

I don’t like to drink hot tea in the summer.  I want something cold and refreshing, so I usually drink Cha Li Wang brand tea.  (Cha Li Wang means Tea Inside King).  It’s not like the tea that you find in stores in the U.S.  I like to get unsweetened oolong tea, but you can hardly find that in the States.  All the bottled teas have fake lemon flavor or too much sugar or Aspartame in them.  They have a sweet after taste.  But here you can get unsweetened bottled tea that contains nothing but that delicious Oolong goodness.  I love to drink that in the summer.  Think of it; a cold sweating bottle of clear crisp Oolong Tea without the additives and sugar.  It’s delicious.

But when the weather starts to turn cooler and wetter, I want hot tea.  That’s the way I started to feel last week, so I took a trip to Union Tea Company in Bade, Taiwan.  Bade (pronounced Bah Duh) is right next to Taoyuan City and it is the location of the Home Office of Union Tea.

Taiwan grows some of the finest tea in the world.  Conditions in the mountains are perfect for growing tea.  A good oolong tea is grown above 2800 meters (9100 feet) and the air temperature must fluctuate ten degrees Celsius between afternoon and night.

Buying tea in the U.S. is nothing special.  You walk into Walmart or your local grocery store and pick up a pack right off the shelf.  The tea is usually blended and in bags.  It’s also fairly low quality.  I have never liked tea bag tea.  But in Taiwan buying tea is special.  You walk into the shop tell the shopkeeper whether you want green, black or oolong tea and they brew a number of teas for you to try so you can select the tea you prefer. A trip to the tea dealer is a fun and interesting time.

The process of tasting tea is interesting.  First the shopkeeper pours hot water over all of the evaluation cups and spoons.  An evaluation cup is a shallow white cup.  It is important to be able to see the color of the tea.  Warming the cups up allows the flavor of the tea to be quickly released. 

Front:  Black Tea leaves:  Rear: Notice the way the Green Tea is rolled

The she will pour the tea leaves to be evaluated into a brewing cup.  Green and oolong tea are usually rolled into tight balls, while black tea is in the leaf shape.  When the vacuum seal bag of tea is opened sometimes the dealer will offer it to you to smell.  Finally one hundred degree Celsius water is poured into the evaluation cup.  And the tea is allowed to brew for a short time.  While it is brewing the dealer will take a ceramic spoon and dip it into the tea and offer it to you to sniff and smell the fragrance of the brewed tea.  As it finishes brewing she will spoon some of the tea into the evaluation cup and then use the spoon to hold the leaves out and pour in the rest.  The color may be evaluated at this point.  Black tea, which is called Hong Cha, in Chinese, (red tea), should be a red color in the evaluation cup.  Green and oolong tea will be yellow in the evaluation cup but can be more of a honey color depending on the oven temperature during the curing process:  The higher the oven temperature the deeper the color. 

Notice the beautiful red color of the tea on the left.

Then you taste the tea and decide which you would like to purchase.  The process usually lasts around an hour and is very enjoyable. 

I don’t think a company like Union tea can survive just on customers like my wife and I.  They sell tea in large quantities to exporters and the like.  In fact, on our last visit we met a man who is the biggest exporter of Taiwanese tea to the nation of Brazil, as well as Malaysia and other Asian countries.  If you’re in the market for high-quality tea, Union Tea has a wide variety of types and prices.  Good quality tea sells for about $30.00 USD for six hundred grams.  High quality tea can be brewed about four times.

"The Best in the World"  $90,000 USD for 600 grams

 Union Tea does have a tea that was voted, “Best in the World” in a competition involving tea from sixty-five countries.  That tea is available to be purchased for about Three Million NTD or $90,000 USD for 600 grams.  I love to drink tea, but I think I'm going to have to pass on the $90,000 tea.  

Keep Watching the Taiwan Adventure for an exciting announcement.

Michell Lu with the tools of her trade:  Union Tea Company

Other posts you may be interested in:


Taiwanese Traditions:  Selling and Brewing Tea
The Union Tea Company Website

Random Asianess: Steak in Taiwan

I've written before, about American Fast Food in Taiwan.  But there’s something else that I haven’t written about and that’s Taiwanese restaurants that serve American Style food.  This is different than American food being served in an American restaurant in Taiwan.

In the US beef is by far the most popular meat that we eat.  But in Taiwan, Pork seems to be the most popular.  Why you may ask?  Almost all the beef that’s sold in stores here is imported from the US, New Zealand or Australia.  There are some dairy farms here, and I would suppose that they have some beef steers, although, I have to admit that I’ve never seen one in Taiwan.

So the reason it is difficult to find an American style steak in Taiwan is that people just don’t eat it all that much.  You can find a steak in American restaurants like TGI Fridays or Outback but rarely will you find steak like that in a Taiwanese restaurant.

My wife grew up on a farm in Ohio and they raised their own steers for food.  In fact, my wife would raise a steer for the county fair and she could be seen taking her steer for a walk through downtown Ridgeville Corners.  I don’t know how much weight they gained or if they won prizes at the fair, but they were happy steers, treated like the family pet.  Well, except we don’t usually eat the family pet.  But that’s another story.

There are a number of restaurants that serve steak in Taiwan.  But it is prepared differently and isn’t what we Americans are really referring to when we talk about steak.  As an American the definition of steak is a flat cut of beef.  New York, Sirloin, Tenderloin, Rib eye, Filet Mignon, you get the drift.  If you’re in the US you can ask your butcher, he knows all about steak and the different cuts.  But if you go to the butcher here and ask for a Ribeye, with the exception of Costco, or Carrefour they will have no idea what you’re talking about.  Because in Taiwan they just don’t cut meat like that.

One restaurant that is famous for serving steak is called Tasty. Tasty has a reputation for fantastic customer service, and the reputation is well deserved.  The service is impeccable, polite, responsive, attentive (without being obnoxiously attentive), and the prices are reasonable.  We had a 7 course set meal for $450.00 NTD (about $15.00 USD).  Salad, appetizers, antipasto, dessert, it was wonderful but the Steak just didn't look or feel like a steak.  It was cooked in what is called a speed cooker.  A speed cooker is basically a steamer.  So the steak was steamed.  It was also a different cut than the steaks we are used to in the US.  But it was delicious served with a nice pepper sauce.  There is a Tasty restaurant in Taoyuan City near the corner of Junghua Rd and Nanhua St, on Nanhua. (No.66 Nanhua Street, Taoyuan City) It is well worth trying, but not if you’re looking for a good ol’ American Steak.

There is a Taiwanese restaurant called My Home Steak at Chunri Rd near Chengong Rd.that serves steaks in cuts that Americans are used to, sort of.  The restaurant has an all you can eat Salad bar that comes with the meal.  And the meat is served with pasta and two eggs Sunny Side Up.  The salad bar serves a nice green salad, with Thousand Islands dressing or you can load up on Taiwanese foods like shrimp, fish balls, and other things like that.  A Sirloin Steak at this restaurant sells for about $280.00 NTD ($10.00 USD) which isn’t a bad price.  After your meal you can get a dish of frozen yogurt or ice cream. 

That same pepper sauce is available to put on your steak if you want.  All in all it’s a decent meal and it looks familiar.  But if you’re a real steak person, like you grew up on a farm and had a pet steer, that you eventually had to eat, you probably won’t be entirely satisfied.

Steak and other courses at Tasty

Sirloin Steak at My Home Steak

My Home Steak Chunri Road, Taoyuan City

Other Posts you maybe interested in:

Eating My Way Through Taiwan:  Japanese Barbecue

Eating My Way Through Taiwan:  The Stink of Adventure

Eating My way Through Taiwan:  A Traditional Restaurant

Photo credits:  www.tasty.com.tw (For Tasty sign and Steak and other Courses)

Chris and Brenda Banducci

Cultural Unawareness: Just Love Hug Rally 2011

"Just Love Hug" rally September 24, 2001

Last week, for reasons that lie completely outside of my area of control, I found myself propelled into an extremely unlikely set of circumstances.  By unlikely, I don’t mean that the circumstances themselves were unlikely.  These things happen all the time.  By unlikely, I’m referring to my actual presence in the place where these circumstances existed.  My being in the same zip code with an event like I attended last week are about as likely as the spontaneous generation of cold fusion in my kitchen sink.  In fact, Evolutionary Biology playing itself out in my refrigerator is one hundred times more probable than me willingly attending something like this.  But I had no choice, well, in all actuality I guess that I could have refused to even go near the place, but it really came down to making a choice between offending people who have made it possible for me to remain in Taiwan, and me being a little uncomfortable for a few minutes. So after hours of serious deliberation, I decided that I would prefer a little discomfort to actually being on a plane headed back to California.

The Premier of Taiwan,  Wu Den Yi exhorts the crowd.

Where, you might ask, did I find myself?  At the Zhongli “Just Love Hug” rally.  I have to tell you, I like people, I love to talk to them, I like to spend time with them, I even look forward to spending time with people, I’m just not a big hugger.  I can’t help it.  It’s probably some psychological flaw, some hang-up left over from some moment of embarrassment or discomfort I experienced as a child.  Some Freudian interpreter might blame it my mother, although my mom is one of the few people that I actually don’t mind hugging.  It’s odd because I’m not a distant, cool, unapproachable type, but in reality, I only hug my immediate family and maybe my sisters, and a few close friends who expect it because of our Hippie days.  But that’s really about it.  I have always felt that hello, goodbye and a nice handshake were perfectly adequate forms of greeting and farewell.  In the late eighties I took a class where, at then end of the three day seminar, I was required to hug each of the seventy other participants in the class and about halfway through I was ready to run screaming for the door.  I was sweaty, rumpled and smelling like a combination of aftershaves, perfumes, colognes and body odor.  I was pretty well done with mass hug-a-thons at that point.  The idea of a mass hug with ten thousand strangers was more than I could bear.  But there I was with nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine others listening to them countdown from fifty to the great hug moment. 

Counting down to the big moment

I was frantically trying to figure out how I could gracefully avoid embracing some well meaning person, intent on increasing the good feelings of mankind, bringing us all a little closer and demonstrating the love of humanity.  I mean really, I don’t want to hurt someone like that.  I really feel those are lofty and worthwhile goals, but how about looking into each other’s eyes and affirming our value as human beings, or a group smile, or maybe a little affectionate punch on the shoulder... but come on, not a hug!  Meanwhile, as I’m working all of this out in my mind, the countdown was plummeting toward the moment.  It was too late to excuse myself and go to the bathroom.  It was too late to pretend to be intent on tying my shoes.  It was too late feign a heart attack.  The count had reached zero.

Nothing happened.  Even those on stage, who were exhorting us toward this moment, were kind of shifting around uncomfortably until the moment passed.  Then it was over, I didn’t see a single hug exchanged except between lovers in the entire place.

The Hug-a-thon

Taiwanese people are warm, friendly and loving people, but they’re not real big on hugging strangers, either.  It was a little bit easier for me to identify with them, and relate to them after that moment.  I felt closer to the Taiwanese people after that then I ever had before.  In fact, I had good feelings toward mankind in general, I felt closer as a human being to others than I had before.  I even felt a deeper love of humanity.  Hey, maybe this stuff works.

Other posts you may be interested in:

Cultural Unawareness:  Cultural Explosions

Cultural Unawareness:  You Scratch My Back I'll Scratch Yours

Cultural Unawareness:  Ticked Off in Taiwan

Photos for the Taiwan Adventure by guest photographer, Wayne Pelren 

Taiwan Travelogue: The North Coast

For the last several weeks, my wife and I have been trying to schedule a family trip to The North Coast of Taiwan, but we had encountered a number of obstacles.  The first obstacle was a typhoon that was scheduled to impact the Northern Area of Taiwan.  The second was that we are the parents of teenage girls, who have actual lives; they were involved in a number of little trips and adventures on their own.  We've lived on the island for two years and have done very little in the way of seeing the island because we've been busy with work and all that we do.

But finally, our schedules came together and we loaded up our daughters, our little dog and our two charges, (my wife baby-sits) and took a road trip to the northern beach cities.  Our intended destination was Fu Long Beach, the famous site of the Hohaiyan Rock Festival in the Gongliao District.  But unfortunately, I couldn’t handle the arching bridge that connects the beach to the landmass.  Almost 30 years of Muscular Dystrophy makes some things difficult, but undaunted we changed direction and headed back towards Taipei, where we landed At Yen Liao Beach Park.

Yen Liao Beach Park is a beautiful Sandy beach about three and a half kilometers west of Fulong beach.  But it’s not all about sand and beach.  Located on the site is an ancient building, a coffee shop, pool, children’s water park, and a second floor patio over the coffee shop to see the ocean, without getting sand in your shoes.  There is an admission into the park, but off-season, it’s only $60 NTD (about $2.00 USD).  We picked an interesting time to visit, as Typhoon Roke churned, north of Taiwan on its way to Japan.  The result was some of the biggest surf I’ve seen in a while. 

A typically nice Taiwanese woman ran the coffee shop.  We were really the only people there at the time and she was kind and gracious, the only problem being that she added ten years to my age and gave me the senior discount, so much for my idea that I still look young and dashing.  In my mind, I’m still in my twenties but apparently I look a bit older than that. 

The drive from Taoyuan City took about an hour, but we went on a Monday after the rush hour traffic to Taipei had dwindled away.  So we traveled smoothly and quickly, north on the #1 National Freeway, north on 62 and east along the coast on Scenic Highway 2.  The scenery on the 2 was breathtaking at some points.  Huge surf smashing on the rocks and surf breaks; Shear cliffs right down to the road and in some cases to the Sea itself.  There were small fishing villages along the road with fishing boats tied up in the harbor and a number of scenic overlooks that looked over the more impressive, and beautiful parts of the coastline.

We thoroughly enjoyed the day’s outing, my daughter declaring, “This is the best day I’ve had since we’ve been in Taiwan.”    My wife and I vowed that we would embark on other Monday trips, now that we’ve seen it’s possible and even delightful to take the little ones and teenagers with us. If you're planning to drive around in the scenic areas of Taiwan and can do it, I would recommend going on a weekday, while everyone is at school or work.  This same drive would have taken probably two, possibly three hours each way on Saturday or Sunday.  Fulong Beach can easily be reached on Taiwan's excellent rail system, it's about an hour and a half from Taoyuan City to Fulong on the train, even on a weekend day.

Gratuitous Cute Puppy Picture to boost readership.  Charlie Wang, named after the tea "Cha Li Wang"

Note the glass floats across the top of the boat.

Yen Liao Beach Park

Photos by Chris, Brenda, Elizabeth and Emily Banducci

Other posts you may be interested in:

Taiwan Travelogue:  The Cross Island Highway

Taiwan Travelogue:  Old Ceramics Street

Taiwan Travelogue:  The National Palace Museum