The Market Next to Hotel 73

Our budget hotel sits on a boulevard of street repair and vacant stores, security doors shuttered tight. Then this morning, turning left instead of right, we notice a large, corrugated metal door on one space had lifted, revealing a narrow passageway that reaches from the street, back into the far distance -- a stretch of stalls and activity six or seven blocks wide. As we step into the corridor we can see chickens a sqwaking, cow tongues hanging on hooks, and other offerings not immediately decipherable as to whether they are animal, vegetable or mineral.

Food here is ofen unidentifiable by color, smell, sight, or texture. I defy almost anyone to identify what I have touched to my tongue in the last few days -- such as fruit that may be pig parts, nuts that are probably insects, as well as eggs hatched back when Taiwan was still Formosa -- black and shrunken 100 year old eggs. These I recognize. My friend Tzu Hui had bought me a skewer of three a couple of days before. There are still two hidden in my trench coat pocket that I'd forgotten to toss, probably mating.

Still we love our market. Friendly proprietors ply us with greetings and gifts, pushing greasy scallion and oyster pancakes, fish cookies -- which I hate -- into our hands, and bits and slices of what are most certainly fermented middle earth creatures stewed in ox blood.

"Nee How," "Hello," we chirp. She Sheah," thank you," we chant.

I think about the food I grew up with. Chopped herring, chopped liver, stuffed derma -- cow intestines filled with flour and seasonings, chicken soup and unborn eggs -- p'cha -- calves foot jelly. Mostly innards and extremities -- poor people food from another part of the world. I'd loved it all, except for the p'cha -- p.u. -- my siblings and I had called it. Still do palates develop as selectively for flavor as they do for the ability to say the l in flavor instead of r as my Chinese friend does? Fravor.

In that case, can I in good conscious make fun of Taiwanese food?

At home in Larchmont, I rarely frequent the Starbucks. I think their coffee is bitter and overpriced. Yet, in Taiwan, I surprise myself. I stop in almost every Starbucks I see. And the best breakfast I have the entire trip is the last morning -- at McDonald's.