{"id":1316,"date":"2010-10-08T11:28:20","date_gmt":"2010-10-08T11:28:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.com\/?p=1316"},"modified":"2010-10-08T11:28:20","modified_gmt":"2010-10-08T11:28:20","slug":"danshui","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/?p=1316","title":{"rendered":"Danshui \u6de1\u6c34"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was told by friends that I had to visit Danshui \u6de1\u6c34 (also written as &#8216;Tamshui&#8217;), a small city to the north of Taipei. As it&#8217;s by the sea, the port city used to be the centre of shipping and commerce in the 19th century. These days, it&#8217;s more of hotspot for tourists and locals alike with its bustling markets, food stalls and restaurants.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4138\/4872064642_a431ea0cec.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" alt=\"IMGP0473\" \/><\/a><\/br><br \/>\nWhile you can choose to take the subway straight to Danshui (it&#8217;s the last stop on the Danshui line), I chose to cycle there from Guandu station (\u95dc\u6e21), a few train stops before Danshui. I met up with a newfound friend from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.couchsurfing.com\">Couchsurfing<\/a>, and he was to be my guide for the afternoon. So we rented a bike for NT100 each, and it even came with a complementary bottle of mineral water. The journey is an easy and pleasant ride along the Danshui River and takes about 30min to get to Danshui at a rather leisurely pace.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4074\/4872096850_493a342541.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" alt=\"IMGP0491\" \/><\/a><\/br><br \/>\nWhen we got to Danshui, we were dripping in sweat and the first thing we wanted was to have a shaved ice dessert!!!<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4096\/4871490229_0ee171489c.jpg\" width=\"375\" height=\"500\" alt=\"IMGP0493\" \/><\/a><\/br><br \/>\nA simple dessert, but oh-so-heavenly at that point, made up of just shaved iced laced with fragrant palm sugar (the Taiwanese call it \u9ed1\u7cd6 i.e. black sugar), sitting on top a bed of fillings of your choice. You can choose from green beans, red beans, grass jelly, tapioca flour balls, longans, yam, sweet corn etc.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4093\/4872093208_49408f9897.jpg\" width=\"375\" height=\"500\" alt=\"IMGP0489\" \/><\/a><\/br><br \/>\nSpongebob fans will no doubt love this stall selling these Spongebob character pancakes. Spongebob&#8217;s Chinese name is \u6d77\u7dbf\u5bf6\u5bf6 which when literally translated, becomes Spongebaby. A cute translation I&#8217;d say!<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4074\/4871483075_7bb9848dd8.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" alt=\"IMGP0488\" \/><\/a><\/br><br \/>\nA close-up of the Spongebob pancakes. Of course, accessories are excluded when sold. Hehe.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4082\/4872077140_ba7a86ce4d.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" alt=\"IMGP0481\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nThese are a specialty of Danshui and they are \u9435\u86cb, literally translated as &#8216;metal eggs&#8217;. These are actually stewed eggs that have been dried. Chicken and quail eggs are normally used to make these.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4075\/4872085362_d7c1efdb35.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" alt=\"IMGP0484\" \/><\/a><\/br><br \/>\nDeep-fried durians are being sold by the stall on the right. OK, no thanks, I much prefer the fresh Malaysian durians I get back in Singapore!!! Nothing like the real thing in its original form I say.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4140\/4872110990_5a2fc8f104.jpg\" width=\"375\" height=\"500\" alt=\"IMGP0500\" \/><\/a><\/br><br \/>\nA poster put up by the Tamshui Church advertising for a children&#8217;s summer camp organised by the church. Where the Avatar connection comes in I have no idea.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4123\/4871511199_b17f938b71.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" alt=\"IMGP0505\" \/><\/a><\/br><br \/>\nA small section of a large tiled wall along the streets of Danshui. I loved that different artists were each given a small space to express their own creativity. The tile on the left depicts a stall selling fish balls (\u9b5a\u4e38) in Danshui. It&#8217;s a good spot to stop and admire this nice piece of street art.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4096\/4872118588_edfc2092bb.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" alt=\"IMGP0504\" \/><\/a><\/br><br \/>\nI liked this particular tile on the left which says: \u539f\u8ad2\u5225\u4eba\u5c31\u662f\u5584\u5f85\u81ea\u5df1; \u751f\u6c23\u662f\u628a\u5225\u4eba\u7684\u932f\u8aa4\u4f86\u61f2\u7f70\u81ea\u5df1. Translated, it means to forgive is to be kind to one&#8217;s self, while being angry at others&#8217; mistakes is punishment wrongly inflicted on one&#8217;s self.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4120\/4872126916_8f2a61d77a.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" alt=\"IMGP0511\" \/><\/a><\/br><br \/>\nDanshui&#8217;s Red Castle \u7d05\u6a13, a historical colonial building that sits on atop a hill in Danshui. It used to be the place where rich businessmen gathered to have drinks and talk shop. Now, a restaurant is located there.<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4117\/4871526617_8d0d7450b6.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" alt=\"IMGP0519\" \/><\/a><\/br><br \/>\nA view of the mountains as we cycled back to Guandu to return our bikes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was told by friends that I had to visit Danshui \u6de1\u6c34 (also written as &#8216;Tamshui&#8217;), a small city to the north of Taipei. As it&#8217;s by the sea, the port city used to be the centre of shipping and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/?p=1316\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dimsumdolly.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}