There is a very, VERY cool show on Taiwanese television. It is a puppet show that is spoken in the native Taiwanese language (not Chinese) and has Chinese subtitles at the bottom. Puppets? Well these are not your everyday, puppets or even muppets. No these aren't your daddy's puppets, like the show Thunderbirds, these are super bad ass kung fu fighting, flying through the air puppets with cool special effects. May I present Exhibit A, a sample from the television show (no idea what in the hell it is called):
Charlene saw that I very much liked this show (and hey what's NOT to like about it?) so she mentioned that they have free live puppet shows outside of Taipei city in Taipei County. Of course I was very happy to go so we finally got to go today. In Taipei County, there is more of an aboriginal and native Taiwanese influence. These puppet shows on television and this live presentation are in Taiwanese, not Chinese.
We showed up about 10 minutes before the show and it was a pretty impressive stage as you can see.
I happily anticipated the performance and was not disappointed.
There wasn't super high tech special effects, but there was smoke, dragons, flying swords, horses, and some other cool stuff. There was even a live band behind stage playing traditional instruments.
Here is a short video from the show:
The show was longer than I expected, about an hour, but it was well done and really brought a feeling of what if must have been like thousands of years ago watching these exact same shows. This was their television and movie theater, it really was amazing to see this show live.
After the show, we left and went shopping a little on the streets. I found some great sweat pants (they even have pockets) and Charlene got some jeans. Then we ran into the infamous CHOU DOU FU "smelly tou-fu". I believe this is a Taiwanese specialty dish. It is "delicious" tou-fu, but smells like something you wouldn't believe.
Remember gym class freshmen year in high school? You put your smelly socks in the locker, then at the end of the year you have to clean out the locker and find the smelly socks you forgot about? Well this is what "smelly tou-fu" smells like. I don't care what it tastes like, I almost threw up in my mouth when I stuck my face in the bag, and took a deep wiff to see what the big deal is with this stuff. After that, it is safe to say that I won't be tasting this stuff anytime soon.
As you can see Charlene was very excited and happy about getting and eating it.
Well at least I saw the really cool puppet show and got some sweat pants that I like.
Smelly tofu?
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