Noodle-making, Stamp-making, and Traditional Arts Park in Yilan

 June 5, 2024

Hello, William and Alena here. Today was another very eventful day. We first arrived at Fuhsing School at 8:00AM and took a charter bus through the mountains to attend a traditional noodle-making class. We first learned the three core steps of traditional noodle-making: Throw, Pull, and Rest. We threw the noodles in a wave-like form in order to create elasticity, and then stretched the noodles into well-proportioned lengths. After doing a practice run with one strand of noodle each, we had some time to have fun by playing jump rope with the noodle strand. Some of us even double-Dutched! We then got into pairs to create the noodles, repeating the throw, pull, and rest motions with a bunch of noodles this time. After taking more photos with the noodles that we created, we were able to have a taste of the delicious noodles. All of the staff members were very kind and enthusiastic as they encouraged us to play and take creative pictures. 

Once we packed our noodles to take home, we took a scenic drive to Yilan, a town about an hour outside of Taipei. In Yilan, we went to the Yilan Park of Traditional Arts. The park was beautifully decorated with colorful lanterns on every street and in every alleyway, and the buildings themselves were very charming. There were many shops and snack stalls and restaurants that you could peek into. Most of the stores sold artisanal specialties ranging from tea to black jade to hand-carved wood. First, we went to make name seals/stamps at the woodshop. We sanded and carved the seal to our liking before giving it to the master to engrave our names. It was certainly an onerous process, but each of us walked out with our own, individual seals. After we made our stamps, we had yet another delicious meal at one of the restaurants in the park.

Some of us ate stewed pork, others ate their special pork chop bento, and one of us (William) ate seafood ramen! All of it was fei chang hao chi! After lunch, we got to walk through the park’s nationally built temple! Very cool! In front of the temple, we watched traditional performances with performers in vibrant costumes dressed as dragons and demons (I think) and a bunch of other things that I can’t really explain. They paraded down from the temple to the amphitheater where the performers displayed many unique and impressive talents: drumming, acrobatics, extreme hula hooping, dancing. Even though we couldn’t understand some of the emcee’s narration, we were entranced and enthralled by the energy of the performers and the audience. After we finished watching the performance, we went to eat a Taiwanese specialty dessert: ice cream (it was more like a shave ice slushy thing here) wrapped in a crepe with peanuts and cilantro (but there was no cilantro; Alena was very sad). On par with everything else we’ve eaten here so far, it was really good. Once we finished our sweet treat, we got some free time to walk around. Some of us went shopping, purchasing bracelets and soap to bring home to our families in America, whereas some of us just bought more snacks, from lollipops to tanghulu to fruit jelly to sausages.  As we walked back to our charter bus, each of us received our stamps that we created earlier at the DIY shop. Each and every stamp is unique from each other and all of us were very excited to receive them. At this point, the rain was pouring heavily, and we were glad to start heading back to see our host students. Everyone has more plans for the night, and we are all looking forward to tomorrow.

Peace!

William and Alena