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(02/28/13 3:29am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>It’s below freezing on a Friday night. Mehdi Saberi pulls his white food truck, emblazoned with “Gyros” spelled in bright purple LED lights, into an empty spot. With pita bread baking in the back, he peeks his head out of the sliding window of the truck and smiles.Saberi is another street vendor who’s found a profession in utilizing the Bloomington bar scene as an income. Not only was he also an IU student once, he has a Ph.D. in education from IU and was a professor in the Middle East for 18 years.Originally from Persia, Saberi moved to Bloomington in 1978 to attend school. He stayed until 1990, when he began his work teaching education in Turkey and Iran. After retirement, he moved back to Bloomington, where both of his children are now attending college.“I retired from work,” Saberi said. “Now I do this to support family.” Audrey Brinkers, an employee in Sweet Claire’s Gourmet Bakery truck, said like any other restaurant, the food trucks face competition with other late-night food vendors.“Each person has their own little niche,” she said. “The only competition is with parking. That makes a little hostile game.”Saberi said although he owns a city and health permit for his business, there are regulations that make it hard to find a good spot to park.“Because of the structure of the city, it’s very hard,” he said. “You cannot go on University property, and you have to be 50 yards away from any restaurants.” Food trucks also face a huge sales slump during the winter when students aren’t as keen to be outdoors at night.“With the cold weather right now, it’s very hard to sell,” he said. “The kids do not come out.”Despite the winter hardship, food truck vendors will always try to be there after a night of student barhopping.Despite how most of his customer base deals with him in an intoxicated state, Saberi said he enjoys his job.“As far as the people are happy, I’m happy too,” he said.
(07/26/12 12:22am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>It’s hard to stroll the streets of Taiwan without seeing a few skinny dogs digging through the neighborhood dumpster. It’s no secret that this country has long suffered a serious stray dog problem due to the lack of animal shelters.But one family is trying to fix the problem, 800 dogs at a time.Huang Xue and her family have a special love for dogs. They own a plot of land on the outskirts of Pingtung City and have turned it into a home for dogs that have been abused, abandoned or lost. It started small with a few dogs brought home by Xue’s daughter, who couldn’t resist nursing them into better health. It has since escalated into hundreds after more strays were rescued from all over the city.“Sometimes we get visitors who pretend they are interested in adopting, only to find what was probably their own dog at our doorstep the day after they left,” she said.Huang Xue used to make a living running a drug store in the city. She and her family have since abandoned their old jobs to become dedicated to the dogs full-time since 2009. When asked why they have sacrificed so much for the dogs, they explain that it’s not just personal. It’s also religious.They went to the local temple and asked the gods if their mission should be continued. They tossed divination blocks, a traditional Chinese religious ritual for seeking answers from the gods. The blocks answered “yes” all three times they were thrown, thus continuing the dog-saving enterprise.The dogs at the shelters include imported breeds such as Labrador Retrievers, Golden Retrievers and Huskies. Xue explained that this is the result of impulsive buying by the Taiwanese, people who lose interest once the puppies grow.When there were only 200 dogs, the family managed to support them with their own finances. However, as the amount quadrupled, they now must rely on donations from the community. All 800 dogs are sterilized, vaccinated and only caged if threatened by other dogs.Only in recent years has the government been increasing the subsidies in funding public shelters for the stray. Even then, the captured strays are euthanized within a week if not adopted due to the lack of shelter space. According to Hwei Lien, an animal shelter worker in Pingtung City, there was a trend of owning Labradors after the release of Japanese movie “Life of Quill, the Seeing Eye-Dog”. Now, a new trend shows everybody getting little dogs, such as Poodles and Pomeranians, so they abandon the old, larger-sized dogs. “People see pets like they’re a fashion statement,” Lien said. “It’s terrible.” Thanks to the Huang family, these abandoned dogs — who would only starve and suffer terrible skin diseases in the humidity and heat of Taiwan — have found a place to call home. Although running the shelter is strenuous, even with help from her daughter and two sons, Xue truly loves the dogs and does not plan on stopping.“The work is hard. I work from 3 a.m. until 11 p.m. to take care of these dogs,” she said. “But I believe this is what I must do. This is our mission.”— lenmorri@indiana.edu
(06/24/12 11:23pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>With the school year coming to a close, Taiwan has been filled with a festive spirit. Communities are flocking to the closest river to witness the dragon boat race, an international sports event that originated more than 2,000 years ago in China. Two days after the beginning of summer, June 23 was the Lunar Calendar’s fifth day of the fifth month, also known as the “Duanwu Jie” or Double Fifth Festival. Traditionally, the fifth month has been seen as the month of poison and evil spirits due to the summer solstice. The new heat causes diseases to be easily spread, food to be easily spoiled and the amount of pests to increase.In response, the people of East Asia formed rituals collected from centuries of tradition in hopes of protecting themselves and their family.Once the fifth month arrived, mothers would hang Calamus weeds outside their houses and sew scented sachets and fill them with certain herbs for their children. For the entire month, children would hang these sachets around their necks to protect them from the summer diseases.At noon on the fifth day, it is also said that the well water has beneficial powers for health due to the sun being at its strongest point of the year. Those who can access wells continue to trek through the heat to wash their children with the special water.Although the city life has threatened these once-common rituals and most mothers no longer feel the need to protect their children from the evil spirits, certain delicious traditions seem to prevail.Zongzi is a rice dish cooked and served wrapped in bamboo leaves. Meat, eggs, peanuts and other ingredients are wrapped inside, and the long steaming process and bamboo leaves give it a unique taste. The recipe stems from the event of famous poet Qu Yuan killing himself by jumping into a river. His admirers mourned his death and threw the wrapped rice into the water to prevent the fish from devouring his body. Today, the people make the dish annually in honor of his death.All rituals aside, the festival is like the Taiwanese version of Thanksgiving. It is a time for families to reconnect through delicious, homemade food. My neighbor’s son and daughter-in-law returned home from their work in the city just to eat and spend some quality time with their family. They wrapped the rice into the bamboo leaves at their front door and gave it away or sold it. The Double Fifth Festival is just one of the many days of the year when the people of East Asia observe the tradition that has been carried through thousands of years. Although life has modernized, the people are willing to take a break from the city to taste their favorite homemade treat. — lenmorri@indiana.edu
(06/13/12 11:16pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Taiwan is known for its exceptional shopping. — whether it’s at a high-class department store in Taipei 101 or at the Shilin Night Market, where crowds of thousands gather for inexpensive food, fun and fashion after sunset. But the kind of shopping you can’t find anywhere else resides in Hengchun, a small town in the tourism-oriented southern tip of Taiwan, where outdoor day markets seem to have substituted the typical air-conditioned grocery stores.Imagine the Bloomington Community Farmers’ Market condensed into one tiny block.But in Hengchun, there are cuts of freshly butchered meat, massive piles of exotic fruits and locally grown vegetables and even live animals for those who still cook whole meals from scratch. Here, there are delicacies you can’t find in all grocery stores of the city, from pickled bamboo shoot to a peanut taffy candy that was once every kid’s favorite treat in the 1960s. The shops sit on both sides of a narrow road beneath a row of condos. There are no registration requirements for selling goods here, so people bring their trucks, shopping carts or even just buckets of their own crops to sell. They lay them out on any available surface they can find, leaving an even tighter space for the pedestrians to squeeze through amongst the scooters. The display isn’t pretty. Raw pork cutlets sit outside under a seller’s fan, sometimes on a block of ice if you’re lucky. An old woman sells her harvest of fresh whole fish by laying it on the pavement in front of her as she chats with the neighboring sweet potato seller. A man smokes a cigarette as he simultaneously advertises his shop through ahands-free microphone and slices a piece of fish for a customer. The scene is chaotic and definitely unsanitary by our pampered American standards, yet the shoppers here do not complain. They come for the affordability, the homegrown native ingredients and the personal touch you can’t find anywhere else.They definitely would not pass U.S. health regulations, but these markets have existed for decades without any reports of serious health problems. Some joke that this is one of the reasons behind the stomachs of steel the Taiwanese people seem to have. The consumers enjoy their frequent-visitor discounts by befriending the sellers, who are also happily making a living continuing the family business. Though I would recommend tourists be careful of what they eat, at only a few miles away from the beach resorts these places represent the unique closeness among the small traditional Taiwanese communities. You haven’t really seen Taiwan until you meet these friendly old folks at the outdoor market. — lenmorri@indiana.edu
(05/31/12 12:31am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Taiwan is a tiny island. It’s a country located about 500 miles from Hong Kong at a size slightly larger than Hawaii. The length of the island is about the same as a drive from Bloomington to Chicago.Yet the amount of history, tradition and culture in this small area is massive. The island is known for exquisite cuisines and exuberant traditional customs carried throughout history. The people are humble and welcoming, always hospitable to foreign travelers.. The government funds affordable tourism to advertise their culture.I arrived in the city of Kaohsiung after a strenuous 18-hour flight straight from Chicago. Struggling with my rusty Mandarin, I stuttered my way through customs to drag my suitcases through the double doors and became stricken by the humidity, typical of the tropical island. Despite being late at night, the air was still hot and muggy. I greeted my driver, a middle-aged woman at a height where her forehead met my chin.On the ride, my driver briefed me on Taiwan’s history. She shared tales of her childhood when something as simple as an apple was considered a luxury. Her mother had grown, sewed, brewed, harvested and killed everything they consumed because they couldn’t afford them readymade. As a democratic country, the economic growth has exploded. Vacant land has been turned into money-making department stores. What were once abandoned buildings and haunted houses to local children have been converted to “bushiban,” or cram schools. What were once miles of bright green rice crops have turned into gas stations and grocery stores. Now Costco and Starbucks are in the city and girls wear Chanel. The city’s transition to modernity has been impetuous.As we departed the city and reached Pingtung, the skyscrapers disappeared. The view was now of rice fields and farms of pigs and cows caged in rows, asleep under the flickering street lights. Old ladies with straw hats tied to their heads with colorful scarves were in red bean fields, illuminated by their own flashlights, for last-minute harvesting before next day’s morning market. The eyes of stray dogs glowed as they stared at passing traffic. Places grew at different rates, and some places like Pingtung seem content with staying in the past.“Pingtung is to Taipei like a cornfield in Indiana is to Chicago,” the driver said, quite aware of Midwest culture. To get to my place I walked through a dark alleyway where stray cats glared at my presence. We then pulled a blue metal door that rolled up at the top. It was recommended that I brush my teeth with bottled water since the neighborhood still used underground water. I realized just how far away I was from America.During the drive from Kaohsiung to Pingtung, I felt like I’d leapt through time. The houses in Pingtung are unorganized rows of condos with fading paint and rusting metal. The town is said to be wealthy, but the people seem content with the simple life of tradition and conservation. At a size often ignored on world maps, the small island holds one of the world’s biggest business centers and once possessed the world’s tallest building. Despite all this growth, the majority of the country has preserved the old Taiwanese lifestyle. I couldn’t wait to see more of its rich history and how it intertwined with modern life.— lenmorri@indiana.edu