Tracy’s Travel Adventure (Part ????) – Dongshi, Taiwan and the Dragon Boat Festival Weekend!

Read time: 7 minutes

Hello Readers,

Going to take a step back from catching up on the past travel adventure in Europe and come to the present where I am in Taiwan! During the past weekend I was on the Taiwan tourist adventure of a lifetime. Normally I don’t do the touristy bit and typically live a very chill, local lifestyle, but when you’re at ULA and there’s a Dragon Boat Festival, Teacher Tung ensures you never have a dull moment.

Background:

ULA stands for Unlimited Lights Chinese Culture Academy. I happened across them on Workaway back in April and had so much fun in the 6 days I was with them that I decided to come back in order to help them make a recipe book (stay tuned…recipes will eventually be here once I get the website portion figured out…).

What can I say about ULA? On paper, they’re a non-profit academy founded by Teacher Tang and Teacher Lin where people can learn about Chinese Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism. In person though, they’re an organization of incredibly kind-hearted individuals who took me like family and wanted me to experience Taiwanese culture and lifestyle. While I thought I’d just be going to ULA to write a cookbook, turns out I was also invited to celebrate the Dragon Boat Festival with them on their farm.

…I had no idea of the adventures to come.

The Weekend Begins!

We arrived on the farm shortly after a wonderful vegetarian lunch. ULA purchased a farm several years back in order to grow organic vegetables for the community and provide learning oppourtunities for students. I’d eaten the vegetables back at ULA so it was fascinating to see it up close.

That night was nice and quiet, but I was warned that the next days would be busy and to get some early rest. They were not kidding! According to Venerable Myogen (the monk in our group), it’s quite common for Taiwanese to ensure there are many activities when hosting visitors. Taiwanese people are incredibly hospitable and so it was lovely for us Workawayers to experience their culture up close!

Lunch at 春風素食 (lolol…no English name)

For lunch, our Taiwanese māma (Mrs. Liu) took us to one of her favourite restaurants for noodles and stinky tofu (chòudòufu). I must say that it was my first time eating real chòudòufu. I’d had it before in Vancouver and didn’t think it tasted much different from regular tofu, but let me tell you that, with the real stuff…you can actually TASTE the funk. Probably something I could get used to eating with time, but not something I’d go out of my way to eat. The noodles on the other hand…WOW! And for only 20-40TWD ($1-2 CAD) a bowl! How it’s possible, I have no idea.

Dumpling Wrapping Party:

During the afternoon, other ULA students arrived and we had a dumpling wrapping event. I wish I had the recipe for these, but alas, the filling was already made by the time we arrived back from lunch. I think what made the dumplings so delicious was that the wrappers were made of fresh dough and some of the ingredients for the filling came from the farm.

The History of The Dragon Boat Festival and Rice Dumplings:

Prior to this weekend, I thought the Dragon Boat Festival was simply a race of people in long, skinny boats. Turns out it’s a national holiday in Taiwan to commemorate a well-loved poet and minister who took his own life when he was exiled. The local people tried to save him on their boats and, when couldn’t, dropped balls of sticky rice in the river so the fish would eat the rice instead of his body. This is where joong (sticky rice dumpling wrapped in banana leaves) comes from! For anyone wanting to make these, let me just say that it’s definitely more challenging than it looks. I love myself a DIY adventure, but this is up there with the arduous nature of making soup dumplings. All the fillings must be seasoned and precooked plus the banana leaves must be washed and dried beforehand. If I ever attempt this in the future, I’m going to make a party out of it like they did (and make 100 at a time…).

With all that rice and delicious food in us, of course the next step was to work it all off with a beautiful bike ride around Dongshi. Apparently Taiwan is quite famous in the biking community for being a bike friendly country. After doing a Workaway with ULA, Joni (one of us volunteers) is going to cycle around the country.

“It’s only 900km!” ~Joni, Workaway volunteer

The biking wasn’t too long (not going to lie though, I was pretty tired) so after I went down for a nap. I needed to conserve some energy as we were going to have a special hot pot dinner and talent show. Luckily we had a tiny bit of downtime to practice something before dinner.

The Rest of the Weekend:

The next day began with an early morning of ULA volunteers and us Workawayers sorting and preparing vegetables to be brought to the city. It’s really fascinating (and incredibly humbling) to experience the backend amount of work that goes into providing the fresh vegetables we purchase at the supermarket. There’s a lot of labour that goes into prepping veggies to the beauty we’re used to seeing – harvesting, sorting, trimming, bunching and bagging. Not to mention the transportation.

Thank you farmers everywhere!

From that, we had a delicious breakfast packed full of delicious nutritious farm vegetables then went to the Dongshi Forest Garden for a walk in nature.

Summary:

That was pretty much the end of our weekend in terms of activities. It was Monday afternoon by this point and people had to go back to work the next day so our group slowly dwindled down from over 25 to a smaller group of around 8. I was headed back to ULA the following morning to work on the cookbook while the others stayed behind toll on the farm.

(…We won’t be separate for long though as us Workawayers decided to do an international lunch for those at ULA on Sunday. Menu items to come: Italian lasagna, green banana satay, quiche poireaux/tomato, mousse au chocolat, käsespätzle, Vietnamese fried rice… …What can I say? More foodie times to be had! )

Next release will be on June 20th and heading back to the past (September 2023) to explore the adventures had in Bosnia and Herzegovenia so stay tuned!

~Tracy