Beipu - Hakka Culture

Delicious 湯包 in Zhubei (竹北). Supposedly this restaurant has been around since the 1950's! Can't believe that a small breakfast store has survived for this long! :)

Mai Ke Tian Yuan - 麥客田園. It's like a small village place where they let you experience plenty of Hakka culture. I went with this big ass group of about 70 people. It was really exciting because everyone was loud, happy and friendly! 很熱鬧! :)

Making Ang Gu Gui (昂骨櫃). HAHA. I have no idea if that Chinese is even correct. This is how you make it! You got oil so it won't stick, and then you've got your Cake Presser or whatever you call that, so you can get the shape.

It's made out of sticky rice (the pink stuff) and inside you can fill it with green bean. 

Tada!

Leicha! 擂茶! Grinding tea leaves, nuts and sesame together. Fun fun fun! The little girl in the background is also super 可愛! The stick is made from the wood of a Guava (巴拉) tree. 

The ending product! You have to grind until the nuts and sesame produce some oil. You can then smell the fragrance of it all. Then you pour boiling water into it, mix it all up, and drink it all up! :) So good and healthy too! But tiring work of grinding. 

A grinding machine used in the olden times. Used to grind soybeans, or rice and water together.  As you can see, I'm a natural at it.

Going for a cow ride! 坐牛車! 

This is like an oven used long time ago. But now, it's been changed to be more convenient for modern use. They cooked sweet potatoes, corn, and chicken! I think it's something called... Kong Yao (恐遙). Not sure how the Chinese is supposed to be written. 

I guess this was our appetizer before the meal. Ban Tiao - 粄條! Which is rice flat noodle! A Hakka specialty. And the drinks were some kind of tea and 仙草! 

Yummm, time to eat! Corn is on top and the sweet potatoes and chicken are on the bottom.

:9 Om nom nom!

I lurrve me some sweet potatoes! The chicken was so good! Meat was super tender and has like the best garlic flavor soaked into it!

Another part of the extravagant meal. A whole chicken! This was better than the other chicken leg! OM NOM NOM! You take pieces of the meat and dip it into some pepper. I think I'm drooling right now... n_n

Piggy!

Time to pound some mochi! This was super hard work! We have to make this sticky rice look like pudding....and it's sticky. SUPER STICKY!

Pounding away. Good thing we had a few kids in our group. They did all the work for us! Haha :)

Now, this consistency is about right when you can pull it like that without breaking!

This is Mochi! Seems like it took foreverrrr to get it to look like this! 

Dippin' it in some peanut powder! It was so chewy! 好QQ! :]

Me and some water wheel thingy.

Random pictures.. haha

Rice balls! 柔湯圓! This is what we eat on 元宵節!

They kept feeding us all throughout the day that I was soo full I didn't even eat dinner that night! This cake was sooo good also! Man, why is everything so good in Taiwan!

So, just to let yall know how small Taiwan really is... I went to this place because one of the students at Ta Hwa invited me. So I went, and my mom and some family were also in Beipu that day. I told my mom to come check this place out because it was so cool! She came and started talking to this one person, like the organizer of the group and found out they used to be neighbors when they lived in their old houses like 40 years ago! Haha, and also found out that he is a elementary school classmate of my god-Uncle, my mom's god-brother. What a coincidence, right? Haha, miracles really do exist. He told us that he's been trying to find him for so long now! Awww, good way to end the day! :)

Stay tuned for more~