Welcome to Fuzhong

Fuzhong (府中)

    I'm sorry that I've been absent from my blog so long! But I've had numerous requests about a post talking more about where I'm currently living and have finally gotten around to photographing it to give you an idea of my daily life!

I live in New Taipei City in a district called Banqiao, which I have circled below on a map of the New Taipei City districts. I'm about a five minute walk from my nearest MRT (Metro Rapid Transport), which is called Fuzhong. Though not in central Taipei city itself, I'm only a 15 minute ride on the underground to Taipei Main Station, costing me only 20NTD (a little under 50p). If you look on the map of the districts, you can see the Touching district which borders with Banqiao and is where I work. Every morning I can get a bus which drops me off directly outside of my school, so it's pretty convenient!

I live in a small one bedroom apartment which comes equipped with a mini fridge, a small couch, a desk and a chair, a wet room (a common kind of bathroom in Taiwan where the shower isn't contained in its own cubicle) and a double bed. It's not amazing but the location is great and it's comfortable enough!

I live on the 6th floor, but luckily I have an elevator which can take me there. Here is the entrance to my building!

My bedroom! The good news is that in an effort to tidy it and make it look more photogenic, I located my long missing iPod under a pile of receipts! (Taiwan has this strange concept known as the receipt lottery to encourage businesses to give out receipts. Every receipt comes with a lottery number and every two months they announce a new winning number, which gives you the chance to win anywhere from a few hundred to tens of thousands of NTD. As a result, I have an enormous amount of unsorted receipt scattered around my room in piles.)

Another view of my bedroom!

My room faces onto Jieshou Park, which despite being a park is fairly lacking in grass. However, it's pretty cool to look around and adds a nice touch of greenery to the area, especially as I have a nice view of some of the trees from my window.

Here is a temple which is also just outside my house. It's currently under construction and I don't know too much about it, but it's an impressive looking building nonetheless!

Another smaller, more modest temple which is next to my block of apartments. 

Fuzhong itself is home to the National Taiwan University of Arts. As such, it has a fairly large population of students and has a pretty large variety of clothes shops. In between my house and the MRT there's a long side road packed with street food stalls and open walled clothing shops. 

This alley way also contains one of my favourite places in Taipei. A small food cart which sells this flaky Taiwanese pancake called Zhua Bing. I normally get it with egg and chilli sauce and it's one of my favourite Taiwanese foods! I forgot to take a picture of the cart, but here is a picture of the  zhua bing itself. The photo doesn't do it justice, so you'll have to take my word for it!

Not an especially interesting photo, but Fuzhong also has an abundance of wedding shops and it's hard to walk anywhere around my house without seeing one. Here is just one of about twenty examples!

About ten to 15 minutes walk from my house on the other side of the MRT there's another area called Fuzhong road where there are some more temples, shops, street stalls and also a 24/7 Carrefour (which is a surprisingly comforting place to go if feeling homesick!)

A temple on Fuzhong Road. Outside they have a big pot full of incense and people often stop to bow three times when passing.

Some street stalls near Fuzhong road.

Another view of Fuzhong road. As you can see, Taipei begins to light up with bright neon lights as soon as the sun goes down. The architecture of Taipei can be a little dull in the day time, but once these lights are lit, I find the city takes on a whole different character and becomes much more exciting to look at.

Banqiao's local night market is located in Fuzhong and is about ten minutes walk from my house. It's known as Nanya Night market and offers a large selection of street food stalls, restaurants, clothes stores and fair games. One personal favourite of mine is a restaurant you fill a giant bowl with fresh vegetables which are then stir fried with a meat of your choice for NTD120 (included in the price is all you can eat rice and all you can drink tea). There's also some great dumpling stalls, a fruit stand which a huge array of colourful tropical fruits and even a shawarma stand offering a Taiwanese take on the shawarma. There's also a sesame chicken restaurant which the night market is allegedly famous for. (Most night markets are 'famous' for a certain food stand and these can usually be quickly identified by the huge line of people queueing outside of it.) I wasn't in love with it the first time I went, although it was tasty and the smell is becoming increasingly appealing every time I walk by.  There's still plenty of food I need to try at Nanya Night Market, and hopefully I'll dedicate a full post to it at some point!

The food area of Nanya Night Market. See if you can spot the shawarma stand!

One of the many game stalls near the back of the night market.

Nanya night market also has a pretty long alleyway crowded with clothes shops, largely aimed at the student population of Fuzhong offering a pretty varied selection of clothes at equally varied prices ranging from 100NTD to in the high hundreds. 

One of the many open restaurants which border the night market.

Finally, out of the night market and on the way home, I pass this road which leads towards the MRT. I thought I'd show it to give you an example of how the streets really come alive with neon lights at night time. You can also see some of the many scooters which cover any available surface of the streets and sidewalks in Taipei. 

Apart from the Night Market, there's also plenty of restaurants within a reasonable distance of my house where I typically eat dinner. Some personal favourites include Noodle Inn (a Burmese restaurant), an award winning Beef Noodle restaurant and a place called Tiger Dumpling Northern Chinese Delicacy Restaurant (I'm sure the name sounds more better in Chinese) which offers a variety of dumplings, soups and also pancakes filled with red bean or taro paste, which taste amazing. I've also recently discovered a Thai restaurant very near to my place whose Pad Thai will definitely have me back soon enough.

So that's Fuzhong in a snapshot! It may not be the centre of Taipei but it still has a lot going on and is a pretty cool place to live. I will try to keep you more updated on my going ons and hopefully update a little more frequently. Until then!