Day 22 - Visiting The Soy Sauce City Of Yanping, And Walking To Huwei, The Long Walk South In Taiwan
Day 22 - Visiting The Soy Sauce City Of Yanping, And Walking To Huwei, The Long Walk South In Taiwan
Between the city of Beidou and Huwei, just south of the river that divides Yunlin County and Changhua County, there is an old town called Yanping.
Yanping Old Street is located in Xiluo Township.
Xiluo was once a bustling trading center in the earliest period of Taiwan, due to its good geographic location.
This small town was the center of soy sauce production, made from black soybeans, rich in flavor and fragrance.
The buildings along Yanping Street were built in Baroque architectural style during the Japanese occupation era.
In 1935, a huge earthquake destroyed many of the buildings in town, and the government decided to use a variety of different elements from ancient Chinese art to remodel the buildings.
The combination of old-time design and the contemporary artistic style used in the 1930s resulted in a charming restoration of the shops on the street, some featuring Japanese wood elements.
We strolled along the street, looking at the shops and architecture. There were no other tourists around, but many of the shops were open.
We wanted to buy a small bottle of soy sauce, just to taste this local specialty.
Soy sauce has been produced here in Yunlin Xiluo since the 1700’s.
Ancient Chinese records show that soy sauce was mentioned as early as 3000 years ago.
The brewing technique of soy sauce was only introduced in Taiwan in the 17th century.
The main ingredient used for brewing back then were black soy beans, which created a product called ”Black Soybean Oil”.
While Taiwan was under Japanese occupation from 1895, a new brewing method using machinery was introduced, and the ingredients were changed from black soybeans to yellow soybeans.
Nowadays, more than 90 percent of soy sauce made around the world is produced from yellow soybeans.
The most important part of the entire production process is to add yeast to create fermentation, and to keep a stable temperature of between 25 to 30 degrees Celsius.
When temperatures are high in the summer months, the clay vats (known as earthen jars) of soy sauce need to be cooled down by fans.
In the winter, insulated covers are put on to keep the vats warm.
After six months of fermentation, the soy sauce is finally ready.
Nowadays, chemical processing is used to shorten the time of fermentation to just one week, instead of waiting for the natural process of fermentation to occur over six months.
But these kinds of soy sauces lack the fragrance that results from the traditional method.
The most interesting thing is that you can brew your own soy sauce! Even Taiwanese presidents came here to learn how to make their own soy sauce.
Sadly we didn’t have enough time to learn how to do it ourselves, but we still wanted to buy a healthy, natural soy sauce.
The smallest bottle of Yanping organic soy sauce made from black soybeans, cost us only $1.50USD.
I wished we could have gotten a bigger gift set to take home, but our shoulders are hurting from just carrying the essentials we need for the pilgrimage.
In the street, we saw a wood turner turning wood into beautiful bowls.
We stopped to admire his work and I bought a wooden hairpin and a small five fingered tool, used to massage achy muscles and apply pressure to meridian points in the body.
The wood turner recommended that we try the local Mochi.
A few shops in town sold mochi, made from pounded, sweetened short grain rice and filled with a variety of different ingredients.
We found it delicious.
The walk south was made difficult by the heat and the sun.
After we left the center of town, we walked by a big wholesale vegetable market full of trucks, food vendors and scooters.
It was one of the biggest vegetable markets I have ever seen.
The rest of the walk was through quiet farmland.
We passed by a rural museum called “The Immortal story house”.
It was a detour from our walk south but we thought it might be worth it.
The museum has a collection of religious paintings that the owner has collected.
The paintings depicted the many Buddhist and Taoist deities.
Alas, nothing was in English.
They also had a cafe and a vegetarian restaurant, but we had just eaten the mochi and were not hungry for lunch.
We kept walking.
I was wondering why we were not adjusting better to walking in the heat.
Why were we finding it so fatiguing, even though we have been walking for three weeks now in the intense heat?
We had no convenience stores to rest in, only some small rural temples where we took off our backpacks and had a drink.
Without convenience stores, we also had no way to get more water to drink.
I wasn’t too worried about it because we’ve learned how to drink very little when we have to, but in the intense sun and heat we were sweating so much, that I started to ration our water.
We passed by no houses, only huge fields or greenhouses with nobody working there.
Finally we arrived at the outskirts of town.
We stopped at a tiny park because it had clean marble benches in the shade.
I offered Jules a banana that we were carrying with us.
He said that he wasn’t hungry but he was very thirsty.
I encouraged him to finish the water left in our last bottle, telling him that we were less than an hour from our hotel and that we would probably pass by a store where we could buy water.
Suddenly, a good looking man stopped his truck near us.
He opened his cooler and gave us two large bottles of cold water, wishing us good luck on our walk.
For me, it felt like a miracle sent from Heaven.
We arrived at our hotel in Huwei, and I was happy to see it was a beautiful hotel and a beautiful room.
We showered and changed our clothes and went over to the local Starbucks, which was located across the street from the Hand Puppet museum.
I wanted to check out the opening time of the museum, because Google Maps was showing that it was closed today.
The Museum was closed, even though it was hosting the annual glove puppet international festival for two weeks.
The performances were mostly on the weekends and we were here midweek.
We could visit the museum tomorrow morning, before we walked out of town.
We spent the afternoon at the cafe and went to eat dinner at a vegan eatery, located in a market.
The market was already closed, but the restaurant was open and busy with people eating in or doing takeout.
They are famous for their handmade noodles.
We chose two kinds of noodle dishes, sesame noodles for Jules and a mushroom noodle soup for me.
We also ate their delicious cabbage rolls wrapped in tofu skin and fried.
The meat substitutes made in Taiwan are so delicious and varied, and they taste so much better than meat.
The food was excellent and we were looking forward to seeing the puppet museum tomorrow morning, as Huwei is considered to be one of the most important areas for glove puppetry in Taiwan.
With love,
Tali
Today’s Stats:
Steps - 24,608
Daily Distance - 16 km.
Total Distance To Date - 340 km
