come see me in taipei! eat drink march chat, part 1

We’re sitting around my room eating the enormous guavas Emily brought back from the mountain. The food that her tea lady loaded her with for the trip home more than doubled the luggage she’d taken there—home grown guavas, bananas, persimmons, a pomelo as big as my head, more tea in gifts than Emily actually bought, plus “sweet potato cookies,” “mushroom brittle crackers,” and something crispy made with bamboo shoots, plus some preserved plums, for your friend Anya, tell her to come visit us. The last couple of days have been what I think of as Very Taipei: a continual procession of new environments with minimal personnel overlap and high sensory input; not very much sleep; always a little too much delicious food that you are powerless to resist; and, with Emily here, the new added feature of tea.

There is not much to tell about Saturday morning’s dim sum (we did not have phoenix claws, aka chicken feet) that is not expressed by this picture, I think: