You may wonder why on my blogs I never post many pictures of Tainan City itself. Most of my photos come away from Tainan and there’s a good reason for that, I saw most things 4 years ago!
When I first moved to Tainan in 2015 I did most of the main tourist sites in my first few months, in fact I did a lot outside of Tainan too in that time. Buried deep in my Facebook photos there are albums full of pictures from those opening few months including places like Wufei Temple, Anping Old Fort, Chikhan Tower, the Confucius Temple, I did a lot.
All that said some argue that Tainan’s greatest attraction is its food and until the last couple of years, I either haven’t talked about it or eaten much of it. When it comes to food in Tainan there have always been two obstacles for me, 1) the language and 2) the food itself. Things started to change a little in 2017 when a friend of mine took me to restaurants (partly removing the language obstacle) and introducing me to new dishes which meant there was a few things I could seek out.
Many of Tainan’s restaurants have purely Chinese menus and after my friend left last year, I realised that I had to be able to read some Chinese if I wanted to eat more local food. I started self translating menus as far back as January 2018 and if I find something I like, or a restaurant I like, I use Google Lens to help me fill in the gaps.
You may be wondering, so why today? Well on Thursday I head to the USA and before I go I wanted to show you some of the tourist spots in Tainan and also some of the food. I’m hoping to make a series out of this but let’s see how it goes…
I woke up early after a good night’s sleep for a change, I’d passed out at 10:30pm after many, many nights in a row of falling sleep gone 4am. Refreshed I sat in bed/on the sofa to watch two NBA games instead of the usual sleep in till 2, before doing my washing and other bits of housework. It was now mid-afternoon and hungry, I headed out on my bike for my first little adventure around the city centre…
My first stop was Koxinga Shrine about 10 minutes ride away on Kaishan Road. Koxinga Shrine commemorates Zheng Cheng Gong the pioneer of Taiwan. There’s not a great deal to it, but it’s a pleasant spot inside a small park.
It was a short ride onto Tainan’s Confucius Temple on Nanmen Road another sight that has visited in my first few days in Tainan. Sadly, the temple was under renovation and there was a concert going on in the grounds. It was initially built in 1665 and I remember being impressed back when I first visited in 2015.
Despite being under renovation you could still walk through the very pleasant grounds on what was warm, sunny winter’s afternoon. I only spent five minutes at the temple before making my way 400 metres back down Nanmen Road to the South Gate.
Now, I have a little confession to make… Until 3:50pm this afternoon I hadn’t ‘technically’ been to the South Gate. You see back in 2015 I parked my bike up and walked towards the entrance, but backed thinking there was an admission charge. I knew that it wasn’t much, and so walked away without so much as taking a photo. Of course I later found that to be untrue, so this was my first proper visit to Nanmen or South Gate…
It was another 5 minute visit and the area in and around was very quiet. I hopped back on the bike to my last tourist spot of the day, Wufei Temple on Wufei Street, about 600 metres away.
I didn’t remember much about Wufei Temple and to be quite honest, I’m not surprised. Situated directly opposite Tainan’s baseball stadium this small temple built in 1683 remembers 5 concubines of Zhu Shi-gui, Prince of Nangjing who committed suicide after their master resolved to die for his country. The late afternoon sun meant getting good photos was a challenge…
Clearly running out of time for the day and hungry I made my way to Ding Fu Fa Lard Rice on Dayong Street about 2 kilometres away. I cycled down Wufei Street then up one of Tainan’s main backstreet roads, Guohua Road to the restaurant.
Last weekend I’d been to Ding Fu Fa and really enjoyed my meal. On that occasion I’d had lard rice, fish ball soup and two pork skewers. What I also liked about Ding Fu Fa is that is classed as an English friendly restaurant with an English menu which can be found here . The old school feel to the restaurant, despite being just off the busy Hai-an Road was also appealing. It was a quiet place to enjoy some good food.
I wanted to try a few other items from the menu and this time around picked the Lard Rice with a runny egg, a sausage and braised pork ball with a black tea totaling NT$95.
Once again the food was good but it was time to head to the next restaurant. I’d initially wanted to go up the road to a place on Jhongjheng/You-ai but passed by, instead choosing to head to two familiar restaurants close to Chikhan Tower aka Fort Provintia.
At Du Hsiao Yueh I had a bowl of Dan Zai Mi Fen, Dan Zai Rice Vermicelli. Dan Zai noodles originate in Tainan and contain minced pork, a fish ball and a shrimp on top. You can have them with egg noodles or rice vermicelli and with or without a braised egg (which I don’t like), and whilst a little pricey at NT$60 they are tasty.
A short walk away was my last stop to Chikhan snacks one of several ‘restaurants’ operating out of a small area, there is a long communal table with menus from 3-4 different places. If you can’t read Chinese, it’s working out where to hand the menu!
I ordered something I’d definitely NOT had for a long time, Coffin Bread. A relatively modern dish invented in the 1940s, it’s a piece of thick, hollowed out fried bread with a chowder like filling which seems to vary by restaurant. This one contained squid, vegetables and a little bit of chicken too, not bad for NT$60. It was nice to have it for the first time in a while.
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With other things to do at home (such as writing this post) ticking away, I ate my food and made my way back across the city centre home.
4 tourist spots visited and 3 eateries too. Tainan’s got a lot of short visit tourist sights, with the exceptions of the two museums and two forts. Anping is one large tourist area and you could if you wanted to spend hours walking round Tainan eating, looking at temples. Saturday’s will be my ‘eat local food’ day so I’m sure when I return to Taiwan after my trip I’ll be doing more food related posts.
Tom
Tom's Travels 2020 