I have been wanting to eat zong zi or  [粽子] every since I heard that Taiwan is in the midst of celebrating 端午節 or [The Dragon Boat Festival].

I absolutely love zong zi.

But I’ve recently been a little too nervous to walk up to one of the many street vendors selling the zong zi. I’m not entirely sure why.

So, after talking online with one of my Taiwanese friends and hearing some encouraging words from her, I was determined to brave the unknown and come home with some hot zong zi to stuff my face with.

When — all of a sudden I got a phone call.

Now when people call me in Taiwan I am simultaneously scared and excited. Excited because I get to say “喂?” or wei in an authentic situation, but scared because my end of the conversation usually goes down hill from there. Although I can usually understand — somehow, and yes I am still in shock over this — what people are telling me, I still however miss some details or rather grammatical nuances and my replies tend to be me stumbling over my words as I am reduced to blabbering nonsense as I finally settle on saying [謝謝你啊~] thank you~ a lot.

Mr. Tseng of Lufeng Technology Company’s younger brother delivered the missed call on my phone. I called him back. Got the busy line. Then picked up again a few seconds later.

“Wei?” I said.

”吳同學你好“ [Hello Miss Wu] he said and then proceed to say somethings in Chinese I sorta understood. One was something about the festival, me meeting him and his wife for dinner later this evening, and finally — that he had brought me some zongzi as a gift and if I could come downstairs to pick it up from him when he got to the hotel.

Of course — overwhelmed by kindness — you would have said thank you a lot too.

I went downstairs, accepted the zong zi and other gifts. sniffle. My heart is still warmed just like the pavement from the bright rays of the Taiwanese sun. Both a meat and vegetarian option…

…so yummy!

Fresh fruit — mango (no mango I’ve seen in America is ever this red!) and my favorite type of grapes…

…as well as a drink Mr. Tseng’s younger brother called a specialty of Yilan. Fresh Milk with Brown Sugar syrup and I think Brown Sugar tapioca balls [黑糖粉圓鮮奶]..

I love brown sugar milk tea and brown sugar lattes…

so this was amazing!!!

It looks like you can get this milk here:

I’m a bit too much in a food coma to do the translation for you.

But not any less thankful!

❤