tea eggs

Taiwan has a presence in St. Kitts that I still don't fully understand.  I think the story goes that Taiwan was one of the first countries to recognize and establish a diplomatic relationship with the then newly independent St. Kitts in 1983 -  but I don't know how it became to be what seems like a very influential relationship. Every year, St. Kitts sends a handful of its brightest high school graduates to Taiwan to go to college, and Taiwan helps with tourism and green energy here too, but exactly how and in what capacities it does those things, I don't know.  No one I ask has any idea what the deal is, and a google search yields frustratingly little.  Taiwan's most visible influence here is in their "agricultural technical missions" which are all over the place, marked with a sign that bears both countries' flags. Plagiarizing from the internet: these missions aim to train farmers, improve agricultural cultivation techniques, and teach agro-processing.  The products from these missions that make it to the grocery store are mostly jams and jellies made from local fruits; they make yogurt, there, too.

some of the only locally produced items in St. Kitts

The thing I really don't understand is what St. Kitts could possibly give to Taiwan to make this relationship worth it for them - but I'm glad for it, because those technical missions are the only agriculture here (everything else is imported: fruits and vegetables are from at closest Dominica, but I've eaten more produce from Canada here than I probably have in my whole life). 

Now this is kind of sad, but thinking about Taiwan made me really...hungry. I couldn't help but think of my memories of Taiwan from a trip to visit my friend Helen there last April, and most of what we did was eat. We ate all day long for seven days - steamed buns filled with things, fried dumplings filled with things, rice balls - yes, filled with things! Exotic-to-me fruits and spicy vegetable dishes,  meat on sticks, fruit on sticks, quail eggs on sticks - all with sauces.  It was glorious.

Helen's favorite restaurant in Xanxia

 I became obsessed with trying to recreate any of those delicious foods, but cooking real Chinese food is daunting.  I have no idea how they do that stuff, what oils they use, at what point oyster sauce enters the equation, if something is fermented, I don't know.  Then I remembered tea eggs! I could definitely make those - they're just hard boiled eggs, steeped in black tea, soy sauce, and spices. You crack the shell once they're cooked so that the soy sauce mixture can seep in and flavor the egg, and the cracked shell produces a beautiful marbled effect, like tie-dye. They were mostly in the convenience stores in Taiwan - every 7-11 had a big burbling cauldron-looking crock pot of them on the counter.  So the other day,  Leah and I made tea eggs, and they were great, tasted just like the ones in Taiwan.  And then, lacking a bamboo steamer, I made a make-shift one by poking holes in an aluminum pie tin and setting it just so in a pot of boiling water, and we had some buns (bao),  too.   It's going to be weird when I have a job again and don't have time for wondering about the diplomatic relationships between nations and making elaborate meals, huh?