All the World's a Stage

As promised, I have finally toured ORTV, (see "Keelung Hills, That's Where I Want to Be"). The company was founded by Doris Broughman, a truly delightful lady whose life story is incredible. I have only heard bits and pieces of it thus far, but I hope that I get the opportunity to talk to her at length later during my trip. She started ORTV in 1962 as a venue for native Chinese speakers to learn English. Today, Studio Classroom, the official name of her company, prints three different magazines and runs a radio show and a television program that airs in both Taiwan and China. One of the magazines, called Let's Talk in English, was recommended by the Taiwanese government as the best tool for teaching English, and can be found in nearly every junior high school in the country.
The atmosphere at ORTV was laid back and friendly, not things that most people generally ascribe to places of business. We happened to tour on an interesting day, because there was a company-wide cleaning competition later that day. One of the employees explained that they do this every year as a way to keep the office building clean. The judges go around with white gloves and the winning department gets some undisclosed, really-cool, prize. I thought that this was a clever way to do spring cleaning, because everywhere we went in the building, employees were madly cleaning every surface. It was an amusing sight.
On our tour, my cousin, my uncle, and I got to see the art department and editing department for the magazines, the music department and the recording studios for the radio program, and the television studio for their T.V. shows.

The art department

outside of the editing rooms

Recording studio for the English teachers

Recording studio for the music on their radio program

sound board for the recording studio

outside of the TV station

outside of Studio Classroom (where the magazines are made)

Inside of the TV station 

a prop used in the TV program

One of the sets for one of their TV shows

The virtual reality set

Lights...

 

Camera...

Action!

Past magazine covers

(From left: my uncle, me, one of the magazine editors, Doris, and my cousin)

Doris invited us to come back and visit again, she also said that she would put me to work. That sounds awesome to me, I plan to return next week and find out more about this fascinating lady.

Don't touch that dial!

For lunch that day we met with another family, who treated us to lunch at a Hong Kong style restaurant. This kind of restaurant has a huge round table with a lazy susan in the middle. First you are served tea in tiny tea cups, and then you are served tons of different dishes. The idea is that everyone can sample a little bit of everything, and at the end of the meal, everyone is full. I was really excited about this lunch, because when I was little, I saw a table like this on Sesame Street. It was a cool moment. It was like visiting a world famous location, but with better food.

The tea

These are little sesame seed cakes that are stuffed with sweet red bean paste

This is fried shrimp with a sweet and spicy red sauce

noodles with chicken, onions, and bean sprouts

soup-filled pork dumplings

chicken

a kind of cake

pumpkin stuffed bouzi

By the way, Bouzi is a kind of large, thick dumpling. It is my new favorite food. Unfortunately, no one I've asked knows how it is made, and I doubt that I can find this at one of the flash frozen Chinese food places at home.  If any one of you knows the recipe, and wouldn't mind sharing, you will forever be in my debt.

shrimp wrapped in cabbage

Fried chicken feet

This is another dish that should go on the "hard to eat" list. It is not that it is hard to eat with chop sticks, per say, it is just hard to eat. It is an irregular shape so it is hard to pick up, and it is difficult to find a place to bite into it that will not render you with a mouthful of chicken bone. Once you do find such a place, there is very little meat, and you really just end up taking a bite of batter and a small amount of skin. Because of this, I can't give you much of a revue on the taste.

Fried rice with pineapple in it

a kind of bouzi with "black sand" in it

Contrary to its name, these are not actually stuffed with sand. Black sand is a filling made with with a mixture of crushed peanuts, crushed black sesame seeds, and sugar. It is what was inside of the Tang Yuan that I had and posted about in "Hello, from Beitou." I have also had it on top of a pastry while I was here. It is, as Rachel Ray would say, "delish."

 This is what the table looked like. Every time the server brought out another dish, there was a mad scramble to move dishes around so that the dish could fit on the table. It was great.

That's all for today folks, but tune in next week for the next installment of Adventure is Out There!