It's FRUIT, Right? 吃點水果

A mystery has been solved! There is an anatomical difference between the Taiwanese and everyone else on the planet! NOW, we understand. We need to evolve accordingly. This is a really good thing.

Let us explain:

We celebrated Ping's birthday with her brother Terence and her parents at a Japanese restaurant in Zhuwei 竹圍 by their building. The food was excellent and plentiful! We were pretty stuffed, but we were all in such good spirits, we decided to go enjoy the afternoon hanging out at Mama's favorite little coffee place just up the block. On the way there, Baba stopped at a fruit stand at the open air market and bought some fresh lychee 荔枝.

This is not your ordinary lychee! This is FRESH, juicy, succulent, flavorful, in-season, locally grown, Taiwanese, still-attached-to-the-branch-on-which-it-grew lychee. The stuff we used to buy in a can back in the U.S. does not hold the proverbial CANDLE to this wonderful delight! Did we mention it's yummy? We'd post pictures but we ate it all.

But back to our story. Remember, we've just eaten tempura, individual sushi, sushi rolls, greens, miso soup and salmon, so we're well fed already. When we sat down at the little table outside the coffee place, Mama opened the bag of lychee and indicated to Mark that he should have some. One of the things you'll notice in Taiwan is that everyone serves everyone else first; it's just normal behavior.

Since he was honestly stuffed, Mark politely patted his stomach and said: "Chi pau le" 吃飽了(I've eaten enough).

Bewildered, Mama looked at him and said, "Shui guo," 水果(fruit) and pointed at the lychee again. It took Mark a second to realize that she had not misunderstood him at all.

She knew he was full, but her response was, essentially: "Well, yeah, but it's fruit, right? So it doesn't count."

When Mark related the story to the others, Terence revealed that Mama has a separate stomach just for fruit, and another one for chocolate, so she knew that only my "main meal stomach" was full! That's why she never gains any weight, apparently!

Ping explained later that Taiwanese really consider fruit to be totally separate from the meal, and there's always room for fruit. When the fruit comes out, everyone has a little. It just goes to that other stomach, so...no problem. We're hoping to develop ours more fully so we're not overstuffed so often. Wish us luck!