Itinerary: Children’s theater @ 文山劇場, 景美生煎包, Marukame Udon, Browsing for home electronics
Finally! A day I’ve been looking forward to! I highly recommend everyone to take their kids to a local theater show when they are in Taiwan. My dream is the Ciao Hu stage production one they have yearly in the summer and fall. But those are pricey and sell out quickly.
We got tickets to see 影子牆 at the Wan Shan Theater. I took all 4 kids with me. There were some issues with our tickets so we had to wait till 5 minutes before our show to go in. To pass time, I bribed them with some baked goods from 85 Degrees Cafe, which is across the street, while I relieved the stress of being responsible for other people’s children by having some delicious Grapefruit Honey Tea.
So many interesting and non-traditional bread at bakeries here. They don’t hew to the same-o traditional styles like the ones in the Bay Area, but rather have a mix of Western-inspired rolls plus the more traditional Japanese style with strange flavors like cheese.
It’s a small and intimate theater, only 240 seats. I love the theater because they provide huge seat cushions for kids under 110cm. Sorry no photos allowed so all I can show is the outside.
The show was about an hour long, and the children did get antsy by the end. But overall they were really well behaved and had a super fun time. The story started with a bunch of people slowly walking across the stage, sighing loudly with their heads down, and saying, “好無聊喔 I’m so bored.” I laughed my head off because it’s a refrain I hear often these days from various children in the house.
So the main character, a wall, is bored because he doesn’t see anything. Eventually he learns he can read minds (讀心術) and helps creatures around the neighborhood. Saying 讀心術 comes with funny hand gestures, which the children repeated excitedly to each other after the show.
It’s such a way to learn language they would otherwise not be exposed to just homeschooling in Taiwan with me. I’m definitely going back again.
After the show, we crossed the street to have some of the delicious pan fried buns 水煎包 at 景美水煎包. Highly recommend! We then took the MRT to 中山 station exit 2, to have some handmade udon at B1 floor of Shin Kong Mitsukoshi building 2. It wasn’t as good as the one in my cousins’s neighborhood.
What you do is order a simple udon dish, which just has eggs and pork, or beef. I had the spicy udon. So so good. Then you can add all these side dishes like tempura shrimp, croquettes (my favorite), tempura yam, etc. A medium soup is big enough for the 2 kids or me. Sadly, this time around we had so much snack along the way noone ate much.
After dinner, we went up to the 7th floor next door to look at Taiwanese fridges, washing machines, and bread machines. It’s mostly stuff from Japan and some Korea. This time around I did not see any new inventions that surprised or delighted me, other than the fact that I really like tall slender fridges.
Oh. Roombas cost $1000 here! Wow! We also saw a $10k 84inch TV. Wish I’d taken some pics!
The kids were running around by now so it was time to take the long MRT and Uber ride home. We’ve been Uber’ing home from the train station the last week because it’s generally $20 cheaper than taking the taxi.
Buying Theater Tickets
兩廳院 Arts Tickets seem to be the place to browse all kinds of shows in Taipei. Alternatively, you can go to 7-Eleven’s iBon website to search for what’s playing. There are also always art magazines laying around Travel Info centers and even local kindergartens. I browse for children’s shows on the website.
I particularly like 文山劇場 Wen Shan Theater because the ticket prices are low ($10 USD) and it’s literally 50 steps from Jin Mei 景美 MRT exit. Plus there’s a 85 Degrees Cafe right across the street for some snacks before or after you watch the show! This time around, I even went to the theater and paid $200 for a yearly membership. This way we save 10% on every ticket purchase. That’s a lot when you’re buying 5 tickets!
You can purchase tickets online through Arts Tickets and pay with credit cards. If you have a membership, it’ll prompt you for the membership number. Alternatively, you can buy the tickets at the iBon machine at 7-eleven or Family Mart’s machine. One thing I didn’t realize is that if you buy tickets online, you have to physically go some other place to pick them up. Which to me defeats the purpose of online tickets. So next time I will just buy at iBon and pay the ticket service charge.
