When the bestselling novelist John Connollyvisits Taichung, on a book tour, he has a culinary experience he won't forget in a hurry
LET'S BE CLEAR on something before I start: I'm not entirely sure what kind of rectum I ate at dinner that night. It's the question I've been asked most often since I admitted eating it at a restaurant in Taiwan: "But what animal did it come from?" I don't know. I'm sorry. Very remiss of me not to have cleared that one up.
I suppose the question is understandable, yet I'm not sure how relevant it is. The fact is: it was a rectum. I'm not sure that there are vastly different taste sensations involved depending upon its origin. I have yet to hear anyone say: "Well, you know, a goat rectum is fine, but stay away from a duck's; that'll just make you sick."
The question of origin is quickly followed by a second question: "Why did you feel the need to eat it in the first place?"
Both are very sensible inquiries to which I, unfortunately, don't have good answers.
The thing I ate formed part of a menu item listed only as Assorted Rectums, with a photograph alongside it of what was a perfectly representative sample of the articles in question piled high on a plate.
In fact, the entire menu included a significant number of delicacies that do not tend to trouble western taste buds very frequently, including something called Assorted Honeycombs, internal organs of indeterminate origin that, I can say with some certainty, had never been troubled by even the faintest hint of honey, unless it resulted from the accidental ingestion, and subsequent digestion, of a bee.
But back to the offending food item. Curiously, how I came to eat it says a great deal about the kindness of the Taiwanese, who are, I think, just about the sweetest, most considerate people I have encountered during two decades of travel. Even the immigration officials were smiling when I arrived, and those of us who have dealt with immigration officials in the US, or even the stony-faced guardians of our own borders, will realise what a shock to the system this was.
Here were people in a position of authority who seemed rather pleased that someone might want to visit their country, and who did not react with borderline xenophobia or call out the dogs when someone "a bit foreign-looking" tried to pass through their borders.
A very nice woman filled in the blanks on my incorrectly completed arrival form, stamped my passport and, with a dazzling smile, thanked me for - well, I'm not sure what, but it may just have been for being there to thank.
That experience set the pattern for what was to follow: a week of small kindnesses, most of them from complete strangers, of help proferred quietly and politely, of greetings exchanged with locals who simply considered it impolite not to acknowledge the presence of a visitor.
Even pausing at a street corner to consult a map would eventually result in someone trying to make discreet eye contact, in case I was in need of help but was too shy to ask, for fear of loss of face.
So this was, in a way, how I came to consume the rectum. We were eating at the Tripod King restaurant in Taichung, a city about 250km from the capital, Taipei. If this sounds like a long way to go to eat, then it's worth noting that the journey only took about 45 minutes on the bullet train that serves the west coast of the island, and cost about €12.50.
Tripod King specialises in a highly enjoyable form of Sichuan cooking called yuan yang, or "lovebirds".
An iron pot is placed on a gas flame in the centre of the table. The pot is divided into two halves, one containing a mild, clear broth, the other a spicier alternative.
This is communal eating of the best kind: you choose various raw meats and vegetables, then toss them into one or both of the pots and allow them to cook for as long as you want. You serve yourself rice, then tuck in, over and over and over again.
In general, eating in Taiwan is best done as part of a large group. It's not that restaurants have any difficulty finding a table for one, or even two. Rather, it's that solo diners will find themselves surrounded by people having a much better time than they are, as large groups can graze on a range of dishes while talking, laughing and generally living life to the full, unlike Johnny No-Mates in the corner with his single starter and main course.
Eating out in Taipei and Taichung, the two cities that I visited, is relatively inexpensive, and the quality and variety of food on offer are astonishing: more spicy Sichuan at the Chili House, spicier Hunan at 1010, a dazzling Thai buffet at the Spice Market (both close to Taipei 101, until recently the world's tallest building) and a sumptuous Shanghai banquet cooked by the head chef at Uncle John's, perhaps the most famous such restaurant in the city.
Even the beer brewed on the premises at the Jolly brewery and Thai restaurant was good. Then there was the famous pearl cream tea, a cold drink beloved of locals and made particularly well at the Chun Shai Tung chain of cultural tea houses.
In fact, before the whole unusual food incident the only delicacy I really struggled with was congealed duck's blood, which seemed to be added to rather a lot of dishes and suggested an abundance of dead and drained ducks in Taiwan.
It looked a little like liver but had the consistency of jelly and was a bit rich for my taste, as well as presenting a problem of texture that only arises with something like jellied blood.
But it's an important question: why would you go to a new, sometimes strange country and not at least try some new things?
Because, make no mistake, Taiwan is an alien country in many ways. Other Asian cities, such as Hong Kong, Singapore and even Bangkok, have made significant concessions to western influences, but Taiwan, on first impression, has not. Yes, street names are in both English and Mandarin, as are the stops on the clean and efficient metro system, but most businesses have only Chinese names, and English is not as widely spoken as it is in the capitals of many of its neighbours. The western influence is sufficient for a visitor to be able to skate comfortably across the surface, but Taiwan is Asian to its depths.
Perhaps the most wonderful thing about Taipei, and Taiwan in general, is that it is not part of the standard Southeast Asian tourist trail, and it is entirely possible to spend days wandering among its temples, shops, markets and museums and not see another western face.
Never have I felt so conspicuous and yet so anonymous. With this came a sense of freedom that, in this rapidly shrinking world, is hard to capture. Taiwan, therefore, is arguably a country better suited to travellers than it is to tourists. Tourists go to a foreign destination to be with their own kind. Travellers go to strange places to get away from those who are most like themselves.
And so, between eating and being made to feel welcome by strangers, you can immerse yourself in the flow of the city without feeling that you're part of some larger imposition, just another white face in a sea of white faces seeking the latest packaged experience.
I spent almost an hour at Longshan Temple, a blaze of red and gold, of bronze dragon columns and intricate reliefs, where more than 100 deities are worshipped, watching people come to pray, light incense sticks and leave simple gifts of water, cakes, noodles and fruit. Others tossed zhi jiao, red throwing stones used to communicate with the gods.
A middle-aged woman placed a copy of a young man's identity card before the god of learning, and I (on the grounds that you can't be too careful, and that every little helps) lit some incense before the god of literature. After all, you don't want to go around offending strange gods.
At 4pm the recorded chants were replaced by real chants, as the faithful gathered and the black-robed, mostly female attendants led the worshippers in prayer. It was both peaceful and strangely moving.
This part of the city, Wanhua, is home to a variety of temples, some of which, unlike Longshan, are little more than storefronts. The Dizang Wang temple, where worshippers go to reduce their relatives' time in hell, occupies what looks like a disused garage.
Five minutes away are the even smaller Qingshui and Qingshan temples, and around them, in the warren of little streets, are assorted incense shops, cake-sellers and tea merchants.
When dark falls the area becomes home to the Huaxi night market, where one can buy just about anything easily transportable that one might want, from pets to phones, from dodgy (but undeniably cheap) Asian pornography DVDs to clothing and footwear.
Huaxi is also home to Snake Alley, where snakes are gutted and cooked for the edification of tourists, both domestic and international, although, having seen fish being descaled alive at a Hong Kong market, I had had my fill of casual cruelty.
Then there is the National Palace Museum, which covers 5,000 years of Chinese art, from huge Buddhas to intricate works of calligraphy - a collection generally regarded as being greater in terms of quality than even that of the Forbidden City, in Beijing - due in part to Chiang Kai-shek's decision to ship the imperial art collection across the Taiwan Strait when he left China in 1949.
The Zhongzheng area, farther south, is home to the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, a shrine built to the memory of the architect of modern Taiwan and one of a number of huge examples of Chinese classical architecture in the plaza, albeit all constructed in the 1980s and offering a rather fragrant take on Chiang and his 40-year rule of martial law, known as the White Terror.
Taiwan's relations with China are, of course, distinctly problematic. It is a de facto independent nation, supported by the US, although unrecognised as such by many states (it is not a member of the UN) and regarded as a renegade province by the Chinese.
A gradual, and controversial, process of "desinicisation" is under way, although so far the country has stopped short of declaring independence, as China would consider this an act of war.
Occasionally, apparently to irritate its larger neighbour as well as to represent the Taiwanese view of the relationship between the two countries, maps of the region are printed upside down, so that Taiwan, or the Republic of China, appears on top of, rather than beneath, the Chinese mainland.
And such deliberate confusion of top and bottom brings us, quite conveniently, back to where we started: that eating experience.
"Have you had enough?" one of my hosts asks politely, after I have filled myself from the spicier of the lovebird broths. I make the universal puff-cheeked sign of the happily engorged and assume everybody else in the group is finished, too.
I am wrong. Anxious to ensure that I was not discommoded in any way, they have been waiting until I am done before ordering some of the more, um, exotic meat options on the menu.
And, with that, the plate of rectums appears. They are puckered and greyish, with a hole in the middle, and they smell horrible.
They are tossed into the pot and allowed to stew for a time. The scent of the broth subtly and unpleasantly changes. An air of expectation hangs over the table, although it is now no longer the only kind of air hanging there.
I decide to eat one. It is not a decision taken lightly, but it seems churlish and somewhat cowardly not to try it. (I nurse a deep-seated resentment to-wards my countrymen who head off to Playa del Inglés for two weeks every summer and never stray farther than Rosie O'Grady's Irish bar and restaurant for their gastronomic requirements, as though paella is routinely laced with strychnine.)
My fellow diners are rather surprised when I reach out with my chopsticks and grasp the bull (or possibly a part of the bull) by its horns, and I find that I have an audience as I take an experimental bite. I try not to breathe in, though, as I have been warned that the smell is worse than the taste.
This may well be true. Like kidney, it retains a worrying hint of what might once have passed through it during its previous incarnation. It is chewy, and slightly layered, in the manner of an unsavoury onion.
The thing does taste less unpleasant than it smells, although this isn't saying much, given how nasty it smells to begin with. I manage one mouthful and decide to pass on the rest. The word that springs to mind is "eeeeuuuggghhh", and for the rest of the evening I can taste it in my mouth. In fact, even writing this, I can still taste it.
In culinary terms it's the gift that keeps on giving, even when you want it to stop.
Still, if the worst that can be said about a trip is that one tried a foodstuff that one feels no great urge to try again, then that's a small price to pay for the week I spent in Taipei and its surrounds, and I didn't even get as far as the stunning scenery of the rural east coast. I look upon it as taking one for the team: I ate it so you don't have to.
I plan to return to Taiwan, and you should visit. The kindness you will be shown is increasingly hard to find in the modern world. But as far as my unusual tasting experience goes, you owe me, each and every one of you.
John Connolly's new book, The Reapers, is published on May 15th by Hodder Stoughton, £14.99 in UK. He was in Taiwan promoting the Chinese translation of The Book of Lost Things
Go there
Cathay Pacific (www.cathay pacific.com), Eva (www.evaair.com), British Airways and Singapore Airlines fly direct to Taipei from Heathrow, with return fares from about €1,100 in high season.
Where to stay and eat
Where to stay
The Sherwood Taipei Hotel, Ming Sheng Road, 00-886-2- 27181188, www.sherwood. com.tw/en has rooms starting at about €130 per night, and its staff are helpful beyond compare.
Where to eat
Both the Spice Market and 1010 Hunan are at 301 Fuxing North Road, Taipei.
Uncle John's is at 18 Hengyang Road, Taipei.
The Chili House is on Zhong Xiao East Road, Section 4.
Jolly Brewery & Restaurant, 423 Jinhu Road, Taipei, 00-886-2-26322229, www.jollys.tw.
Tripod King (89 Gangfu North Road, 00-886-2- 27422116) is part of a chain with branches in Taichung and Kaohsiung, although the delectable "lovebirds" dining experience, where you control what goes in, is relatively common in local Sichuan restaurants.
Getting around
The simplest way to get around Taipei is by metro or bus, so get an EasyCard at metro stations, costing 500 Taiwan New Dollars (€10).
It can be topped up as needed.