Bamboo★Shooter

I went with my uncle and a group of his coworkers in a recreational trip to hunt for bamboo shoots in Neiwan (內灣).

By that, of course I really mean ninja training.

First of all, the trip over there was fairly uneventful, with the exception of this huge rest area called the Guansi Service Area (關西服務區). It’s seriously huge: multiple stores, several coffee/tea stands, a museum, and a park.

Guansi Service Area

Besides that, after stopping by the service area and driving up the mountains a bit, we hit the meeting spot, which looked kinda like a rally or something with all the cars in the middle of nowhere.

Bamboo Hunter Rally

So we all gathered our courage and set off into the mountains, infested with wild boars, nasty bugs, and… bamboo, in search of bamboo shoots.

Setting off into the mountains.

Hunting for bamboo shoots is actually pretty easy, just look around and find a bamboo shoot growing out of the ground…

Soon-to-be-taken-bamboo-shoot

…then either pull it out of the ground or kick it loose, depending on how tall the shoot is.

Taken bamboo shoot.

Problem is, there were a bunch of us competing against each other and against pro bamboo shoot hunters. So, all the easy places already had the shoots taken.

Here’s the ninja training part. My group of 4 people decided to go off the beaten path into the steeper section of the mountain and look for shoots in this bamboo grove.

Bamboo Grove

Lots of bamboo. All of the bamboo makes it harder to find shoots, hiding a tree in the forest and all.

Did I mention it was steep?

It's steep.

It was pretty damn steep, all of us had to pull ourselves up with bamboo. Problem is, sometimes the bamboo we held onto was dead and that resulted in a nice slide downhill… at least it would have for non-ninjas.

Counter-intuitively, it was much harder coming back downhill. It’s all too easy to lose your footing and slip and fall. Trick is to jump from bamboo to bamboo but being careful not to catch a dead one.

After some time, we eventually slid back down the side of the mountain. All of us got together to eat lunch, including cooking the bamboo shoots we all picked.

Bamboo Hunter Rally pt. 2

Sacrificed Bamboo Shoots

Afterwards, mostly because we could, we went to the nearby Laojie/Old Street (老街) which is a busy, night-market-ish street with lots of shops but even more food stalls.

Laojie

Lots of statues that would raise an eyebrow, trademark-wise.

ETee

Furbo

Questionable statues aside, seriously lots of food. We ate at this one stand that had a Hakka Leicha (擂茶) blended ice drink. It was actually pretty darn good. I really liked the rice krispies-thingies that she put in.

Leicha Frappe

We also had Hakka-style mochi which was covered in ground peanuts.

Hakka-style Mochi

Haha, sorry about the picture, it was so good that we ate most of it before I realized that I should take a picture.

Overall, long day, but there’s something really fulfilling about jumping around the side of a mountain in the middle of a bamboo grove.

Best part? I don’t even like bamboo shoots.