Kathmandu to Taipei: Taiwan: China Lite

Arrival in Taipei

What a relief to see Ben striding out of the station to the sidewalk where we stood with our bags. His studio is in the block next to the station. It’s a busy spot. The divided road in front of his building is six, maybe eight, lanes wide and the buildings are ten, twenty, thirty stories high. Non-human scale.

(Click on photo to enlarge)

I was touched by the things Ben did to make us welcome – apples, coffee, butter and jam, mugs, dishes, Easy Passes for the transit system. We didn’t know it at the time but the passes are good for everything that moves - subway, buses, taxis, long distance trains and local transit in other cities. A national system.

Ben took us to meet Barbara near the 101 building, until recently, the tallest building in the world. We followed Ben underground and within minutes were stunned and disoriented. The MRT (Metro Rapid Transit?) has long corridors, multiple levels, up and down escalators, extreme signage, shops and fast food everywhere. Everything is connected and we moved seamlessly from underground to aboveground and underground again.

We met Barbara at a ‘hot pot’ restaurant - raw food and bubbling broth to cook it in. A sauce bar where you concoct your dipping sauce, a wine and beer bar where you can free-pour and for dessert, an ice cream bar with dozens of flavours. Ben kept ordering more and more food and we kept eating it. A lowlight was what they called chicken balls – rooster testicles.
The catch in these places is that you can stay only ninety minutes. Order fast, eat at leisure, order again, eat at leisure. We were by far the oldest people in the place. There were tables of six and eight people in their twenties. The place was rocking!

I mentioned that I didn’t have a book to read so we went to Eslite bookstore. What a treasure. I bought Amerikanah by Adechie and went back to the studio full and happy. On the way, Ben got us a loaf of bread for toast in the morning.

Day 2: Lin Family Mansion

Ben picked us up at our new favorite coffee shop, Ikari, right next to his building. Ikari suited us. We didn’t have to go underground and most of the clientele were over fifty. Our first experience of what I came to think of as Taiwanese muzak - old sixties and seventies American and British pop songs done in orchestral arrangements, no synthesizers, no drum machines. So classy.

We went back underground with Ben and came up into a more human scale cityscape. The walk to the Lin Mansion and Garden went through small commercial streets, shops, noodle restaurants and the occasional temple.

The mansion is almost the only old thing in all of Taiwan that we saw, most of it built in the late 1800’s.

We had lunch in a complex of old buildings – a former winery – that has been restored and re-purposed. The Granville Island of Taipei. Very arty. And THE place to have your wedding photos done. Barbara joined us and bequeathed to us her street map and transit map. We used them everyday we were in Taipei.

We saw this odd procession of monks and dogs. We seemed to be the only ones staring. Ben couldn’t shed any light on the possible meaning.

Ben took us to the loveliest restaurant in Taipei IMHO. I felt like I was in a 1930’s spy movie. Elegant and quiet with wonderful food.

Museum Day - On Our Own and with Ben

Ah, the confidence a map can bring … and loaded Easy Cards. A bonus on the MRT is the PA system in multiple languages – Mandarin, Hakka, another Chinese one and English! If you don’t hear the announcements you can follow what’s going on on the scrolling signage above the doors. Idiot proof.

We went to the National Palace Museum, which seemed very far away on the map but only took about 30 minutes to get to by subway and bus. It’s an imposing modern complex set atop a small hill. I managed only the first floor, which consists of about twelve galleries. Ian did the whole thing, three floors!

The signage was multilingual, English included. An interesting thing was that, besides describing the art pieces, the artists and era in which it was created – all the usual museum stuff – the process of how things were collected, the museum’s future plans, its shortcomings were also described. Government transparency and accountability came to mind.

I sat in the busy lobby. It extends the whole width of the building and there was lots of top notch people watching to be done. The museum is a prime destination for people from China who have only recently been allowed by China to come to Taiwan. They were there in droves. They filed through the lobby, busload after busload of poorly dressed, name-tagged, ear-phoned folk following tour guides holding banners aloft.

We met Ben at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum. The exhibit we liked a lot was a Chuang Che retrospective, over 100 abstract oil paintings. There was a series of twelve or sixteen large paintings (8’x4’) of bizarre, distorted male figures. Ben told us they were the artist’s interpretation of a folkloric story about randy monks.

The exhibit we didn’t like was The Night of Sodom – a new media, interactive, dynamic installation. The audience went into a darkened room and stood while lights flashed around us, images and sound were projected and at the end, wood shavings rained down on us. Yawn.

Day Trips from Taipei

The first trip was to Yingge (pronounce ing GUH), a pottery town. We strolled around small streets lined with pottery shops then went to a local lunch place and shared the table with a couple and their grandson.

The protocol for ordering is that you check off what you want on the menu that’s printed (Chinese only) on a tear off pad. Someone collects it from you and delivers the food. That’s it for service. Pick up your own utensils, serviettes and drinks at the dispensers.

The pottery museum exhibit was exquisite.

Our second day trip was a bust because of the weather. Tamshui (pronounced dam SHWAY) is at the mouth of the river at the northwest end of Taiwan, roughly! There’s a boardwalk that would have been lovely if the rain and wind hadn’t been beating us around.

Two facts about Tamshui: It was a big seaport once upon a time but the mouth of the river silted up. George McKay, Presbyterian physician and Canadian missionary settled there in 1870-something and stayed his whole life. There are several McKay hospitals in Taiwan.

Green Island via Taitung

Taitung appeared to have little to offer. We walked around checking out the hotels and then, once settled, looked for a restaurant. Hordes of people were eating at the night market but we weren’t daring enough. Anthony Bourdain would have been happy to sit down to a plate of mystery meat but not me.

A little more wandering and we found a great spot. Very little English spoken and no Chinese from us so it was a surprise meal. While we were eating the server handed me her cell phone. English words on the screen – a translation app. Whatever she said in whatever language, it was lost. We all had a laugh.

We heard live music when we left the little restaurant and followed the sound to a magical sight. October 10, Ten-Ten to the Taiwanese, is the National Day and they were celebrating.

We flew to Green Island because we heard that the boat had a well-earned reputation as the ‘Barf Barge’. Nobody told us that we would wish we were on the barf barge when our tiny aircraft got caught in a crosswind when landing. It was rocking side to side and the pilot had a white-knuckled grip on the wheel.

Green Island is a diving destination for Taiwanese and foreign tourists but going there at Ten-Ten would be like going to Cape Cod in November. Things were wrapping up for the season. Electric scooters and small motorcycles are available for rent.

It would be quite a scene if they were all out on the road (only one road on the island that we could see) at the same time.

The other attraction of Green Island - two defunct political prisons. From the 1950’s to the 80’s many, perceived to be an enemy of the ideology and government of Chiang Kai Shek, were imprisoned here. Many died. After CKS died in 1987 things changed and a memorial and Peace Centre were built on the sites of the prisons. Very sobering.

Victor runs a small bistro. It had an elegant shabbiness to it and wine and non-Chinese food. Say no more. Victor apologized because he was closing up for the season and couldn’t offer us soup or dessert.

All that info was conveyed via a translation app. He is going down to Kenting (southern tip of TW) to do a Master Diver course. He doesn’t hold out much hope for the restaurant business!

Another thing Green Island is famous for is the saltwater hot spring.

We risked the one-hour barf barge back to Taiwan. No problem, but it was tense. Everyone sat like stone, staring straight ahead. The man beside me was greenish and got out of his seat three times. I didn’t look to see where he went.

Back in Taipei

The weather was great so we stayed aboveground and walked around. First stop was Peace Park where we came upon the stone foot path - outdoor, self-administered reflexology. Yikes! I couldn’t step on it.

Then on to the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial. Weird after seeing the prisons. Respected and reviled. I just learned after the fact that CKS built the monument to himself. So, not so much reverence.

As we left the enormous plaza we came across these older, amateur musicians and opera singers. Not so old really, about our age! I got the impression that they were singing ‘the oldies’, things they remembered from back in the day. Like a bunch of us singing Tea for the Tillerman. One of the men was singing in an extreme falsetto voice with lots of gasping and gulping. I thought his jugular veins were going to pop out of his neck.

Ben had shown us around Q Square, three levels of shopping and eating with a movie theatre on top. We decided to see The Martian and have dinner in the mall. After, we were reluctant to go underground because we’d gotten lost before, so we headed out to the street. Nothing was familiar. Cars and people whizzing past, construction to go around, chrome, glass and concrete soaring above us. My vague sense was that we had to go south, but where was that? Trusty iphone compass to the rescue. We were only two blocks from home.