Living in a Rock and Roll Fantasy

[image error]She was twenty years old, living in Taipei for half a year with the intention of improving her Chinese.  The city was large and gray and crowded. Pungent smells of cooking oil and stirfry and garbage filled the humid air.

It was a city of narrow streets, crooked buildings, packed buses and haphazard sidewalks onto which cars drove at will. She and two Chinese roommates lived in a fourth-floor walk-up just off Roosevelt Avenue.

This was a long time ago. The city was still under martial law...