The Other China – Taiwan report – part 1

I’ve been living in Japan for a total fifteen years now, counting in my student year in Fukuoka and fourteen years in Tokyo. I’ve been planning to go to neighboring Taiwan a couple of times but never made it somehow. Until now. And I’m very glad I finally managed.

Arrived at Taipei’s Taoyuan airport, the first difference to mainland China struck me in from of better cars. While cars in Shanghai are crappy, old, rattling VW Santanas without even seat belts, the yellow taxis of Taiwan are all big new looking Toyota Camry, Crown, Prius or Honda Civics.

My taxi driver spoke three words of English and reassured me he knew my hotel (whose name I had printed out in Chinese again just to be sure). Driving was fast and adventurous much like in Shanghai if a bit more civilized down massive eight lane freeways and intertwining bridges. My hotel turned out to be a pleasant surprise. While it doesn’t look like much from the outside, the rooms are excellent, with all you need and fairly new (renovated I suppose): The FX Taipei Nanjing East Road branch. I highly recommend it.



On the first night I just ventured out on foot for a bit to test the waters and Taipei felt about as safe and normal as Tokyo, people were walking about everywhere – good!

My first stop the following morning was the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial and for that purpose I explored the MRT – the metro system of Taipei, which turned out to be very easy to understand and to use, much less complicated as Tokyo’s extensive network, well, after all Taipei is much smaller than Tokyo. (Special municipality only 2.6 million, but greater urban area some 8 million and some 6 million within the subway system area).

At the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial I got my first special experience of the trip. In front of the memorial are the national theater and the national music hall and on the wide place between them was a bunch of yellow and blue clad people, at least a thousand if not more, who were grouping themselves in an elaborate pattern under instructions from a lady with a loudspeaker. The people in blue all had yellow t-shirts under their jackets and on their backs you could read Falun Dafa is good. I so far only knew them under the name Falun Gong but Falun Dafa seems to be their preferred designation.



Several freaked out tourists and myself sneaked past them to get to the memorial.

They have a nice museum about Chiang Kai-Shek’s life under the memorial and I hung out there to wait for the changing of the guards in the memorial hall that happens every full hour.



One word about the weather: hot! Close to 30 Celsius with the classic Asian high humidity.

My new smart watch that I could not resist buying on the plane (Cathay Pacific, one of my favorite airlines) said constantly over 80% humidity, sometimes more.

The changing of the guards was highly complicated and elaborate and man, these guys have practiced that for hours and days and months…

My way back to the subway station led me through a beautiful garden including pond next to the national theater that had a little outdoor cafe to offer. So I sat there and listened to the Falun Dafa people praying. They had meanwhile all taken their supposed positions and were sitting on the ground. I think they sat in form of a Chinese character though I could not make out which one. They must have been sweating their guts out in the heat without any shelter and in those blue jackets…

Interesting. They were just about finished when I had eaten my lunch and I quickly left to avoid congested subways.

I rode to my next target: the Longshan temple, (which means dragon mountain) and it’s the oldest still standing and operational temple in Taipei.

I am by now highly fascinated by the Taiwanese branch of Buddhism and more about that throughout the rest of the trip as well.

First of all I was a bit astonished to see the temple as a functioning religious site rather than a historical site. I felt kinda bad and intruding on people but managed to take a few (well actually quite many all in all) snap shots. I am especially touched by the snapshot of this old lady here who looked like she is spending a considerable amount of time in this temple.



I am actually not sure whether pictures were allowed or not. I could not find a no photos sign anywhere. I have no intention of disrespect, which is all the more true for the pictures I took in Kaohsiung on the next day and again in Taipei on day three. They were all taken in innocent wonder and fascination.

Back to Longshan temple, not only at this temple, but also all others I have seen: dragons everywhere, awesome. Longshan temple combines the dragons with age. This particular temple is from the eighteenth century. I am not sure if the buildings are still original, but they indeed looked older than anything I have seen in Kaohsiung for example. Since, in contrast to quite a number of westerners, I can read some Chinese characters including dragon mountain temple I bought a nice talisman from Longshan and shall honor it at home.

I wandered around the block before leaving the area again, backwater Taipei.



There are not too many westerners in Tokyo either but in Taipei there are even fewer. Well, it’s not a major tourist destination for Europe or the US. Too bad actually, since it’s wonderful!

My next stop was Ximending “the hipster shopping district” also called Taipei’s Harajuku.

As for that, nah, Harajuku is cooler, especially the fashion. I did find some underground scene though, a street with open tattoo parlors and managed one sneaky shot of them.

Now eating does represent a bit of a problem. I am not too adventurous in that department and while the food stuff in the stalls of Ximending did look interesting I have no clue what much of the stuff is and don’t know how to order it either and ended up at a Japanese restaurant since I at least know the menu…

Last stop for the day was another highlight: the Taipei 101, still one of the highest buildings in the world. I have to go up things like that and bought a ticket for the observatory at floor 89. The queue is always long and once you have a ticket you can come back an hour later. I used that hour to walk a bit away from the thing to be able to take decent pictures of it.



Then back to the extensive luxury shopping mall next to the beast and killing time until I was allowed to queue.

Massive clouds were coming in and blocked the view but parts of them looked really cool and I didn’t mind. Then the world disappeared and we were in the middle of a rain cloud.

After some evening shots of the beast I headed back to the hotel, dead tired but having become a fan of Taipei.

Here is the link to the full set of photos and I’ll upload part two of the report tomorrow.