More Taipei

I'm already back in Matsuyama, after a grueling 14-hour journey that started at 5:30 am. A bit ridiculous, considering I was only in flight for about 3 hours total.

Lots more to say about Taipei, though. On Monday I moved from the little boutique hotel to Academia Sinica, the big government-funded research institute where my linguistics conference was going to be held. I had a few free days because the conference wasn't to begin until Thursday.

When I arrived, I couldn't check into my room in the Activities Center right away, so I hung out for a bit in the lobby. There was a lot of noise coming from the auditorium. I peeked in, and was greeted by this extremely cute and entertaining sight:

On Monday afternoon I went with my good friend Weera to look at my old neighborhood around National Taiwan University campus (公館 Gōngguǎn). In 1994, when I was studying there, I went out to Academia Sinica once. As I recall, it took forever to get there by bus -- at least an hour -- and around the research center was mostly farmland, only a handful of small restaurants on the one little street outside the gates. But now the area around Academia Sinica is all built up, and the new subway system has a stop only a mile or so away. So now traveling between the two locations is a breeze.

The subway system is great. Like all major transit systems around the world these days -- including even Seattle! -- Taipei has an RFID-chip travel card that you can load with money and use on a variety of forms of public transportation. But since there is a minimum 500 NTD to start a card, I just bought individual subway tickets. Or tokens, I should say. The system is really innovative. Instead of giving you a little paper card with a magnetic strip -- which is subject to getting mangled in your pocket, or to fluttering away on a breeze, and anyway ends up in landfill -- the ticket machine spits out a hard little plastic coin, like this:

But it's not what it appears. Inside is a little RFID chip which knows how much money you've paid. You wave it over the sensor as you go through the turnstile, and it records the stop you are entering. When you exit, you drop it into a coin slot. The fare is checked against the distance you've traveled, and the coin is ready to be reused.

When we got to our destination the rain was coming down torrentially. In Seattle we rarely have thunderstorms, and never have rain that crashes this heavily and unrelentingly. The intensity of these afternoon storms in Taipei is rather unsettling. Fortunately, many of the sidewalks are covered. (Commercial buildings in Taipei generally have a set-back first story, essentially creating a double sidewalk. The outer sidewalk, the real sidewalk, is where all the motorbikes are parked. Sometimes there is also some room to walk. The inner sidewalk is covered by the floor of the story above, providing shade in summer and protection from precipitation. When it's really hot it's nice to walk along the inner sidewalk and get blasted by arctic air-conditioning as you trigger the automatic sliding doors of the shops and restaurants that you walk past.)

This is what a Taipei thunderstorm looks and sounds like:

We couldn't make it from the subway stop all the way to NTU campus staying covered, and even with umbrellas, there was no way we could be out in the rain for long without getting completely soaked. So we made our way gingerly to a cafe. Taipei is now full of fancy coffee shops, many with European names, something unheard of when I was living there in the early 1990s. Weera and I made our way to a Tiramisu (提拉米蘇) Cafe, and sat for hours over mochas, chatting.

That snack is surprisingly good. Cheesecake outside, blueberry inside, cookie on the bottom. We got a little pack of five of them.

Eventually the rain subsided, and we made our way over to the Gongguan neighborhood and campus. It was already dark. I originally wanted to go see the dorm I had stayed in (and that at least one reader of this blog also stayed in), but due to the lateness of the hour we canceled that plan. Campus was little changed -- I recognized some of the buildings and the main roadways. It would have been easier in the daytime. The area around campus was completely transformed, however. Only the church and the McDonald's were recognizable. It was so hard to get coffee in the 1990s -- there was one little shop one of my exchange student classmates discovered, it was incredibly expensive, but some of us liked to sit there nursing a $6 cup of hot chocolate and do our homework in air-conditioned comfort. Now there are so many cafés you can't help tripping over them as you walk around.

We had a late dinner of dumplings and zhajiangmian, and then headed back home.

To be continued in next post ...

Taipei

It's certainly been an interesting experience for me to spend a week in Taipei. I lived here for 3 months in 1989. Then for a full year in 1993-94. Since then, I've only been back once, for just a few days in 2005, and didn't have a chance to experience the city (other than a quick visit to Taipei 101).

Taipei has of course changed a lot in 16 years. There's now a rapid transit system, which is fast, efficient, and comfortable. The city is more sophisticated and internationalized. But it very much feels the same way it did when I last lived here.

It's still extremely ugly. I know no other city that seems to entirely lack a single attractive piece of architecture. Not only are the buildings hideous to start with, they seem designed to age poorly, to attract and show grime.

Taipei still smells like

• incense
• auto exhaust
• stinky tofu
• wet cardboard
• steamed meat

Young guys still ride motorbikes wearing flip-flops.

When I was an exchange student at National Taiwan University, the main street nearby (Roosevelt Road) was torn up for the new subway line they were building. Construction was loud and went on through the night. Traffic was a nightmare.

As I walked from the airport bus a few blocks to my hotel, I found that the street my hotel was on was torn up for the new subway line they were building. Construction would be loud and go on through the night. Traffic was a nightmare.

"Taipei Rapid Transit - Quality First"

As I recall, signs like this used to say "Safety First". I don't know if the change from safety to quality should be taken as a good sign or a bad sign.

Here's a brief scene of traffic near my hotel. Note the huge numbers of motorbikes, the noise, the chaos. Note also the diagonal crosswalks.

The first few days I stayed in a really neat little boutique hotel that would not have seemed out of place in New York City. It was called Dandy.

The hotel was decorated in a spare modernist style, with the rounded rectangle as the main decorate theme.

My room was small, but pretty fancy.  The double blinds were very effective against the tropical sun.

I never did figure out what that white thing in the corner was.  Very heavy metal object.  I think maybe some sort of safety device.  Perhaps it could be extended out the window and used to lower oneself to safety in event of emergency?

A condom was provided in the room.

The Chinese says "Digital Condom".  I don't figure that.

This is the view out my window in the morning.  It seems a very typical Taipei scene.  The owner of the little breakfast shop across the street is out in his shirtsleeves watering his plants with a hose.

My first evening I wanted to get good beef noodle soup.  On the advice of the hotel staff, I went to a nearby place called "Old Zhang" (founded 1958).

One of the great things about Asian airports is that they have fantastic bus service.  Big comfortable limousine-style express buses run frequently from the big airports into the city.  They don't cost much and they get you where you need to go.  When I got to the bus ticket counter I saw that the bus I needed to get me into Taipei was leaving in about 2 minutes.  I pulled out the 500-dollar bill (about US $15) that I had remember to bring with me from Seattle -- I had brought it home from Taipei five years earlier -- to pay for the ticket.  "I can't take this," the woman said, "It's old.  We don't take those bills any more."  Fortunately, I had also changed some yen into Taiwan dollars at Kansai airport, just on a hunch.  I was able to buy my bus ticket and run onto the bus just before it left.

This is the bill I had tried to use:

One of my errands was to go to a bank and exchange it for a new bill.  This is what I got for it:

Looks like the main difference is the silver security stripe. Front and back images are the same.

Matsuyama to Taipei

I lived in Taipei for a full year as an exchange student back in 1993-94.  I've only been back once, for a just a few days in 2005.  So I've been eager to see how the city would feel to me now.

Interestingly, the first time I ever went to Japan was in December 1993, while I was living in Taipei.  I remember feeling a tremendous sense of relief after getting back to Taiwan from Japan.  In Japan I had felt constrained, anxious, constantly worried that I was doing something rude or improper.  In Taipei things felt relaxed and free.  I was curious to see if my impressions would be the same now, more than 16 years later.

Because I didn't have time to eat at the guesthouse before leaving for the airport, the manager made me a bento breakfast.

The darker food up at the top left is liver.

By the way, I haven't seen a single obese Japanese person since I've been here.  Come to think of it, I haven't even seen anybody you could charitably describe as fat.  Maybe one or two chubby folks.

The flight from Matsuyama to Itami Airport in Osaka is a mere 50 minutes.  From there, though it took over an hour by limousine shuttle bus to get from Itami to Kansai, Osaka's international airport.  Kansai Airport is way way out.  Looks like it was built on an artificial island.  Crossing the bridge to reach it, the views are just lovely.

It was a bit hazy today, unfortunately, but if you click through on the picture you can probably see the bridge on the lift, and the hills beyond the water.

And here's the control tower:

Kansai is huge, modern, and seemed surprisingly under-utilized.  In the area where I was waiting there were dozens of gates, but the electronic boards showed no departures at all from 11:30 to 1:00.

Much of the place felt like a ghost town.

The architecture is pretty neat.  I like the elevator towers:

There's some pretty wild artwork on display, too.

Apparently this was made in Jingdezhen China, famous for its porcelain wares, as a gift to Osaka for the 2005 International Food Festival.  On it are scenes of foods and famous meals.

That middle one looks like the Last supper.  Bizarre.

The televisions were showing the Yankees-Mets game live, because a Japanese national, Takahashi, was pitching for the Mets.

He was doing quite well, too.

Through 6 innings: 103 pitches, 2 walks, 3 strikeouts, 4 hits, no runs.

Before getting on my plane -- this Chinese Airlines jet

 --

I decided to get a snack.

Yes, that's right, Pretz, the under-appreciated sibling of Pocky.  These are "salad flavor", whatever that means.  And hey, what's that inset image?  Seems to be the Pretz package -- labeled パッケージ pakkeji -- saying tsuretette, whatever that means.

All becomes clear when we look at the back of the package:

Yep, you can fold out the little frog-package's arms and hang the box from the inside of your handbag.  This is, in typical Japanese fashion, obviously more for aesthetic appeal than practical convenience.

Like so:

They were pretty tasty, by the way.

The bottom of the package has three heart-shaped cutouts, but I can't imagine they serve any purpose whatsoever.