Things I Think About Taiwan

May 22, 2015

A Half-Taiwanese American Writes About His Half-Homeland

My mother is Taiwanese and my father is ethnically Shanghainese. Growing up, I spent more time with my mom’s relatives. The Mandarin that I understand and speak has a Taiwanese accent (in which I don’t end every other word with the “err” sound). So all in all, I am pretty Taiwanese. So isn’t it a bit funny that I have never visited the mother country before?

I have spent the last 8 days in Taiwan, visiting different parts of the country like Taipei and Taichung. For the most part, I traveled through the country with little agenda and did not go with anyone. At the end of it all, I wanted to sit down and write some thoughts on the experience of visiting an entirely new country.

Things I Think About Taiwan

1) If you have never experienced it before, Taiwanese humidity is truly something.

My sister had told me about it the day before I stepped on the plane but it really does not hit you until you step outside onto the street. It feels like someone turned on the Great Big Humidifier In the Sky and left it there running for like ever.

2) People’s salaries in Taiwan are nothing near where they are in the US and everybody has their own theories why.

Costs here are very low, but the flipside of that is that salaries are low too. It feels like to me many of the companies here are of the type that do not provide a service with a high amount of value captured. The biggest companies are probably TSMC and Hon Hai - the OEMs that manufacture and assemble Apple’s iPhones. Apple is the most profitable company in the world by far, but nobody has ever heard of TSMC and Hon Hai. There is no company like Apple in Taiwan, the companies here do work for other companies.

3) I can’t find a goddamn trash can in this city yet the streets are 10x cleaner than anything I’ve ever seen in SF.

Taiwan has the cleanest cities that I have ever seen. That might sound hollow to you since I have not really traveled that much in my life (and I think NYC is especially clean), but I seriously wonder where people are throwing away things considering that I did not see a single trash can the first 2 days I was there. What the hell? Where is all the trash going?

To add to the mystery, I have seen trash cans full of trash and dirty (ah a bit of SF) but at night.

The Only Trash Can In Taiwan ... at Night

4) It was 4 days before I saw my first homeless person in Taiwan. It was 4 minutes before I saw my first homeless in SF.

5) Taipei has an incredible public transport system that is advanced, complex, and highly efficient.

I have not tried out the NYC public transportation system all that much but Taipei is probably the best trans system that I have ever used. It is fast, efficient and very cheap. It is about a buck to go practically anywhere from my hotel.

Perhaps it is that Taipei is not that big, but it seems like I can get to even the furthest parts of the city within just 20-40 minutes. I took a trip out to Tamsui, out on the coast and it just took 60 minutes. It takes like 45-60 minutes to go from SF to Milbrae.

The trains are clean and very easy to navigate. You do not have the ultra disgusting cloth seats. The aisles are also relatively wide.

6) Taiwanese building architecture has a mix of the old and the new.

Due to my jet lag I am spending a long time walking the streets of the city. Taipei seems to me a city that is suspended in the midst of a transformation into a more modern metropolis. Taipei has more green than any other metropolis that I have ever seen, which leads to sights like these.

And while you can come across a building like the super modern Taipei 101, you can also come across derelict places like this too:

A stunning sight that is just around the block from a huge, modern office park.

7) The High Speed Rail burns through your wallet as fast as it does the miles.

I wanted to take a trip down to Tainan where I have distant relatives but found out that to take the normal rail way down there would take about 4-8 hours. That’s not feasible. So the best way to go is the High Speed Rail, which was okay except I found out that it costs about $1,500 to $1,800 NT to go. That is about $40-50 each.

8) The Shilin night market seems to be the closest thing that you are going to get to the Vegas Strip in Taiwan.

Right close to the National Palace Museum is the famed Shilin Night Market. I had expected to see something akin to a swap meet here in America or a farmer’s market but what I ended up seeing is something much closer to the Vegas strip at night.

There is this strip of huge lights and fancy stores and then deeper in you start finding stands where you can go and try traditional food like stinky tofu.

9) What’s with this country and 7-11?

There is a 7-11 around the corner. They are like Starbucks in SF in that they seem to cannibalize each other. In the main Taipei bus/rail station, there is a whole lot of these places. I remember 4-5 of them, different levels. They are everywhere. The interesting thing is that they are very standardized - they all have the same sorts of drinks and foods (various chips, cokes, and coffees) as well as the ubiquitous hot dog (though without the nacho cheese that I so adore back in the US).

10) The National Palace Museum is not bad at all, but …

It is mostly full of mainlanders and people from Hong Kong with a nice dose of Japanese. For the most part, the majority of the items are worth your time. Some are pretty dry though - like the vases. Most of the vases look the same as the ones you find in SF Chinatown.

The scrolls are beautiful and I love them. I think there is something special about seeing all that history and knowing that the ink and paper was touched by someone all the way back 300-400 years ago.

The most popular thing of course though in the Palace museum is not a scroll or a vase. It is that green jade cabbage. I saw it in its own little room (equipped with ropes and spiraling pathways for crowd control) and it is surprisingly small. You are not allowed to photograph it (as well as anything else in the museum), but I can say that it is indeed quite something. The white part of the cabbage has veins and pulses through it which makes it very lifelike. The green part is also quite beautiful. For a thing so universally loved and popular in the museum, it was created surprisingly recently - about the 1800s. We do not know the name of the master who created it, which is unfortunate because it really is something stunning.

11) I don’t care what people say. Eating at Yoshinoya was totally worth it.

I grew up eating Yoshinoya and I never believed it when people said that Yoshinoya was everywhere in Asia. Now I am here and it is glorious.

12) You never know when you come across something wonderful.

I had felt myself in the mood for a coffee shop and was looking for a cafe that a friend had recommended to me and so there I was walking down an alleyway when suddenly I looked to my left and I suddenly saw this beautiful looking modern cafe.

Aura, Established in 2012 as well as in my heart

I think there is just special about a great cafe shop, a place that you can come to rest and read and reflect even thousands of miles away from where you are familiar. Ended up hanging out there for 5 hours, and it is where I wrote the majority of this little reflection post.

I liked the books on the left. Adds character.

13) The country offers stunningly beautiful sights.

One of the best trips that I enjoyed was when I wanted to visit the Houtong Cat village. So apparently this little village which used to be built on coal mining ran out of coal. After noticing that they had a lot of stray cats around, they re-branded themselves as a village for people to visit and pet cats. The place is situated in a valley of unspeakable beauty.

I will write more about my trip to Houtong in a separate post - accompanying a whole lot of cat photographs of course.

Things I Think About Traveling

1) Getting onto the mobile network is a mixed blessing.

It was the first thing that I picked up when I got to the airport. Gotta get onto a mobile network. However, it was a mixed blessing. Technically the service is phenomenal, it is 3G but unlimited. However all the time that I ended up spending communicating with people I think tore me away from spending time in Taiwan and enjoying it.

2) The iPhone 6+ truly is the best iPhone to get if you are traveling.

I took a lot of photographs, checking notifications, messaging friends, and checking email constantly. The result is that you are spending a lot of energy. While data is not an issue (because the plan is unlimited, albeit a slower 3G), battery life is constantly an issue. I have two iPhones so that I can manage and trade them off during very intense photo trips (like the one to Houtong Village, where I took over 300 photographs). But the 6+ is really something when it comes to handling huge amounts of the activity. I am constantly using the thing and it holds up well nearly 6-9 hours of battery life.

One thing that I wish I brought though was the iPad AC power adapter because the 6+ is so power thirsty that it takes about an hour or so to recharge. If you want to drop stuff off at the hotel room and get going somewhere then you have to waste time idling at the hotel room to recharge.

3) AirBnB is truly, really something special.

I stayed at a hotel and an Airbnb and while both experiences were great, I think the Airbnb was significantly cheaper. (Though there was a mosquito bug bite problem that I had.) It was easy to get to the room and the guy who managed it left me a few instructions and then went on his merry little way. No hassle.

4) Pointing is not a way to order food.

They have no idea what you are pointing to unless you got a laser pointer with you. And then when the first attempt does not work, what are you going to do? Jab again at the air? You can’t say anything in their language and they can’t say anything in your language and so we are left just gesturing at each other before I walk away in frustration.

5) Don’t oggle the women while you are walking the streets.

5.5) Don’t oggle the guys either.

6) Take photos of everything because otherwise you are going to forget it. Back up every photo.

There are a few apps that you can use to backup your photographs. I use several because I am paranoid about some service messing up and losing all my data. The ones that I use are:

Google Plus (uploads every photo for free if you use a worse quality)
Amazon Photos (if you have Prime)
Flickr
MSFT Onedrive

I ended up taking over 600 photographs during my time in Taiwan and I was unable to back them up until I got home. Just opened the app and let it run in the background. It will upload all the photographs. Might take a while but having offsite back ups is just a good piece of mind.

7) If there is a long line in front of a shop, then it is worth eating at.

That is basically my criteria for eating at some place. Yelp game here is pretty weak sauce so I think the best sign that somewhere is worth eating is if everyone else seems to think that it is great to eat.

Line? Check. Don't speak English? Check. Okay let's eat here.

I walked an hour and a half through the sweltering humidity to find this one place that just opened and has some great Taiwanese breakfasts … only to find the line being longer than the line to Heaven.