On a wet January Tuesday in Taipei what do students do?
They go to the National Concert Hall and throw the girls in the air, of
course.
There is a large covered veranda, the students spread a few mats out and
a couple of girls standby to help catch in case of a cock-up. There are three
lads – one is the lifter off the ground and the other two hold her feet. She
has to remain rigidly unmoving and showing no emotion in a vertical position
(or horizontal as the case may be) whilst she is tossed about. There were six
groups and all I can say is that they are very brave girls. The lads looked so
weak that even I wouldn’t be worried about meeting three of them down the
proverbial dark alley at night.
So what am I doing in Taipei. Well it is there. My terms work finished
ten days ago but I am never sure whether I can escape straight away a week
before the actual end of term and have to leave it to the last minute. My main winter trip starts two weeks after
the end of my term’s work. I got
confirmation that I didn’t need to do anything in the last official week and am
off to Sri Lanka.
Ah!
To visit that allegedly lovely country of Sri Lanka you have to fill in
an ETA form. I believe that ETA stands for Excruciatingly Terminal Autism. The
form, of course, takes a little time to load.
Once loaded, I tried
several times to fill in the form and each time it comes back with "No
valid Capcha code" (the exact non-word spelling eludes me because you are
rapidly told to try again). I assumed it meant to refer to entering a few
letters and numbers that ensure that my application is not computer
generated.
That would be fair enough
but I was never been asked to enter said code.
So trying again means
filling in the whole tedious form again. It tends to be a little frustrating.
The result is the same.
One of my techie friends in
Guangzhou investigated and it seems to be the Google-China relationship. They
do not get on and you cannot use anything Google on the mainland. What appears
to happen is that many organizations call Google to use their Capcha code
program, rather than write one themselves. So when Google gets called the thing
fails. This must cost Sri Lanka a lot of tourist yuan and meant that I couldn’t
go.
Yes, I know that I could
have filled in the form and done a screen dump and got somebody outside of
China to do the job for me. Hindsight is usually perfect.
So I had to spend three
days in the pub watching England thrash South Africa at cricket. Or more
accurately watch two very even days followed by a day of absolute slaughter.
After that I needed to
detox in a country where I didn’t need a visa or some other damn form. This was
the nearest.
Is Taiwan a country?
Technically the locals call it The Republic of China. Not surprisingly, this
name is none too popular on the mainland where Taiwan is regarded as a province
of China. In sporting events it is referred to as Chinese Taipei. The Hong Kong
Rugby 7s normally has three “national” teams in it - China, Hong Kong and
Chinese Taipei. Hong Kong has been part of China now for nearly twenty years
and the government let the people of Hong Kong do their own thing – just so
long as they say they are Chinese. I don’t need a visa for Hong Kong (or Macao
or Taiwan), Hong Kong has its own currency (as do Taiwan and Macao) and in Hong
Kong they even drive on the correct side of the road (as they do in Macao!) but
not in Taiwan or the mainland. Taiwan has a population of 23 million – less than
treble that of Hong Kong. It has not been under the control of the mainland
Chinese government in any form for 120 years of Japanese occupation or ROC
rule. Eventually there will be a relationship of one country two systems as it
applies in Hong Kong and Macao.
None of my cards worked at
the ATM at the airport so I changed $500 US cash. At a bank in town later last
night a card worked so I took the maximum. I know how far too many of the local
spondoolicks. I am confident that I won’t get ripped off when I change some
back!
I like most of what I have
seen so far.
First proper port of call
was the memorial hall for Jiang Jeshi. Most of you will probably know him as
Chang Kai-shek – the first leader of Taiwan after they Nationalists ran for it
after losing the civil war to the communists in 1949. This tries to look like
the Temple of Heaven in Beijing. Well – hmm. It has a similar roof but rather
horrible whitewashed sides. The Zongshan Memorial Hall in Guangzhou had similar
ideas but did the job much better. Who the hell is Zhongshan I hear you ask.
Well most of you probably know him as Sun Yat Sen, the leader of the revolution
at the beginning of the twentieth century that got rid of the last emperor. Of
course, some of you have never heard of him. Many people in China have more
than one name – it can be a little confusing. Good old Lizzie has two birthdays
but not two names (if you ignore Saxe-Coburg-Gotha). You will see many streets
in cities in China called Zhongshan after the great man, streets named Jiang
Jeshi are curiously absent – I wonder why.
Speaking of street names.
Here has some characteristics similar to the mainland including shops grouping
together on one street. In Guangzhou I can take you to” picture framing street”
or “get your crap trophies for your darts contest alley” although they are not
called that. Today I walked down pet bird street. I also went one better and
found myself on a street called “Wedding Dress Street” which sold....
I seem to have digressed. The old todger is not buried in his memorial
hall but there is a 21 tonne statue of him. They do an elaborate changing of
the guard routine every hour – quite entertaining. Nothing about old
traditional costumes and that sort of thing. Goose steps, stainless steel
helmets, AK47s (or whatever they use now) – you get the idea. Five minutes
after it is all over the place is pretty well cleared out. One is left
wondering what they are guarding against. I didn’t see them shooting at any
birds who came to shit on his head. Are they worried about somebody stealing
the statue?
Speaking of birds in the park around the area the rain had brought up
quite a few worms and this fellow ignored me completely whilst he got stuck
into a good lunch.
Next was a “traditional” craft centre – rather good. Signage in English
is, in general, either quite good or non-existent. The best exhibits were on a
floor where the only English sign was “Chullery” This is rather untypical – the
standard of English is quite good although I did wonder later what “A
locomotive builder’s lunch” could be. All the food here is meaty so I didn’t
risk it.
The National History Museum is just down the road – well worth a visit.
Lots of stuff, some pottery going back to 2500 BCE. Pottery is the one area
where the ancient Chinese were always a long way in front of The West. An excellent exhibition of Tang dynasty (618
to 903 CE) pottery as well. This is on loan from a museum on the mainland and
tends to illustrate that the bit of water separating Taiwan from the mainland
is only really a political barrier. Visas still apply but that is true for
everyone going to or from the mainland who intends to stay more than three
days. Playing Bob Marley in the forecourt did rather undermine the historical gravitas.
Typically Chinese though. More than half the visitors in both places
were in the noshing shop.
The Botanical Gardens. Compact with lots in there but not at its best on
a wet January day. (Extract from the pamphlet “About 4,500 years ago the lake
became habitable...”)
On to a temple. Why do I do it? I have seen so many temples in China.
Lots of people there but small and definitely nothing special. Best thing about
it was the ornaments on the outside of the roof.
This photo is from a different place but it seems like a good place to add it. I especially like the "traditional" information sign.
Food is odd. The odd McShit and Substandard plus quite a few Starfucks
but no Bugger Kings, Kill the Fucking Chicken, Done-in Donuts etc. But also few
proper restaurants. There are lots of small shops and street vendors and I have
to use Chinese to make sure that I don’t get ANY meat - and that is not my most
notable skill.
Many 7/11s call themselves cafes and there is a 7/11 for every 450 people
in Taiwan plus lots and lots of Family Marts which are similar. In seven hours
walking today I haven’t seen one proper supermarket. 7/11s are often a bit
bigger than normal but nothing like a proper supermarket.
AND only one bar. They wanted more than $20US for a small flask of saki
so I declined and left. The price had gone up by 40% between what the man said
and what he wrote down.
Yep, I have had to resort to the 7/11 and am writing this in my hotel.
Hotels are not cheap here but this is OK – if you like your room Hong Kong
size. There isn’t even a chair so I am writing this on a table in reception.
The people are pretty nice with a lot of English and they come up to
talk to you and offer help. I was surprised by the fact that many people of my
age speak good English but I realised that American soldiers were based in the
country until forty years ago.
Another day another few hours of pounding the street. I am a believer in
the Bill Bryson theory – if you want to get to know a city you must walk. Am I
Brysonite? Taipei is a small city. When I first came to China one of my friends
described Ningbo as a small city – only 3 million. I wondered how many cities
in Europe and North America are that size or bigger and got stuck at ten.
However, I have now been in China a long time and think that 3 million is, indeed,
a small city. On the mainland only cities over ten million are regarded as big
cities – there are at least seven – and perhaps twenty or thirty that are in
the 3 to 10 million bracket.
After a salutary half an hour queueing for a train ticket for the morrow
I was off due north to my main destination for the day. Taipei has a pretty
much a gridiron sort of layout with the American mentality of traffic lights at
every junction. That means that the pedestrian crossings at the junctions are
traffic light controlled. This slows your progress considerably but I got the
idea fairly quickly and was the only person who ignored lots of the red lights.
I had deliberately started late for two reasons. I was knackered.
Yesterday I had had one stretch of street/ museum/botanical garden etc. pounding
of five hours during which I had not sat down once and I had also done some
more pounding later looking for bars. You are also warned that the Museum gets
very crowded so you go for early doors or late afternoon. No prizes for
guessing which one I went for.
So I rock up about 3.30. It all
seems a bit odd. Lots of stupid Dineyesque type characters, I appear to be the
only non-Chinese around. I pay my $3 and go in thinking that was cheap.
Naturally I was in the wrong place. This was the good old boys place where he
lived for 26 years after leaving the mainland. I was desperately searching the
guide book on my kindle for something about this joint (there was nothing) when
I got accosted because they thought I am taking photographs with my electronic
device. This got me a personal guide about my age. I know more about Madame
Chiang than she did. Maybe because I read her (Madame C's, not the guide's) biography
a few years ago. The thing they seemed most proud of was that the old boy got a
visit from Tricky Dicky when he was Vice-President in 1953.
I made my excuses and left. The biggest tourist attraction in the whole
of Taiwan is the National Palace Museum. A bit of a bugger that it is not on
the tourist map of Taipei. A bit of study and I knew I was close and set off in
the general direction. Big signs saying “National Palace Museum” did help a
bit. It closes at 6.30 and I get there at 4.15. Perfect. Well not quite. The
girl at the desk pointed out that if I waited 15 minutes there was 40% discount
for late entrants. Just time for a reviver. Unfortunately the cafe only served
coffee.
The Museum is absolutely splendid. Very well laid out with lots of room
and good lighting. In 1949 when the
Nationalist realised that they had lost the civil war and legged it to Taiwan
they took everything from The Forbidden City that wasn’t nailed down. In 1965
they decided that they weren’t going back any time soon and opened the crates
of the stuff that they had “liberated.” The contents are now in the National
Palace Museum.
Chinese people are fascinated by “Jade.” There is no such thing. There
are two different rocks, called Jadeite and Nephrite, that have very similar
characteristics but are formed in completely different ways. Both are called
Jade. There are a couple of small items on display that go back to the 4th
millennium BCE but these are of no interest to the Chinese tour groups. The two
jade rooms were absolutely rammed with people.
Some of the tour groups took some interest in the old pottery but none
in the stuff that is undoubtedly the star of the museum. (Can stuff be a star
or should they be stars?) Shanghai is a dump and just about the only thing I
like there is the museum and especially the ground floor where they have bronze
work going back 5,500 years. Truly impressive stuff. BUT. In the museum in
Taipei they have stuff going back equally far but much more ornate – there is
nothing to compare with it from any part of the world. You may gather I was
impressed.
Some of the pottery stuff is also pretty good. The slight problem is
that the best stuff, not surprisingly, is from the last five hundred years and
you can see very similar items in many shops all over China.
Two hours of that and I really did need a reviver. I found one and it
worked so up went my energy level and off back the way I had come to the best
night market in the city near the wrong palace.
Night markets exist because it is too hot in the day. Well that is the theory. It was only 14 or 15
degrees so hardly roasting in January but the markets are institutionalised.
They sell lots of the usual shit – cheap jeans, nasty T shirts, glass jewellery
etc. But the reason that you go to these places is the food. You stop at a
stall and buy something small and eat it.
You are talking a euro or two at each place. So I had quails eggs,
followed by three different flavoured egg tarts then pawpaw and pineapple
followed by spicy cuttlefish - yummy. Actually that is the buying order – I
saved the fruit to the end for when I was publishing earlier – I am a traditionalist.
On the mainland there are bins every 50metres and an army of street sweepers
who are needed. In this market there were lots of skewers and plastic bags
& boxes being given out, but no public bins that I saw until I left but the
streets were clean. Not quite Singapore clean – there was the odd skewer – but much
cleaner than London.
I really was tired so got the metro back to the hotel. Yes – wimp I
know. Two small points. On the display inside the metro carriage signs would
say “Be considerate. Fold your newspaper and hold your backpack in your hand.”
I especially like the second part. Anybody who is stupid enough to both read this
and work for Transport for London please take note. I got off at the main railway station. Now here’s the thing. These are underground retail opportunities and there are shops everywhere. Find
the exit? I found a list which told me the exit number I needed but tell me
where that exit is? You must be joking – why would they want me to leave
without spending money? It took me about fifteen minutes to escape. My advice
is that, should you be unfortunate enough to be caught in one of these versions
of hell, just get out of the nearest exit and worry about where you are once you
have escaped to above ground.
Another day another city. I have come to Tainan. This used to be the
capital and if your idea of a holiday is visiting fifteen temples a day for a
week with no repetition this is the place for you. OK it is not Bagan in Myanmar
where there is nothing between temples but this is a proper old city (one tenth
the size of Taipei) and still they are round every corner. As you will have
gathered by now this is not really my thing.
I had elected to take the slow train – taking 4 ½ hours rather that the
quick one that does it 1/3rd of the time and not just because of
price. It is called the “Mountain Route” and I wanted to enjoy the views. Every
time I woke up (which wasn’t often) and looked out of the window I would see
just badly constructed buildings or fields with nobody working in them. Taiwan
is supposed to be no. 17 in the world GDP per capita list and classed as a
developed country. Even assuming that Euroland is regarded as one economy that
is one list and one categorization that I don’t believe.
Or didn’t. When I looked at that extract again it is no. 17 based upon PPP
(Purchasing Power Parity). If you use
the exchange rate of the day to make comparisons the values are severely
distorted by a currency (like the pound or US dollar) being overvalued or being
undervalued (like the euro and RMB). To compensate for this, different measures
are used to make more realistic evaluations. For instance how many pints of 4% beer
can the average person’s monthly salary buy? That particular measure is my own
and rigorously tested all over the world. Unfortunately “economists” use other
measures e.g. how many Big McShits does a week’s pay get. Economists are not
real people.
I have wandered again haven’t I? Mainland
China is no longer cheap cheap but it is still half the price, or less, of
anywhere else outside East Asia. Taiwan is a bit more than the mainland but not
a lot. It is nothing compared to Japan, Hong Kong or Singapore. A couple of
examples here. Admission to sites. Many are free, most are a quid. My dinner on
the street last night (excluding two beers which added 60%) was three euros.
When you realise that it makes the claim above seem reasonable – higher up the
list, incidentally, than Japan!
Comparing Taiwan to the mainland there is gross underemployment in the
retail sector for both – there are masses of people standing around doing
nothing. Like the US, in mainland China the car is king. You can drive how you
like, park where you like, pedestrian crossings are meaningless etc. In Taiwan
the motor scooter is king. I think this is a good thing. Cars are filthy,
carcinogenic, carbon emitting things that take up ridiculous amounts of road
space for one person and on the mainland, like the USA, gas-guzzling SUVs are
the vehicle of choice. In the cities on the mainland most two and three wheel
powered vehicles are now electrically powered. In Taiwan the scooters all have
piddly little motors which must be less carbon intensive than electrically
powered vehicles. So far so good for Taiwan. However, everybody has a scooter.
They are everywhere – pavements are just scooter parks, the most likely cause
of death for a tourist is a scooter accident, cars (and even taxis) wait at
pedestrian crossings, scooters go round you.
There are very few motorbikes and certainly nothing of the thirteen
hundred cc monstrosities that people of my age buy in Europe or the USA. But
anybody who is working in a (to me) semi-developed country can easily afford a
scooter.
One oddity here is the ownership of the pavement (sidewalk to the
yanks). You have a shop front that is two metres wide, you want to make it easy
for the handcarts to get from the delivery vehicle into your shop. So you make a
ramp and tile it with the same tiles as you use in your shop. Job done.
Except that the ramp you have made is different from the ramp next door
– a different angle, different start or end points etc. Taipei and Tainan are
both fairly flat with nice even roads. Walking on the pavement is awful. You
are glancing around, looking for a shop or something to eat and suddenly you
foot hits a steep ramp and over you go. Useful to have ramps not steps, of
course, to help the scooters drive on the pavement. It is especially difficult
if you are feeling a little uncertain of the location of your hotel after an
unpaid brief visit to do some unrewarded quality testing at an establishment for the
purveyance of alcohol – of which I am happy to say Tainan appears to have a
significant number including one twenty metres from my hotel. I even found a
wine bar selling – wait for it – decent Italian wine. I was the only customer.
Planning laws are clearly very weak or not enforced.
I don’t tend to go to an awful lot of sites but how could I resist a
visit to the Eternal Golden Castle. Well I think I would find it easier to
defend the revolting four storey block of flats I passed near the entrance.
Clearly grey is the new gold. Doomsday must be imminent.
It was built in 1874-76 and has a moat that is, in turn defended, by hibiscus shrubs. It was armed by the latest British muzzle loading cannons.
Amazing. Breech loading guns had been around for 400 years by then but the
latest technology was still muzzle loading.
Finally, on my fifth day in Taiwan I spotted a supermarket! What a sad life I lead. My fears about which one were also realised - Carrefour. Why the French? Even the yanks are preferable. Well no actually, but it is damn close.
The fort was built because the Japanese had landed just prior to this to
cause a spot of bother near what was then Taiwan’s capital. Twenty years later
the Japanese took over the island and, forty years after it was built, the
castle was a ruin. A couple of bouts of restoration have revealed new places. I
find it amazing that no plans exist from such a big jobbie built less than 150
years ago. It is quite pleasant for a
gentle stroll although I was glad I wasn’t wearing sandals and shorts because
there were “Beware of the snakes” signs around.
I also visited the Tree House. Not quite what you might expect. Tainan
was the main port for the Island but the harbour silted up and the Japanese
moves the capital to Taipei so the trading houses declined. The last warehouse
was abandoned seventy years ago. Banyan tress will grow pretty well anywhere
and are very adaptable (they are a relative of the strangler fig that I have
seen in Australia). One thing they are fond of is calcium carbonate. This is
used in cement so when the warehouse was deserted the trees moved in – big time.
One other bit of Chinglish is a “shopping shop.” One wonders what the
alternatives might be. I could only come up with two but I have no imagination.
A shoplifting shop? A dieing shop – commonly called an undertaker. This one
would take a good deal of planning, unless you are Dignitas. You would have had
to have the call from him upstairs (or downstairs in my case), gone to the
shop, asked for a doctor to be called to sign the death certificate and then
keel over just as the quack arrives.
My final stop on this trip is Kaohsuiung – Taiwan’s second city. I have
tired of street pounding hence have been writing. However, I have instructions
to go and get pissed with a brother of a sort of friend. I have run out of beer
so it is time to go for four hours pounding before following my instructions.
New experiences are less frequent with age of course. I am staying in a “Business
Hotel.” The room is quite large but bare of any decorations or interest.
However, it does have a first for me – the bed is wider than it is long. One is
left wondering how many “guests” a “businessman” is expected to entertain.
Just done the obligatory pounding. This is a boring characterless city. The lady in the Tourist Information suggested that I visited the station where the two metro lines crossed. I arrived to the usual shopping hell but changed my mind. This was the roof.
The fact that it is cool, wet and windy, of course, has no impact upon my view.
Nor is the fact that I was stood up by somebody who invited me to his
restaurant, specified the time and his name is not even Goodland. Hang on a
minute he is the half-brother of a very old female friend of Dr G.s and we have
all seen “Chinatown.” Could Henry be a love child? No. Even MCG would have
phoned within an hour to say that he was delayed by sending a particularly unimportant
email that he could have sent hours before.
Visit Taiwan? No, not as a destination by itself. If you have had a
decent look around China – not just Beijing, Shanghai, Guilin and Lijiang –
yes. You will see some interesting contrasts.
