Sino Travel Blog 2017: Taipei

So I started writing this like December 2017 and it's never going to be finished so i'll just post it here lol. Oops. 

After the claustrophobic clutter of Hong Kong, Taipei, with its wide roads and low buildings, came as a relief. We got off our China Airlines flight, which, despite being only a little longer than an hour, had a ton of movies––we were able to introduce Blaise to Moonlight––and took the commuter MRT into town, getting of at Ximen station, right next to a vibrant pedestrian shopping district called Ximending. Meander Hostel, where we stayed, was at the very other end of Chengdu Road, a long strip lined on both sides by shops, cafés, and cinemas. Throughout the week that we stayed in Taipei, we learned to walk briskly and dodge the groups of young people chatting around street stalls. We often passed a New Balance flagship store and would hover to gaze admiringly at the blown-up photos of glamorous people wearing sensible but cool sneakers by the window, even going inside a few times to check out the shoes, until eventually I gave in and purchased a white pair that was on sale. It was too pure in color, however, to wear, so I wrapped them up in plastic bags and shoved them to the bottom of my backpack, where they took up quite a large amount of space, waiting for the day to arrive when they could prove their worth...


We'd originally booked a 4-person room with an en-suite bathroom (yay!), but since Yasmin wasn't able to make it, we had to agree to let a stranger stay in the fourth bed if needed. The first few nights, however, it remained unoccupied. We dumped our stuff on the bunk beds and sat under the air conditioning for a while, relishing the cool breeze. Taiwan may be less dense in population compared to Hong Kong, but it wasn't any less humid. It became a running joke to sigh in contentment and say, "So this is the breeze that Kevin was talking about in that beach scene in Moonlight..." every time we walked past a storefront that was blasting its AC out onto the street.

That first evening, we had what might have been the best meal of the entire trip: an unassuming Sichuanese restaurant tucked away in a side street off Chengdu Road, where a huge pot of rice, unlimited tea, a cold appetizer, and five dishes cost a tight $900 NTD... 30CHF! The price of a single bowl of noodles in Switzerland! And best of all was how much Blaise and Seb enjoyed it. We picked up some bubble tea, naturally––we were in its homeland, after all––and waddled over to Ximending, where we wandered around its labyrinth-like streets, getting lost in the LED lights, stinky tofu smells, and racks and racks of fidget spinners on sale.




The hostel did free breakfast every morning, so we resolved to get up at human hours this time round. The next day, we helped ourselves to peanut butter on toast and green tea at 9am and got ready for the day ahead, but Blaise promptly went back to bed and refused to budge. After many attempts at persuasion, Seb and I left him behind and ambled towards the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall under a blazing mid-afternoon heat. Despite the gray clouds in the sky, I could feel every individual ray of sunlight that beat down upon my skin.

After a photo-op on Liberty Square, we climbed the stairs to enter the cavernous hall, thinking it would be cooler. It wasn't much better, but at least we got to see the changing of the guards. I wondered how these guards managed to maintain absolute stillness while in full military gear. I knew that they were boiling––they needed a man to come and dab the sweat off their cheeks before performing the changing ceremony. The actual ceremony involved a lot of musket-waving and heel-clicking––each little noise that they made in unison reverberated across the entire silent hall. In front of Seb and I were two Taiwanese-American kids brought here by their father and grandfather who stood fidgeting impatiently. I wondered if they visited often, or if this trip would become a major component of their identity crises in the future. I would see quite a few diasporic children while travelling, including a boy and a girl at the Youjian Pingyao performance in Shanxi whose mother needed to constantly whisper them translations, and a pair of mixed teenage sisters who threw each other conspiratorial looks at the Muslim Quarter in Xi'an. I don't even remember how I felt about these visits when I was a small child, though I probably didn't appreciate them all that much, since they mostly consisted of talking to family members I didn't recognise, watching television, and being teased for my bad Chinese. Eventually I developed a lot of diaspora angst, which was one of the initial reasons why I'd planned this trip, although I was now more self-aware. I wondered if, in ten years' time, these little boys would look back at that moment in the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall and also feel nostalgia for a home that both was, and wasn't, theirs.

Outside, there were troupes of dancers and drummers rehearsing for some kind of event. Seb and I sat on the steps of the National Theatre (left in photo above) to watch the uniformed performers, and talked about a film idea we had: someone who works in a small photo-developing store who discovers stories hidden in other people's photographs. 

We walked to the 228 Peace Park (and telling Seb the, like, three things I know about that event) and at some point we must've picked up Blaise –– I don't remember. I flipped through the journal that I tried to keep this summer but I only really wrote on Hong Kong, and stopped when we arrived in Taipei, apart from a brief bit on the last day (more on that later...) I stopped doing a lot of things a week into the trip, such as brushing my hair. I got really tangly and plasticky because I didn't bring conditioner, so I would basically just wash it, let it air dry, and then throw it back into the ponytail that permanently hung out of the hole on the back of my baseball cap. I'd also long given up on makeup: the eyeliner would immediately melt in the heat and print a circle under my eyes, making me look like I'd come from the early-2000s emo scene. And I learned that there was no point in trying to avoid mosquitos. I diligently spread large quantities of anti-itch cream on my bites and sprayed lemony chemicals all over myself every morning, but it didn't stop a dozen bites from appearing every day, some swelling into astonishing proportions. I gave in to my primal urges and scratched them until they broke, leaving scabs on my arms and legs. This was a really terrible idea, because now, six months later, I still have faint scars that I fear shall never disappear. Don't scratch your bites, kids.

I also eventually gave up on this log, so know that there were many, many unrecorded ones, too.

The hostel was one of those really well-organised ones where they have events every day that you can join for free. The first night that we were there, one of the guests, who was a trainee hairstylist, was cutting hair in exchange for "stories". Seb really wanted to do it, but the person in front of us was waiting too long, so eventually we left. That second evening, Bonnie, one of the staff members, took a group of us to climb Elephant Mountain on the southeastern edge of the city. The climb was, frankly, one of the most difficult physical exercises I've ever had to do. Blaise and Seb quickly disappeared ahead, and I struggled to climb the individual stone steps up, feeling pressure both to keep up and to not block the people behind me. Every time I thought we were almost at the top, I would glimpse yet another row of stairs. I had to grip the filthy, paint-chipped banisters for support, which was disgusting. The copious amounts of sweat I was producing mixed in with the humidity in the air, making me feel like I was wearing a bodysuit made of pure moisture. I could feel it in my ears. I feel like that was when the floodgates of my sweat glands were pushed open––for the rest of the summer, I would be constantly mocked for having "a lake down my back" and "literal drops of water on my neck". On that fateful evening, Bonnie gave me tissues with which to physically wipe my sweat as a reward for reaching the top... and I would never be the same again.


The view, though, was worth it. We arrived just in time to watch the sun slowly set in the west, creating a gorgeous silhouette of the Taipei skyline, including the Taipei 101 building, with its joints of metal-and-glass bamboo (eight of them, naturally!). The viewing platform had a circular bench on which you could sit, and God did I want to sit, but it turned out that the tree in the middle of the circle was full of ants. So we stood, and watched the pink glow of the sky flush up Seb's face as he wore a pink hat, a pink shirt, and ate strawberry-flavored Pocky. Truly a Wes Anderson moment.

Touching the moss on the rocks.

The next day was spent doing what I did best on this trip: racking up those steps on Wechat. (My record was ~37'000 in Nanjing!) We navigated Taipei with our feet, checking out everything from the Huashan 1914 Creative Park (hipster heaven) to Zhongshan Park. Tsai Ing-wen, if you're reading this: please put more benches and garbage bins in Taipei, please. Sincerely, teenagers who walked for a very long time while holding our trash in our hands and with no rest.

We spent a great part of the afternoon looking for the Qi Dong Poetry Salon, which we thought was a poetry-themed tearoom/café.

The Google Street View for this quartier is actually bringing back all the war flashbacks... I even recognise some of these signs!

Following the directions given to me by Baidu Maps, we spun round and round the tiny lanes of Qidong street, finding only an empty playground, gray residential apartments, and worn-looking small businesses. I thought I was hallucinating: surely the Poetry Salon was right where we were standing! Why couldn't we see it? Had it been shut down? There was a traditional-looking house to our left, and I peered at the brochures in the glass case on the wall, trying to understand what this establishment was. It looked like some kind of museum or temple. We stepped inside, into a shushed hallway that required us to take our shoes off. Beyond the doorway, there were tatami mats and shadows of people walking around somewhere far off. Was this the Qi Dong Poetry Salon? I still didn't understand this building's function. A paragraph seemed to invite us to go inside for tea. Was it free? I was confused. Seb and Blaise knew nothing, of course. We hurried out before someone could ask us if we needed any help. I was convinced that the Poetry Salon was still out there, somewhere, waiting for us. It taunted me. It called me a coward for not being able to find it. I could feel my friends getting annoyed, though, and we were hot and thirsty, so we adjusted our search parameters to "anything with air conditioning". We ended up going into a café where I had a really awkward conversation with the barista because I misunderstood a quickfire "eat in or take out?" as "you're not allowed to bring in that milk tea that you bought from a different store". (After having spent the week in Hong Kong speaking English––terrified of offending locals by speaking Mandarin to them and knowing no Cantonese except m goi––I was still getting used to the fact that I could actually speak freely to people in Taipei. But who am I kidding? My Mandarin sucks.) We sat down, had some drinks and food, used the toilet, and played around with creating the Vertigo Effect on our phones. After spending enough time inside to feel guilty about not drinking in the city, we set off again, but not before taking some really cool selfies in one of the mirrors that they use to let drivers see around a corner.

We picked up some takeaway dumplings (the ladies asked me how many dumplings I wanted, but for some reason I thought they'd said how many grams... a fumbling exchange ensued where I became more and more embarrassed, but we did end up with a box of 15, which the ladies insisted weren't enough for all three of us. I reassured them that it was only for a snack) and walked down Zhongxiao East Road––the long horizontal line that cuts across all of Taipei, dividing it into two––window shopping until nightfall.

I think this was the day that we visited the Shilin Night Market, one of the places that, to this day, makes me "that annoying girl who won't stop talking about that time she went traveling in Asia". Yet, how could I not? A street full of mouth-watering smells and delightful sights. I can still remember the warm orange glow of the street stalls selling lamb skewers, Xinjiang wraps, Taiwanese sausages (Ô, l'amour de ma vie, les saucisses taïwanaises! Si grasses, si douces, si sucrées! Si dégueulasses! Mais tellement bons...!), seafood of all kinds, cold noodles, stinky tofu, Korean fried chicken, and––and––and––! Oh, my!!! While Seb and I walked around eating wonderful cold noodles off paper plates, Blaise dragged me to a stall that only sold chicken and asked me to translate the menu. After rattling off each item, he reluctantly chose the chicken thigh filled with rice. It was so spicy that tears filled his eyes, but he second he finished it, he ran back to buy a second one. If I was a street stall owner, this sight of a white guy running back to my stand crying––willing to suffer to enjoy my food––would bring me so much joy. Another stall helped us get rid of our rubbish (again, President Tsai: please put more bins in the streets!) while blasting Guan Zhe's 想你的夜, an absolutely iconic song that is one of those angsty C-pop ballads that make me miss my ex even though I don't have an ex.

After stuffing ourselves, we strolled into a clothing shop that sold really cool Instagrammy stuff like DHL T-shirts, flannels, and graphic tees (including one of FKA Twigs). While Seb and Blaise pored through the selection, I figured I could get the same stuff off Taobao anyway, so I wandered around and danced to the music being played on the speakers. The shop assistant was really nice, complimenting my outfit (a white sports polo paired with pink H&M sweat shorts, which, along with the permanent fixtures that were my cap and sneakers, made me look like a tennis player). He told me I had really cool style, and admired my confidence and lack of self-consciousness because he saw me dancing around. (And this is why summers are amazing! I'm writing this in December right now, and I would never have this kind of confidence in cold weather.) Likely assuming that I was Blaise and Seb's Taiwanese friend, he asked me where they were from, and when I replied, he said, "Oh. They're so shuai!"

The staff at the baseball cap store in Ximending were also super friendly. We'd walked past it in the first evening and decided to get custom embroidered hats, but it took us a while, the night after Shilin, to find it again. Each of us was convinced that we had the best combination of directional instinct and photographic memory, but ultimately I have no idea how we managed to come across it. I'm convinced that Ximending's side streets are magical, and shuffle around every night, with some shops being at times revealed or concealed, and that we simply didn't have the enchanted map. A few months previously, Seb and I had started planning potentially getting tattoos of minimalist Rothkos, but in Taipei we settled for hats. We each picked out a Rothko we liked, and I also designed a cap depicting a Swisscom photobooth for Gabriel. There was a fat guy dressed like a hypebeast and a girl who was the definition of "goth gf": all-black with silver chains and a sharp bob, but with the kindest demeanor and friendliest smile. They helped us finalise our design, and sweetly made us part with quite a lot of cash. The hats, when we picked them up a few days later, didn't turn out exactly as expected, with Seb's graphic looking more like a ribosome than was desired, but it wasn't really their fault.

With mango shaved ice! 

Blaise left halfway through the Taiwan stay. He had a flight in the morning got up at around 8 to take a taxi; I remained asleep while he snuck away. By the time I woke up at 11am, his bed was empty. "Why didn't you wake me up?" I asked Seb, feeling horrible. He replied, "I thought that if you woke up early you'd want to go outside. I wanted to stay in bed." That was that. The evening before he left, we deviated from our usual straight-line route from Ximen station to our hostel by visiting the Cinema Park, of which we knew nothing apart from its cool intriguing name. We were delightfully surprised by the graffiti everywhere. There was a giant painting of two herons on the side of a building. A girl was dancing in front of a camera fixed onto a tripod. After wandering around for a while, we sat down on the pavement next to the park itself, which was all concrete and included some young people wearing Thrasher and fishnets teaching themselves how to skate, which was adorable. This one guy kept going around doing tricks –– he obviously thought he was talented. Another girl was wobbling. The other half of the park was taken up by a huge group of teenagers wearing matching athletic wear and orange T-shirts: they were rehearsing for some kind of dance competition. They moved in almost-perfect synchronisation, with a few people at the front of the group directing the sharp, confident poses that they were striking. Another week and they'd nail it. Off to the side, some members were taking breaks, drinking water and chatting with their friends. We sat there on the (ant-infested, I worried) concrete and listened to the music being blasted for what seemed like an hour, staring at nothing and everything. In that moment, as scratched the massive mosquito bite on my wrist and I let the dusk take me, I felt like a true flâneur.

The day that Blaise left, Seb and I finally got to visit the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA). We had previously tried to go on a Monday when it was closed, and had instead spent some time in the tiny tea shop nearby where Blaise bought some tea for his mom. They only had one exhibit currently on –– another was being installed –– about the artist's father who would peel off spam adverts in the streets and fold them into origami boxes. I had to dissuade Seb from trying to shoplift from the museum shop. Then, bubble tea in hand, we decided to follow the path of a free walking tour that we were too cheap to take. All the while developing a slight addiction to whistling. It started out with me showing Seb Shostakovich's Jazz Waltz No. 2, which I had recently discovered, while sitting on a bench in Da'an. The tune soon became stuck in our heads (although I could never quite remember the whole thing) so we would belt it out, with some short breaks to pretend that we were on the walking tour by making up explanations for the history of the city. Seb is a far better whistler than I; he can reach all the high notes in Chopin's Nocturne No. 2. The route took us past the Taipei Grand Mosque, which I hadn't known existed, and into the Qingtian neighborhood full of little restaurants and cute stores. We bought some xiaolongbao to-go and sat down in a small park to eat it. That was the best xiaolongbao I had ever had: not too much soup, with the perfect sauce dip. Even after the time I spent in Nanjing and Shanghai, no other xiaolongbao would ever taste as good. There was a big tree with yellowing leaves so I took one to use as a fan. It was triple the size of my head. When we returned to the hostel, Bonnie let us borrow a permanent marker to draw Blaise's face on it. Thus Blaise was easily replaced.

The next day saw me and Seb going to the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, a massive, modern block of white in the north of the city. Outside there was an installation that featured white hammock-like structures and cool fog that would be sprayed out every once in a while. Seb and I stayed there to enjoy the respite from the heat. Tiny droplets of water latched themselves onto Seb's leg hair and glistened in the sunlight. Inside was a typical modern art museum with expansive spaces and interesting large-scale multimedia installations. We stayed inside a dark room with projections of blue waves for a while, listening to the sound of the ocean. We also visited the Story Museum nearby, which contained sketches of how Taipei used to look compared to now. It had a small swing set in a park and we sat there talking until our shadows got longer. That evening, we went to a restaurant that my Tumblr friend recommended. It had a queue around the block and a lady was going around giving us laminated menus. We ordered the famous eel rice, as well as some tempura, and were ushered into the busy room, where we sat at a large table facing some random girls. The tea was bottomless; all we had to do was go and get it from a giant dispenser and bring the boiling hot beverage across the crowded restaurant without being knocked over. It was delicious and totally worth it. It's called Hizenya.

The next day, something happened that I still talk about a lot. We had rather lazily wandered around Taipei and had decided to visit a cat café –– I no longer remember where it was, but we then had the brilliant idea of walking back to our hostel by following the river. Seb wanted to use a bike-sharing app; I didn't. We figured it would be nice to see the scenery. I held an empty bubble tea cup in a plastic bag and waited for a trash can to appear. We walked, and walked, and talked. We took photos. We played music out loud –– everything from Hotel California to Swan Lake. We got thirstier, but there was nothing to drink. We used porta-potties. Our legs began to ache, but we couldn't stop. We could only walk. There was only forwards. When we finally got to the point where Google Maps was telling us to turn east back to Chengdu Road, there was actually a giant wall. We had to cross busy traffic and go up some stairs in order to bypass the wall; beyond it, it was rush hour and a constant, endless stream of scooter drivers blocked us from being able to cross the road. 

Arriving at Meander was bliss. We immediately rushed to the water fountain and proceeded to chug from the glass.