In Defense of Taipei

Here’s my question.

And I write this as someone one month away from leaving her old-skool back-lane neighborhood and becoming a Da’an yuppie.

What the hell is up with all these folks who live outside Taipei who somehow think that “their Taiwan” is more real, is better, is somehow qualitatively a step above Taipei? What is so bad or wrong about Taipei?

I know these folks like to think of it as an easy-peasy expat cocoon, where you never have to work to hard, study Chinese too much or get your feet wet. I know that that can be true: it’s certainly possible to set yourself up nicely in a foreigner enclave like Tianmu or even Shida/Gongguan and not have to try too hard. It’s easy to spend your weekends on Anhe Road and make only other foreign friends.

But just because one can do that doesn’t mean that one actually does. Taipei is a Taiwanese city just like any other, even if it lacks some of the, what’s the word, ineffable cultural qualities of cities elsewhere in the country. It’s only “warm and safe” for foreigners here if you seek that out. If you don’t, you can live a life that is not, to be honest, all that much different from someone living elsewhere – except the case could be made that there’s more to do, and not all of it is touristy.

Take a look at my soon-to-be-erstwhile neighborhood, Jingmei. (By the way, regarding my last post, Lao Wu’s not dead. I clearly misunderstood the old ladies, although I was certain they said ‘她過了’ so I’m not sure how). What have we got? One local coffeeshop that plays The Carpenters and serves Japanese curry. A night market. Old folks who hang out outside and gossip. A stinky tofu/thin oyster noodle vendor. A chicken coop where they’ll even kill the chicken for you. A-Xiong’s “everything” store. A few 7-11s. A Wellcome. A breakfast restaurant that turns into a betel nut stand after dark across from an 按摩店. Old ladies and Vietnamese domestic workers who collect recycling when the trash truck comes. Guys who own the breakfast/etel nut shop outside in wife beaters and 藍白拖 drinking all sorts of local liquor at all hours, who always say hello and often give me a shot of Gaoliang. My neighbors are Taiwanese – most of them prefer to speak Taiwanese or Hakka, in fact – and none of them speak English. Most are too old to have learned it in school and those who did have mostly forgotten. I have to speak Chinese and integrate into the neighborhood like everyone else. No helpful English, no special stores, no special help, no swanky cafes.

I have my old lady gang, just like any self-respecting wannabe-obasan should. I have my local friends. I have the people I see every day and greet. In Chinese, if not Taiwanese.

How is this any different from a neighborhood where I might live in, say, Yunlin or Miaoli or wherever? How is it any easier or any more foreigner-friendly?

Sure, I have more work opportunities. I couldn’t do what I do anywhere else except possibly Hsinchu: not even Kaohsiung has the demand for it. In fact I’ve been sent to Kaohsiung for seminars because there is a demand, just not enough to sustain much local English corporate training business. I can and do avail myself of public transportation: besides my own driving limitations (I really don’t drive – I mean I know how, and I have a license, but I have very little experience and I’m not that good at it), I really feel that public transit is superior to private. It’s better for the environment and it’s more social.

It saddens me that Taiwan is not investing enough in both building and encouraging the use of public transportation. This does not make a Taipei-based expat inferior: I’d argue that it makes them more environmentally attuned. Yay for MRTs, boo for gas guzzlers and polluting scooters.

Yes, I can take that MRT to swankier bars – although compared to Istanbul, Taipei’s nightlife kind of sucks – and nice cafes, and I have more choice than elsewhere on the island, but an expat based in a Kaohsiung, Taizhong or Hsinchu can go to similar foreigner-friendly places. Sure, they don’t have Carnegie’s, but I don’t go to Carnegie’s. At most of my favorite spots - including Shake House and La Boheme, my two favorites – the beer is good but English is barely spoken.

Again, how does this make my life easier, less authentic or less “really in Taiwan” than if I were to live elsewhere?

Honestly, ride a bike through the lanes, talk to the shopkeepers and old folks outside socializing (a perennial favorite of mine). Go to the 100-kuai beer and seafood joints – I was quoted regarding them in the South China Morning Post not long ago, unfortunately the article is no longer online – go to Dihua Street or just wander Wanhua, Dadaocheng or Dalongdong. Go to Bao’an Temple (my personal favorite).

How is any of that not the real Taiwan? These are the places where I tend to hang out (what can I say, I like old urban stuff), and I can guarantee that by doing so, my life is not easier, more cosseted or more cocooned than someone living outside Taipei. I am not superior (although I am more environmentally friendly with no wheels!), but I am not inferior, either, and I’m sick of hearing it. I’m sorry, but Taipei is just as good as whatever town y’all live in, and it is not necessarily any easier to live here. It’s only easier if you let it be.

Finally, most of my local friends in Taipei are not from Taipei – with a few notable exceptions (I do have one friend who waxes rhapsodic on how he and his grandmother would go for oyster omelets by 圓環 in the ‘70s). They’re from Kaohsiung County, Nantou, Miaoli…they weren’t born here, but they’d balk at the idea that – while plenty of southerners call Taipei “台北國” – it’s not just as much “Taiwan” as any other part of Taiwan.

"Why Bother?"

A quick thought on the ever-shifting poll numbers of Ma Ying-jiu and Tsai Ying-wen...

What worries me is that four-ish years ago, when Ma swept into office, it was on a wave from what I could only describe as resignation. Ennui, almost. From my perspective, I could almost palpably feel the defeat-before-we've-even-fought-the-fight from the DPP side, a sort of quiet sigh as they, in droves, decided not to vote.

I don't say the above lightly - I have a lot of local friends, most of them green, and almost none of them voted. Some never vote. Some don't care. Some care, but don't vote. Some thought "why bother traveling home on election day when we're going to lose anyway?" And lose they did, but I have to ask if it really had to be that way, or if the DPP could have at least put up a better fight if it'd had any fight in it after A-bian.

And now, I see it again. A sort of why-even-bother harrumph from the green side - the side that I always thought of as more passionate and invested in their beliefs than all those "I vote blue because my parents are blue but I don't actually care/know anything/think about politics"young Taipei urbanite kids. A sort of self-prophecy of defeat that worries me anew.

I didn't actually think that Frank Hsieh would win back in the day - the A-bian scandals (if you could call them that compared to what the KMT has done to Taiwan) were too fresh, too new, and after 8 years of DPP rule the country seemed poised to return to the blue side - as much as I didn't like it, I couldn't deny it.

I think Tsai could actually have a shot, though. If - if - she can mobilize the base, the independents, the undecideds, the light blues who don't like Ma. She could do it, even if she does lack a certain charisma or spark: Ma, honestly, lacks the same spark. I mean, seriously. No. Just...no. Put on a shirt, pasty-boy.

But despite this, I don't think she'll win, because although she could have the support, I see the same "why bother", the same "oh Ma will win it", the same lethargy and slow unraveling. I see thousands of folks who live in Taipei but are registered down south who won't bother making the trip. I see Taiwanese abroad who won't bother coming back. Why, when you are so sure your candidate is going to lose?

Glue Dots

While we were in the USA, we bought the materials necessary to make our wedding album in Taiwan. We knew that similar materials would be hard to find and likely more expensive here, even though photo printing is fantastically cheaper.

It's true, too: just try finding a nice, classy photo album that doesn't have pictures of cartoon dogs and cats and stars and babies and dodgy English ("Forever My Always Friend!") and fluffy clouds made with the spray-paint effect of a mid-90s version of MS Paint. Try finding an album that doesn't force you to fit in exact rows of regulation-size 4x6 photos in little slots with no room for sizing, spacing, tableau creation, artistic scrapbook-like additions (I'm not into scrapbooking per se and can't stand the little theme stickers, but the papers are nice and some elements of it work nicely in dedicated photo albums) or any sort of classy presentation. Muji sells a few versions but they're all very plain. A few souvenir shops sell pretty Chinese-style decorated ones, but inside it's all 4x6 photo slots, not blank paper.

And just try finding acid-free photo glue, glue tape or glue dots. They exist, but are frighteningly hard to come by. It seems that in Taiwan you either buy a cheap album covered in puppies and kittens and stick your photos in there, or you get pro photos made and the photographer prints up a book for you - standard for weddings and pictures of daughters in princess costumes and occasionally over-indulged Maltese dogs. Although DIY was a big thing in Taiwan several years ago, these days people just don't make their own fancy photo albums and they certainly don't DIY their wedding albums (we ran into the same issues DIYing our wedding invitations. Apparently nobody does that) - so the materials are hard to come by.

What's my point?

Well, we go into a photo store - you know, similar to one of the Konica ones with the blue sign - which prints photos, sells camera batteries, frames and photo albums with puppies and kittens on them, and a few with roses ("The love is our special bonding") and ask about acid-free glue to make a photo album.

After getting over the initial shock of the idea that two people would make their own wedding album, they said that they did not, in fact, carry such glue.

The thing I noted was that one of the women immediately got on the phone and called not one, but three - three - other stores to find a shop that sold such glue for us. First she was sure that there was a place in Shinkong Mitsukoshi that stocked it (no). Then that there was one "around Taipei Main" (yeah, just try walking around Taipei Main asking random people "Do you know where that store is that sells acid-free glue?") and finally she found it at 誠品.

Now, in the USA it wouldn't work this way. You'd drive to Michael's in your gas guzzler, wander the football-field sized cornucopia of DIY goodies (including whatever you need to make a cornucopia), find your acid-free glue dots in the scrapbooking section, and pay for them. You might not even talk to the cashier. Then you'd hop back in your car, possibly get lunch at Panera, and drive home.

In short: zero social interaction.


In Taiwan, this stuff is harder to find, you're never sure which store or even which kind of store carries what (ask me someday about finding leaf skeletons), and half the time it's just luck or knowing someone who knows where to get it.

But then you walk into a place like this one, in some random lane off Roosevelt Road, and the clerk really helps you, and you chat with her, and she tells you how she'd like to make photo albums too but the materials are so expensive, and you pet someone's dog, and she makes a few phone calls, and the next time you come in she recognizes you and asks you if you found the glue you needed.

This is one reason why I love living in Taiwan.

It's easy to get in the car and go to Michael's, but it's infinitely more rewarding to actually talk to people. Forget real glue dots for photos - these small interactions are figurative, social glue dots that form community.

I realize you can do this in many parts of the USA, but my experience has been that it's just not that common anymore, especially with the rise of suburbs and the patterns of interaction they create between people (ie, no interaction). What I find interesting is that my experience is the opposite of what you hear many Americans saying: you always hear about friendliness and everyone knowing everyone in small towns, and the meanness of big, scary anonymous cities. My small town was OK - not too friendly, not too unfriendly. I couldn't go to the pharmacy on Main Street and have the guy behind the counter know me by sight or name. You can go out and be warmly greeted, but not because people actually know you, and rarely because they remember you. Whereas in cities where I've lived, sure, if you leave your neighborhood you're anonymous but if you are doing anything - shopping, drinking coffee, taking a walk, waiting at a bus stop - people from your neighborhood know you, recognize you and greet you. I think this has everything to do with the fact that in those neighborhoods people got in their cars (if they even had cars) a lot less.

But I digress. I haven't felt the same warmth in the USA as I do in Taiwan, and I don't necessarily think it's just because I'm a foreigner (all those old townies and obasans who sit outside gossiping in their social circles, deeply embedded in their neighborhood community, are not foreigners). I don't think the owner of a store in the USA would be likely to call three other stores to help me find what I needed because she didn't sell it (maybe in some places they would - it just hasn't been my experience). I'm not at all sure that same owner would remember me the next time I came in (although that, in Taiwan, might well have a lot to do with my being a foreigner, especially living in a neighborhood with so few of them around).

Now, I'll end on a sad note. We're moving soon (in a month, in fact). We're not leaving Taiwan, just moving from Wenshan to Da'an, to a gorgeous refurbished apartment that we fell in love with on first viewing (wood floors! a dryer! a water filter! a bathtub! stucco walls! a tatami-floored tea alcove!). I've felt really great about changing apartments but also sad about leaving my little Jingmei enclave and saying goodbye to all the vendors, old folks, shop owners and various loiterers I greet daily. Sad about leaving my favorite night market and knowing the vendors who I buy dinner from. Sad about not occasionally waking up to the sounds of the chickens squawking from the chicken vendor one lane over.

Near my apartment is another residential building of roughly the same era (when everything that was built was ugly), with an awning and old chairs by the entrance. I used to sit outside and gossip with the old ladies who gathered there. The nexus - the glue dot - of this octogenarian (and older) clique was Old Wu, who lived on the 2nd floor and had a decrepit old dog named Mao Mao. He was killed when a scooter hit him a few years ago (I was very attached to Mao Mao and I did shed a few tears). Even if the other old ladies were out napping or taking care of grandchildren or wandering around, I would often sit outside with her, and pet Mao Mao when he was alive, and shoot the breeze. Even when that breeze was the first hint of a typhoon blowing in.

Her health was deteriorating before we left for Turkey. I noticed that the glue was coming a bit loose: the old ladies no longer met under the awning, what with Old Wu in the hospital and not there to hold court. They moved to the temple goods store (you know, gold paper lotus offerings, incense etc.) next to Ah-Xiong's shop. I joined them there a few times, but there aren't enough chairs and it's too close to the chickens, which, frankly, stink.

I knew that Old Wu didn't have long, but I didn't think I'd never see her again. I guess I figured, those ladies are pretty tough, and most of them are surprisingly ancient. Old Taiwanese ladies never die, right?

Well, she succumbed to her poor health and passed away while we were in Turkey. I only found out when we got back, and suddenly those empty old chairs were a lot sadder, now that I knew their unsat-in condition was no longer temporary. I cried a fair bit on the way back up to my apartment and was extra winded when I got to the top from doing so (another reason to move: six floor walkup in this place. No more).

Old Wu was my glue dot in Jingmei. She and her group, whose ages totaled must have topped 500, made me feel welcome, like I was part of a community. I didn't feel like a foreigner, a novelty or something strange or different. They'd seen a lot in their lives (a lot - anyone that age in Asia has) and a young foreign girl was really nothing chart-topping. They just accepted me as another part of their life experience (and also told me all about my husband's arm hair and how many kids we should have, but that's another story).

I don't believe in signs. I really don't - but if I did, a case could be made that the end of an era has come and it's time to leave Jingmei - not because Old Wu passed on (I'm not so self-centered as to believe that the universe killed an old lady just to tell me to move!) but because my old lady gossip circle is no more, and because it's just different now. I feel released, pulled off a page, and it's time to find a new glue dot and adhere somewhere else for awhile...even if that somewhere else is technically just up the road.

In Defense of Taiwanese Food

I know, I haven't updated in awhile - at least, awhile for me.

First, the jetlag.

Then, getting thrown right back into work.

Then, I came down with a migraine followed immediately by very quick and dirty virus - some kind of 24-hour flu.

I can say that since I've been back in Taiwan, I've been diving in - not quite literally, but if I could don a bathing suit and do so literally, I probably would - to eating all of my favorite foods. I realize there are Taiwan bloggers out there who don't like the food here ("bland" and "greasy" are two adjectives I've heard to describe it) but I simply think they're wrong. I started dreaming about wontons in chili oil (紅油抄手) within weeks of landing in Turkey - even though Turkish food is spectacular - and I relish the smell of stinky tofu as one would a smelly gourmet French cheese.

So far I've crammed my gullet and fattened my gut with:

Korean flavor pot stickers (韓式鍋貼)


Wontons in chili oil (紅油抄手)


Oyster vermicelli (蚵仔麵線)


Thai-style fried chicken (泰式幾塊)


Octopus Balls (章魚球)   


"Stuff on Sticks" (肉串- but not necessarily always meat)


Zhanghua-style "rice gluten" meatballs (彰化肉圓）


Cheap sushi on a conveyer belt


North Chinese style pork roll (大餅豬捲)


Burmese style noodles (緬甸何粉 - not an exact translation)


Stinky tofu (臭豆腐)


...and plenty of Chinese-based Taiwanese food that I got for free from the buffet at the long-term seminar thing I just finished for work.


Not bad considering that I've been sick and had next to no appetite!


I'm still excited to enjoy, in the near future, oyster omelets, Tainan-style shrimp roll rice, dry noodles, tea eggs, stewed meat rice (魯肉飯), BBQ squid on a stick, clams stir fried with basil, 1oo-yuan seafood, lumpia (the thin crepe wraps with red-cooked pork and vegetables) and many other favorites.



This is why I get annoyed when I read posts like "Taiwanese food is bland" or "Everybody says Taiwanese food is good, but it isn't, because all those foreigners who claim to like Taiwanese food regularly eat foreign food". I call bullshit.

Well, on the first one, that's really a matter of taste: yes, Mr. Blogger, Taiwanese food may well be bland to you, but it isn't to me. I can taste many delicate layers of flavor in simple dishes and appreciate the flavors and textures in dishes that might seem gloopy and pointless to some (it helps that I like that gooey texture that is so popular in Taiwanese food).


On the second, well, yes, it's often greasy, usually unhealthy and frighteningly easy to fatten up on - but the idea that in order to properly "like" Taiwanese food, you can't eat non-Taiwanese food (and if you do, even occasionally, it's somehow evidence that you "don't like" Taiwanese food) is thoroughly ridiculous. It's OK to like many different kinds of food, among them the culinary delights of Taiwan.


What I'll say is this: criticize it all you want, if that's you're opinion, but don't pretend that your opinion is fact. I happen to think Taiwanese food is fantastic. So fantastic, in fact, that while in the culinary mecca of Turkey I was thinking about how much I'd like some of my various favorites from Taiwan. The first thing we did when we got back wasn't to go to some famous spot or even see friends (waited for the weekend for that) - we went out to eat, and very consciously so. To deliberately eat some of the food we'd missed so much: chili oil wontons, green papaya in passionfruit sauce and cold coriander chicken.

Updated: The Best Coffee in Taipei

I just updated my post on the best coffee in Taipei to include Rufous, on Fuxing S. Road just north of Xinhai. I was tipped off by another expat that this place makes some great stuff.

I'm pretty serious about my coffee and have a few more places I've found that I'd like to try and possibly add to this list - I need to see if Black Bean still exists as well as a place I went to in Dapinglin once, years ago. I'll keep everyone posted!

The Public Transit Conundrum

This editorial on public transit in Taiwan is something I really agree with. It's quite timely for me, having just returned from the USA, to talk briefly about public transit in Taipei. Taishun Street has a number of articulate posts on the topic, so take a look over there if you want another pro-public-transit perspective.

When we lived in the Washington, DC area, and when we returned in our early Taiwan years to DC to visit friends and some of my extended family, we relied heavily on public transit there. This trip was different: now almost all of our friends own cars and since we are mainly in town to see them, they're usually kind enough to give us rides - and when we go "sightseeing" (more like revisiting old favorite places, seeing new monuments) we no longer take Metro or Metrobus: one person drives - usually our friend M who is a bold city driver and has great luck with street parking - and we all pile in.

I used to think that public transit in DC was great - after all it's widely believed to be the best public transit system in the USA. I would contest that: it beats out the L, the T, BART and whatever Philadelphia has. Sure, unlike New York it's air-conditioned, trains are generally clean and it doesn't smell like urine and homeless people. That said, it's not nearly as extensive as it needs to be (only New York can claim that mantle, of all American transit systems), the waiting time for trains is really unacceptable, especially on the outer ends of the lines that double up in the city, the stations are dark and creepy (one book calls them "attractive and well-lit". I want to know what that guy is smoking!) and the buses are unreliable and inconvenient to use on the outskirts of the Metro area.

In Taipei we regularly use public transit to get to trailheads for hiking or go on day trips. You can go far on the MRT, bus network and buses leaving Taipei, although once you leave the area around Taipei City, you may have to fill in the gaps with taxis - fortunately, taxis are cheap. The DC equivalent would be using public transit to take day trips to Baltimore, Ocean City, Annapolis or Richmond, hike the Billy Goat Trail, go down to Shenandoah or up to Harper's Ferry. Well, you can't do any of those things. Technically you can take a bus to Baltimore or Richmond but once there you can't really go anywhere, and you can take a train to Harper's Ferry but due to departure/arrival times, you can't do it in a day trip. You're looking at at least a full day and two nights.

So yeah, now that I live in Taipei, I've long since stopped thinking that public transit in DC is great, or even good. In fact, now I think it kind of sucks. It has its defenders, but I say: its defenders haven't been to Taipei where the stations are clean and bright, the escalators always work, there are restrooms (and they're generally quite good!), trains come an average of every five minutes and signs will tell you down to five seconds when the next one is coming. Come to Taipei, take a few day trips or flit around the city on public transit, and then go back to DC and tell me if it's any good. You can throw me an e-mail from your bus stop after your bus arrives 20 minutes late if at all, or while you're waiting 14 minutes for a train, or the Red Line is on fire (again), or you're huffing and puffing up a long, out-of-service escalator.

Anyway, back to Taiwan. Taipei has excellent public transit - and it'll be even better once the MRT reaches its planned network size, but let's be honest: the rest of the country doesn't. From what I hear, it used to: buses would travel far more extensive networks and depart more often and you could get to a lot of places that you now need a car to reach. Only Kaohsiung and the High Speed Rail have been improvements (my only complaints about the HSR is that it doesn't go down to Kending and that the stations are too far from city centers. Otherwise, I love it and use it often for work: of course, since it's mostly for work I don't have to pay for it).

I agree with 鄧志忠's editorial in this case: Taipei has done an excellent job of building a fantastic MRT from scratch in an astoundingly short time, but the rest of Taiwan is really lacking good public transit - if anything, it's gotten worse.
This is a huge problem: Taiwan shouldn't be going in the direction of postwar America, where suburbs created a greater need for cars (encouraged, of course, by auto manufacturers and oil companies), public transit in many urban centers was dismantled or never built at all, and when it was built it wasn't nearly extensive enough. Only New York, which was ahead of the curve, managed to build something useful - because it did so mostly pre-war. If it had waited to start building subways, it too would be woefully inadequate. So what did Americans do? They all bought cars, they spewed and continue to spew pollution into the atmosphere, and they've all convinced themselves that they need, need, need their Earth-killing, congestion-inducing cars - so when public transit is introduced, nobody takes it ("but I need my car! Waaaaah!"). Do we really want that in Taiwan? I don't think so, but that's the direction we're headed in. Convince people that they need cars and they'll, well, they'll need cars. Show people how great life can be if a public transit network is extensive enough to suit their needs, and they'll take public transit.


Instead of building more highways - although that needs to be done to some degree, as well - there should be more investment in buses on rural routes, especially mountain routes where people unused to mountain driving would probably be better off not nervously swinging around high-altitude switchbacks for hours on end. Taichung really, truly needs a public transit system that doesn't suck: a lot of people say that Taichung is a fine place to live. Some go so far as to say that it's the best city to settle in for expats. I disagree: it will never be good enough without public transit. If you need to buy a scooter to get around, it's not ideal. This is one way in which I believe Taipei is really the better place to live, even if the weather sucks and I disagree with its political bent. Build an MRT and I'll consider Taichung as a place worth living in.


Because, really, public transit is good for everyone: it relieves road congestion and chaos for those who must or should drive (couriers, salespeople who make several daily client calls, people giving elderly relatives a ride etc.), it's more environmentally friendly, it reduces smog and pollution and it encourages more walking and reduces isolation. It's also good for people who: hate driving; who can drive but hate city, open highway and mountain driving (me); are legally blind or otherwise can't drive (a friend of mine as well as a friend of my mother's fall into this category); the elderly who are too infirm or blind to drive; and those who are simply bad drivers. Having to drive to get anywhere is extremely limiting for those people. 


So, in the end, we want to be going in the opposite direction of the USA. Taiwan should be encouraging public transit, not opposing it and definitely not shrinking it - which is a real concern, as bus routes are, in fact, shrinking island-wide. Taichung, Hualien, Taidong, Taoyuan, Yilan, Luodong and Hsinchu all need improved networks (even if it's just buses - though Taichung is big enough to warrant an actual MRT). We need to encourage the public to use public transit, reminding them that no, you don't need a car. Of course, first, we need to build networks extensive enough to serve people's needs so they're not actually right when they say they need a car. 

Taipei, Percolating

We arrived back in Taipei late last night.

I've taken long vacations before - up to six weeks - but this is the first time I've spent more than two months (nine weeks) away since I moved to Taipei five years ago. On all of these trips, but this one more than most, the taxi ride back to our apartment from Taipei Main (we could take the MRT but we usually don't when we have lots of bags) has been a mostly familiar but also slightly disorienting experience.

I always seem to forget while I'm away that the architecture of Taipei takes some getting used to. I love this city and in many ways think it's beautiful (as one friend put it, "it has a patina"), but that is not an immediate reaction: that's a view cultivated over time, as the aesthetics of Taipei percolate and settle in my brain like so much dark coffee. Let's face it: while plenty of buildings in Taipei have distinct and compelling facades - from the turn-of-the-century shophouses to the whalebone-ribbed and color-tiled mid-century mid-rises - many are not so visually arresting. I'm talking concrete or white tile buildings, buildings that, rather than having a lovely "patina", really just could use a good scrubbing, featureless buildings with backlit neon signs and chock-a-block street-level shops along mangled sidewalks.

It's when these monstrosities settle in your brain and you stop looking at them that you adjust to Taipei and see other things - a charming black-and-white church on Chang-an Road or the '60s funktacular post office jutting into view along the highway to Linkou, views down busy roads on the brown line MRT, street food vendors cooking up all manner of greasy treats, a Japanese era corner house-turned-coffeeshop on Zhongshan Road, inviting restaurants, little parks, derelict Japanese wooden houses and the old shophouse outlines of renovated buildings still in use.

That's not what I see when I come back to Taipei after a long trip, though. After banishing the concrete monstrosities to the back of my consciousness, they hurtle back into full view after time away. They whiz by, advertising chain boutiques I don't shop in, scooter repair, 7-11, plumbing and electrician services, restaurants. Above float darkened, barred windows stamped with hideous conformity into dark gray hulks. I'll say it: the taxi ride back was ugly, like U-G-L-Y, you ain't got no alibi, you UGLY ugly. After renting a garden apartment in a charming rowhouse in Istanbul for a month, the six flights (six flights!) of cement stairs and peeling paint back to our apartment in Jingmei were ugly. I'd forgotten how ugly the kitchen is, and the view from it has never spectacular (although I've grown quite fond of the neon cross from the nearby church that glows red at night. You don't have to be Christian to appreciate Christian camp).

I feel it's been made worse this time due to the length of time we've been gone, the extended period of time we spent in Istanbul, which is generally more attractive, and the fact that living in Istanbul even for a short period and taking a class there has changed me and my perception of the world more deeply than one of our usual trips would.

Oh well. This only reinforces my desire to move into a newer, nicer apartment, and I'll stop actively noticing the horrible architecture soon. All of the things that are attractive about Taipei will come back into focus in time. Tonight I'll probably seek out one of my favorite haunts in Gongguan, if I'm not too jet-lagged, pour myself a classy beer and look out on the pretty-ish lanes around Wenzhou Street, and it'll come back.