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I'm in Taipei; all the city I could ask for, plus all the Chinese culture I could possibly demand, and at least recently (don't ask about 28 February 1947) rather more averse to shooting peaceful demonstrators than its neighbour across the Formosan Strait.
Explanation of title: I've spent three or four hours wandering down main streets, and I think I've seen three non-Chinese faces; say, about the number of people you'd see in black dress and black veil if you walked around average bits of London for an equal time, or the number of non-white faces you'd see (if I'm to believe the BBC when reporting BNP hijinx) in Oldham.
I've been to the (enormous) shrines for Chiang Kai Shek and Sun Yat Sen, and can't help thinking more of divus Augustus than of the Jefferson Monument; this is a culture with a process for deification (the war-god Guangong was apparently a real general of about the time of King John, and the world-explorer Zheng Ho, contemporary with Agincourt, is getting towards the pantheon), and as I watched the hourly changing of the guard in front of Chiang and Sun's monumental statues, I thought that's what I was seeing. I may of course be wrong.
Beef noodles for lunch, in the company of a nice New York Taiwanese family who gave me all sorts of advice on what to visit next, then teppanyaki cuttlefish followed by Mowenpick creme-brulee and chocolate-with-apricots ice cream for supper.
It would be extravagent to go up Taipei 101 again some morning to get views of Taipei by day to go with the ones I have by night, but it's the kind of extravagence I'm known for ...
Explanation of title: I've spent three or four hours wandering down main streets, and I think I've seen three non-Chinese faces; say, about the number of people you'd see in black dress and black veil if you walked around average bits of London for an equal time, or the number of non-white faces you'd see (if I'm to believe the BBC when reporting BNP hijinx) in Oldham.
I've been to the (enormous) shrines for Chiang Kai Shek and Sun Yat Sen, and can't help thinking more of divus Augustus than of the Jefferson Monument; this is a culture with a process for deification (the war-god Guangong was apparently a real general of about the time of King John, and the world-explorer Zheng Ho, contemporary with Agincourt, is getting towards the pantheon), and as I watched the hourly changing of the guard in front of Chiang and Sun's monumental statues, I thought that's what I was seeing. I may of course be wrong.
Beef noodles for lunch, in the company of a nice New York Taiwanese family who gave me all sorts of advice on what to visit next, then teppanyaki cuttlefish followed by Mowenpick creme-brulee and chocolate-with-apricots ice cream for supper.
It would be extravagent to go up Taipei 101 again some morning to get views of Taipei by day to go with the ones I have by night, but it's the kind of extravagence I'm known for ...
