Sunday March 6, 2011

10:30 a.m. Taipei

I love weekends. This is the first weekend in a while during which I’ve stayed in Taipei, and I’m enjoying it very much. I was wearing myself out with all the weekend trips. And in truth, there are an endless number of things to do and see in Taipei. I’ve been here a long time, but I’ve experienced very little of what the city has to offer. There is simply too much. People ask me all the time if I will ever settle down in Canada, and despite all the great things about life in Canada I could list, I don’t think I could ever be content in a city there after the cities of Asia. I honestly don’t know how immigrants from this part of the world can ever be happy in Canada. Once you’re used to the life of a place like Taipei, the life of Toronto would seem quite bland.

A friend of mine called me yesterday afternoon around four o’clock wondering if I wanted to walk down to the river and then over to a night market. I went with him and we had a great adventure. We didn’t go very far from this neighborhood where we both live, but I still saw so much that I hadn’t seen before. You can walk in any direction down any street and find yourself with so much to look at and experience. A place like Taipei makes you wonder how in the world people in Canada eat and feed themselves. Here, I swear there are fifteen restaurants and twenty street stalls per person. And they sell thousands of different snacks and foods. It’s astonishing. I often wonder about the children here and how over time they get to know the names of all the possibilities for snacks. In Canada, it’s pretty easy. A kid will clamor for ice cream, or a chocolate bar, or potato chips. Here, they will clamor for any one of a thousand delicacies. I don’t even know how they can choose among them. And they are such wild things that a kid in Canada would probably gag upon trying to eat them. Yet, these kids eat them up and think they’re the greatest snack ever.

Early in our walk, we came across a stone store. It held an astonishing array of stones, minerals, beads, and marbles. It was a fun place to explore. I’ve walked through that neighborhood a dozen times and never saw this store before. When we got to the river, we were entertained by a grass fire that had somehow sprung up on an island. There was nothing on the island but grass, so it wasn’t an emergency, but the local fire departments had been scrambled. It was great fun to watch, as the fire trucks tried desperately to get near the fire. It was like the keystone cops. The firetrucks, just as I do constantly, found themselves on bridges and highways and overpasses that they couldn’t get off. They went racing across the river on a bridge and then tried desperately on the other side to turn around and come back. Then they found themselves trapped on another set of roads. Back and forth they went in a crazy circle. I thought perhaps they knew of a way, a road down to this island, but there was none. They eventually had to stop on a nearby bridge and then shoot their water hoses into the air and try to have the water come down on the distant fire. If it came down at all, it would have come down in a light mist, so eventually they just gave up and let the fire burn itself out.

From there, Scott and I walked along the river. Taipei has a very extensive river park with walking paths and bike paths. I wouldn’t call the park pleasant in the way that river parks in Canada would be pleasant. However, it is certainly interesting. The most intriguing aspect to this river park is the massive concrete wall that runs the entire distance of the river, separating the river from the city. I’m guessing it is there as a flood control measure. There are markers up the wall showing the height that the water could reach. I can’t imagine it though. I can’t imagine the water of this river ever getting that high. It must be a possibility, though. Otherwise, why did the city go to the trouble and expense of building the wall? The wall is like something out of science fiction. Above and around it is a set of highways and bypasses and bridges, massive concrete structures soaring and spinning all around you in the air. It is pure urban concrete wilderness. It’s the kind of place in most cities that you’d avoid for fear of being attacked and robbed. Taipei, however, is perfectly safe and I never even think about such things.

Getting from the city to the river and the river park is something of a challenge. The massive concrete wall stands there barring your path. To get through, you have to locate one of the few doors built into it. Some of the doors are about the size of a door into a house. On one side, traffic, buildings, noise, thousands of people. Then you step through this door in a high concrete wall, and there are grass and birds and a river. It is almost magical. There is also the occasional larger door through which can pass scooters and cars. And some neighborhoods have huge concrete stairways climbing up and over the wall.

The river levels are quite low right now, and the riverside was a vast mud plain. Scott had recently picked up some kind of aloe vera plant. He wanted to repot it into a bigger pot, and one day he got soil from the riverside. The aloe vera plant promptly sickened and died. No surprise there. It’s nice to walk along a river, but this is not a river you’d want to go swimming in. I have this mental image of your limbs simply dissolving in the water as if you had stepped into acidic toxic sludge, which is probably not far off the truth.

We eventually made our way over a set of stairs and back into the city. Then we were in a part of the city known as Hsimen Ding. It’s not a traditional night market. It is a place where the young and the hip go to hang out. I like it there, not because I’m young and hip, but because it is a pedestrian-only area. Thousands of people mill around going to one of the many movie theaters and sampling the snacks from the food stalls and local restaurants. We saw several street performers, including a foreigner who juggled crystal balls and spun flaming sticks. A woman playing a full drum set drew a crowd of hundreds. We stopped at all the different food stalls to see what was on offer. I stopped at a fruit juice stand that sold all kinds of things I didn’t recognize. The giant blender is right there, and you pick your fresh fruit and it all goes into the blender and in a few seconds you have a delicious fruit juice. I went for the traditional this time and I got a mix of pineapple and watermelon. It was the kind of drink that comes as a shock to your whole body with its incredible flavor.

By the time Scott and I got back to our neck of the woods, we had been out there on our walk for over five hours. And it felt like we had barely been gone at all. It was nearing eleven p.m. as we made our way back and the streets were still full of life. Another astonishing thing is how friendly everyone here is. We went into quite a few shops and stopped at a number of cafes and restaurants and food stalls and everyone greeted us with a big smile and lots of help. In terms of the world of backpacking, Taiwan is still unspoiled territory. It isn’t like Thailand where the local people have tired of the tens of thousands of backpackers who pass through every month. It isn’t like India where foreigners are seen as walking wallets. It isn’t like Africa where foreigners cause shock and confusion and where you have to be on your guard for robbery and other dangers. The Taiwanese are confident, happy people and they love to have a foreigner show up at their business just as they would be happy to have a local person show up. We are all customers, and they go out of their way to show the foreigner this or that traditional snack.

Tags: Canada, fire, Hsimen Ding, Taipei, Thailand