An Ohioan In Asia

Taipei Tango

July 11th, 2006

We arrived in Taipei, Taiwan, the evening of July 6, 2006. The airport arranged for us to stay at a hotel that evening, since our flight to Honolulu would not depart until the following afternoon. A Vietnamese woman from Canada told me about a free half-day tour of Taipei the following morning, and five of us decided to take it. That meant getting up at six a.m. to return to the airport, but it beat sitting all morning in a hotel room.

Taipei stands in sharp contrast to most of the other cities we visited in SE Asia. It is cleaner and much more modern. It’s more affluent and more expensive — about as expensive as the United States I would say. There are more cars on the road and fewer motorbikes. The city is veiled in smog.

Driving through the city, we noticed something very unusual. We noticed very attractive women, typically wearing mini-skirts, sitting “inside” store-front displays. The women looked like mannequins, placed in the middle of a brightly decorated display case. The “betel nut ladies” sit in these windows and wait for customers to pull up to the curbs outside. The women then run outside the store and sell “betel nut gum” to the waiting motorists. The gum is a stimulant. People use it to stay awake. It may also cause mouth cancer. Most of the people who buy the gum are men, so vendors hire attractive women to sell it.

Our local guide, Scott Kao, an older man with a sense of humor, spoke to us frankly. He had pointed things to say about the Japanese (“whale killers” who occupied Taiwan for 50 years) and the Chinese communists. He made it quite clear that Taiwan represented the true China. (“We have 35 provinces in China,” he said. “Thirty four are occupied by the communists.”)

SCOTT KAO, UNPLUGGED

We stopped at Lungshan temple in the Manka district of Taipei. “Religion,” Kao observed. “It may not be real, but people like it.” We certainly liked the temple, a Buddhist sactuary filled with Tao deities. The temple was also filled with worshippers — ordinary people, not monks — chanting and lighting incense. This was the only place in SE Asia where we saw ordinary people praying together in large numbers.

We visited the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall, a giant white tower capped by an octagonal roof, in downtown Taipei. The Hall contains a number of exhibits on the life of Chiang Kai-Shek, one of history’s great losers but an impressive man nonetheless. (He ruled a united China for a short time, led the nation in its fight against the Japanese during WWII, and built Taiwan into an economic power. He did not, however, make Taiwan into a democracy. That came after Chiang Kai-Shek died in 1975, one year before his arch-rival Mao Zedong.)

CHIANG KAI SHEK MEMORIAL

STILL AT HIS DESK AFTER ALL THESE YEARS

The exhibits include Kai-Shek’s touring Cadillac with its “888” license plate. I found that interesting only because we had been told earlier that most Asians consider even numbers to be unlucky. The Vietnamese even built a ninth channel in the Mekong delta because they considered eight channels to be unlucky.

The Hall includes many photos of Chiang Kai-Shek with world leaders and his beautiful wife. She was one of the famous Soong sisters. (”One loved money, one loved power, one loved China.”) She moved to New York after Chiang Kai Shek. She died there at age 106.

We stopped at Taiwan’s war memorial and watched the changing of the guard. The young men seemed fit, well trained, and disciplined, which may not be enough should the communists ever decide to invade. (The communists seem content, for now, to win the Taiwanese over by economic means.) Taiwan has compulsory military service. Twenty three million people live on the island. One point three billion people live on the mainland.

We made one last stop before returning to the airport. Taipei 101 is among the tallest buildings in the world, too tall in fact, for me to take a full-length picture. The office tower stands more than 1,667 feet tall, like a giant bamboo tree in a field of shrubs. Wow.

Entry Filed under: Freeman Fellowship