In Which Sights Are Seen

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Because Gabe and Chieni's house is rather small, and Anja is in place in her life where she needs a lot of "me time" (my words, not her's) My Dad, Magda and I shipped out to another Taipei suburb called Beitou. Beitou comes complete with its own train spur and a collection of thermal spas, not that a person feels the need to use them after a day of soaking humidity.

It was in Beitou that we tried our first Taipei specialty, beef noodle stew, which is sort of like chili back in the states. There are competitions and awards given to the city's favorite bowl. Ours seemed to taste just fine, but we're hardly connoisseurs.

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The morning after our move we took Anja to the zoo, which was entertaining on too many levels to completely recount, but one that sticks out is that she was just as delighted with the giant brass sculptures of turtles on the walkway as she was with any actual living creatures. The zoo itself is small but packed with critters, some housed in approximations of their natural habitats. There were some really cool animals to be seen, especially in the arctic area to where we had mysteriously gravitated under the scorching sun.

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After some time inside, we met Chieni by the entrance to the Taipei metro's Maokong mountain gondola. Little six person pods carried us up the steep forested slopes of the Taipei's outlying mountains, big clear windows giving us amazing views of the valleys far below and the tree-tops that we skimmed on the dizzying ascent into the sky. The gondola is a whole network of cables that climbs the length of some 4,030 meters to finally arrive on the top of a mountain that commands a view of the city below and has a collection of high end tea house to enjoy it from. We went to Gabe and Chieni's favorite tea house from which we could see the city, the gradually fading hillsides, blue-ish in the distance, and the solitary and slightly lonely looking monolith of Taipei 101, the world's tallest building (for now). We also drank gallons of delicious tea which was recommended by the owner, a famous Taiwanese tea-master.

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The following day Magda, My Dad and I went to another great height by rocketing up the fastest elevator in the world to the observation deck in Taipei 101. The ride inside of the elevator was accompanied by a mystifying mini-light show, complete with shooting stars and an LED night sky, and a superbly unenthusiastic monologue by the elevator operator. Taipei 101 sounds like a beginner's course for tourists here and its not far off. From the observation tower you can see all of Taipei and beyond. The view from the top is far reaching, but oddly the complete lack of any neighboring skyscrapers makes Taipei 101 seem not very high. The entry price included a free audio tour which literally made me feel nauseous it was so saccharine sweet. The accompanying soundtrack seemed to be an Irish jig too, which seemed about as appropriate as the starry night light show in the elevator. Better to skip the audio tour.

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Back on earth, we walked over to the Sun Yat-Sen memorial hall. Sun Yat-Sen was instrumental in the fall of the Qing Dynasty. One of the few things the China and Taiwan can agree on us the Sun Yat-Sen is the father of modern China. Taipei has a massive memorial built to him with a sign in front of his Lincoln-esque statue that asks visitors to kindly salute. We refrained, not out of maliciousness, but because we didn't know anything about him. Its hard to take back a salute once you've given it. The dozens of citizens outside of the memorial hall making use of the giant park have no such misgivings. They rested a moment from flying kites, playing catch, or simply cutting across the park grounds to stand at attention as the memorial guards lowered the flag at sunset. As the national anthem played over loudspeakers, people everywhere stopped what they were doing, pivoted towards the flag pole and saluted. I can't remember ever seeing such a spontaneous display of patriotism. Such is the mood in a country with a big hungry wolf at the door.