The Port of Keelung

Keelung is northern Taiwan’s port city and part of the Taipei metropolitan area.  It is also called Jilong, which I understand is a more authentic Chinese pronunciation.

Passenger Rail:  The train from Taipei’s Main Station to Keelung took about 50 minutes and cost 41 Taiwanese dollars.  That’s less than a dollar a minute:  in USD, maybe 3 cents a mile.  The journey ended right on the harbor, which had a huge cruise ship (Superstar Aquarius) in port.  I tried to figure out who was on board, but the language barrier got the better of me.  In the end, I concluded that it was experiencing some down time in Keelung.  Had I gotten the more expensive room-with-a-view at my hotel, I could have watched it more closely.  Indeed, my hotel was called the Harbor View, but I had none.  I got the cheapest room (1950 TD); it had a window that was a few feet from a wall opposite.  Still, the hotel was a treasure:  modern décor, big bed, clean, free breakfast, friendly staff.  It did not seem to be crowded.  At any one time, there could be four young folks behind the desk in the lobby waiting to serve their guests.  I had to think about how contrary this was to the United States, where every effort is made to get rid of jobs.  We Americans do everything we can to replace labor with technology; then we complain about high unemployment.  Is that the sign of an economy that works?  Or do the smiling faces behind the desk at the Harbor View reveal an economy that really works.

Food City:  One of the first messages I saw (in a language I could read!) upon arrival in Keelung was a sign that offered up a nickname:  “Food City”.  In my walk around the city center on Sunday afternoon and evening, I saw why.  The street in front of Dian Ji Temple came to life with food vendors and, by evening, it was a crowd scene.  So were the nearby cross-streets.  This was the Miaokou (“temple entrance”) Night Market, maybe the best in Taiwan.  If it is seafood you want, as a snack or a meal, here you can count on it being fresh.  Octopus arms (severed from the body and complete with suckers) were ready to grill and eat from a stick like a popsicle.  I didn’t try them.  What I did was spend about an hour fressing (that’s a Pennsylvania Dutch-ism that means something like snacking).  Here is what I had:  (1) three small sausages (intestines filled with sweet pig parts, grilled, and served in a bag with garlic cloves), (2) four eggs (quail-sized, fried, and served on a stick with pepper), (3) corn-on-the-cob (lathered with a sweet and spicy sauce and grilled on a rotisserie until tough [!] and served on a stick), (4) orange juice (fresh-squeezed; not common in Taiwan), and (5) iced tea (oolong, sweet, with lemon and ice).  Not everyone was eating on the go, however.  Some took a seat on stools and benches around the grills and crock pots to get various fish, pork, chicken, noodle, rice, and tofu dishes usually served in a bowl.  I should mention one other indigenous snack I had a bite of in the mountains:  blood pudding on a stick rolled in peanut flour.  It looks like a ‘fudge-sicle’ and is a very popular pick-me-up. 

American Movie, Taiwan Connection:  Right beside the Keelung Cultural Center and the McDonald’s is a Showtime cinema into which I strode to ask a question:  “Are any of the movies in English?”  “Which one would you like to see,” she asked.  “The Bourne Legacy,” responded I immediately.  “English, yes,” came the response.  I would return later to buy a ticket and take my seat.  8:10 pm was showtime at Showtime.  I thought I would miss Jason Bourne, but I really didn’t.  In fact, this may be my favorite of the Bourne thrillers.  It is action filled, but it also offers one worrisome vision of a future that most of us would not like to see.  Like the other entries in the franchise, Legacy is a portrait of time-space convergence.  Its tentacles embrace the world.  It ranges from Reston, Virginia (coincidentally, Edward Norton’s real home town) and ends in the Philippine Sea, with stops in the Alaska wilderness, Washington, Bangkok, and Manila, in between.  I hope it was filmed on location because the geo[cinemato]graphy was great.  Alas, no scenes from Taiwan, but there is a connection.  Genetically-enhanced and remorseless Larx-03 is played  by Louis Ozawa Changchien, who has a Taiwanese father.    

Goodbye ROC

Return to Taoyuan:  From my hotel, I walked across the street to the Taipei West Bus Station and caught the 7 am bus to Taoyuan International  Airport.  Remember, it used to be named after Chiang Kai Shek.  Recalling his name reminded me of a monument I missed, the Sun Yat Sen Memorial.  Dr. Sun is the nationalist who brought the monarchy to an end 100 years ago this year.  In fact, the government is spending lots of money commemorating the anniversary.  By tracing the Republic of China (that is how the visa in my passport reads) back to 1911, Taiwan makes itself look like an elder among the world’s nations and like the legitimate heir to the monarchy.   I didn’t get to visit with Dr. Sun, but you should never end a trip having seen everything.  Otherwise, you will have no motivation to come back.  And I would like to come back.  When I do, the MRT line to the airport might be finished.  It’s a long distance, but the Taiwanese are working on the entire line all at once.  It looks like a serious endeavor.  In fact, I think Taiwan will have a line to their international airport before our national capital (my last stop before Norfolk on this trip) has a Metro connection to Dulles, which it should have had two decades ago. 

Flight Home:  My return flight followed the same route as my outbound flight, but it was just a bit shorter.  I noticed from the onboard map that we flew over the Arctic Ocean on the way from Washington to Tokyo, in part to take advantage of the Great Circle Route and in part to avoid the headwinds of the Westerlies.  On the return flight we flew over Alaska and seemed to try to stay in the Westerly Wind belt to take advantage of the tail winds.  We were actually an hour early coming into Dulles.  I get home around 6 pm, but on my internal clock it is about 6 am.  Once again, it will take me a week to adjust.

Hotels:  I stayed in four different hotels in Taiwan, three in Taipei and one in Kaohsiung.  They book up so quickly, especially on week-ends.   That means you can’t always extend your stay.  In Taipei, you can get a hotel for as little as $30US a night and will pay no more than $75US a night.  Food is cheap and so is transit.  If you are on a budget and want to experience Chinese culture, go to Taiwan!  It’s easy and affordable, and they even have a choice of English-language daily newspapers.  For the record, here are my hotels' business cards.  And for the record, pick up a card immediately upon checking into a hotel and keep it with you; you never know when you might need it to find your way home.

Collective Memories

Conditioning:  I woke up this morning and heard it raining, just pouring!  I got up and went to the window, and saw that the streets were dry and nothing was coming down.  I guess I am hearing what my mind expects me to hear.  Still, the ceiling is low and the day gray.  The morning, though, was dry enough to enjoy a walk again through 228 Peace Park (memorial wall in the picture) and make some more observations for my research project.  That was on the way to the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial and the two performing arts centers that flank the grounds.  President Chiang was China’s leader and an American ally during World War II.  In 1949, however, he and his KMT lost to the Communists after a civil war that went back to the 1930s if not before.  In 1949, the mainland became the People’s Republic of China, and the Taiwan archipelago became the Republic of China under Chiang’s and later his son’s leadership.  Democracy took a firm and aggressive hold of the Taiwan only in the 1990s.  Despite our democratic principles, the United States does not recognize democratic Taiwan.  We recognize the un-democratic People’s Republic of China.  You know the reason.  The U.S., however, does have a strong relationship with Taiwan, a.k.a., the Republic of China, and everyone assumes that we would come to the archipelago’s defense should the PRC’s forces get frisky.  I used the word archipelago in this context deliberately, since some of the Republic of China’s islands are only kilometers from the PRC’s coast.  The two most famous are Kinmen (which I knew as Quemoy) and Matsu.  For Virginians, it would be like a foreign power occupying Assateague and Chincoteague.  On my next trip to Taiwan, I want to visit both islands and add two more ferries to my list.

The CKS Memorial:  It reminds me of the Lincoln Memorial, and the grounds (officially, Liberty Square) remind me of Washington’s National Mall.  I find it hard to believe that it dates back to only 1980, the year I finished my doctorate.  Not surprising, I guess, since Chiang died only in 1975.  Chiang’s luminescence here is not what it once was, though.  I came to grips with that as I was planning my trip and was having a hard time figuring out where my plane would land.  I was rightfully confused.  The international airport is now called Taoyuan, but only a few years ago (and still in older sources), it was Chiang Kai Shek International Airport.  The named changed when CHK’s political party lost to the opposition ‘Green coalition,’ which brands Chiang a murderous dictator.  Here on the grounds of Chiang’s memorial, the image of the 228 incident (new to me when I arrived) kept contradicting that nationalistic reverence I was seeing.  Indeed, maybe it is hard for a democracy to look up to someone who defended single-party rule and had little patience for democracy.   In hindsight, it is easy to condemn authoritarian leadership, but one thing is for sure:  There would be no Republic of China were it not for Chiang and his KMT (his political party, the Kuomintang).  Taiwan would have fallen to the Communists, and everyone here would have been traumatized by Mao’s rule and the Cultural Revolution.  Without Chiang, I wouldn’t even be typing this on my netbook.  I have an Acer Aspire, and Acer is a Taiwanese Company with headquarters in Taipei.  Without Chiang, we wouldn’t have Ang Lee and Jay Chou, either.  Of those two names, which one do you recognize, and why don’t you know the other one?  Over the legacy of Chiang Kai-Shek, the Taiwanese people (or are they Chinese people?) will continue to fight, but the nation is still young.  And remember, it took the United States 80 years to agree upon the fact that we were one nation.  Only after the Civil War did we start saying “the United States is…” rather than “the United States are…” 

The Taipei Zoo:  I added another zoo to my collection this afternoon.  The Taipei Zoo is billed as the largest in Asia, and it is easy to get there by a very scenic MRT route.  Despite the showers, the grounds were crowded.  If anything, the rain just added to the authenticity of the tropical rainforest exhibits (though the camels looked like fish out of water, unless that’s a mixed metaphor).  Of course, the pandas are the big attraction.  I saw two big ones, both asleep.  Pandas are relatively rare zoo animals.  The only other ones I have seen have been at the National Zoo in Washington.  With me, every zoo commends a different species.  Here at the Taipei Zoo it was the macaques who get the golden star award.  Our primate cousins must recognize us as kin because they love to mug for the cameras, and their huge family groups make them so photogenic.  Babies will always steal the show, the baby macaque sure did.  This specific species is called the crab-eating macaque, but I understand crabs are not a big part of their diet.  Like Mikey, they’ll eat anything.

Tamsui

Red Line North:  Taipei is an inland city, sited on the Damshui River.  It commands a lowland basin fed my multiple streams and surrounded by mountains.  It is close to the sea, and I have always thought of it as a port, but it isn’t.  Its old port is Tamsui (Damshui) to the northeast (and its new port is Keelung to the northwest).  Today, Tamsui is the northern terminus of the MRT’s very-busy Red Line, about 30 minutes from center city.  The line follows a busy urban corridor:  river, mangroves, parks, trails on one side; tall mountains on the other; high-rises and ‘high streets’ down the middle.  The way urbanization has accommodated itself to steep topography reminded me of Hong Kong.  I won’t get to see the real mountains on this trip, but I was surprised to learn that some peaks exceed 10,000 feet.   That’s Rocky Mountain high.  It’s surprising because Taiwan is so small.  It’s not surprising since Taiwan finds itself along a convergent plate boundary.  It’s part of the circum-Pacific island arc, susceptible to earthquakes, but with no active volcanoes.  With as many people on this Maryland-sized island as there are in all of Australia, I hope the Republic’s government can resist pressures to turn the mountains over to the monarchs of rapacious capitalism. 

Tamsui:  The streets of Tamsui run parallel to the river, but they don’t snuggle up to the river.  Between shoreline and shops is a waterfront park.  On weekends, it is pervaded by a carnival-like atmosphere.  People come out from Taipei to enjoy themselves, to eat their way through the day, to buy things they didn’t know they even wanted, and to spend time with friends and family.  One street (probably others, too) offers all manner of interesting treats.  I had the best cream-filled cake, candied strawberries and tomatoes on a stick, and cubed guava served up in a small plastic bag, and the ever-popular among all, iced tea with lemon.  All of this was finger food, and I was full.   Some of you will know that I am not a fan of Chinese food, so I might rank this eat-and-walk the best meal I’ve had on the whole trip.  And not all of it was junk food!  Some was only half junk food:  the candied tomatoes, for instance.  You know what a candied apple is.  Instead of an apple, dip a cherry tomato into the same red glaze and serve it on a skewer:  that’s a candied tomato, and it’s surprisingly good.

Ferry Ride:  Last summer, I decided to consciously collect ferry rides since I seem to have already compiled a long list of them.   Along the waterfront in Tamsui, I saw two ferries ready to pull out.  I hopped on one and took it to Fisherman’s Wharf, maybe a mile or so downstream.  Cost:  50 dollars.  The ride was fun, the destination a disappointment: a concrete harbor, no fishermen (ok, maybe one), touristy shops, an elegant modern hotel, an empty square, a deserted bus stop, and one over-priced amusement ride that took you aloft.  The saving grace of this place was the public art:  a mermaid in the middle of a fountain, an I-Love-Tamsui sculpture, and a smiling, spouting whale.  Lest you think my judgment contradicts the judgment of the Taiwanese:  A short while after I arrived, I rode back with the same Taiwanese family that I came with.  Apparently, they couldn’t find anything to do there either.  In retrospect, the idea for this Fisherman’s Wharf seems to have been inspired by America, and it just does not seem to fit into Chinese culture.  And, why would someone come here when they could be having fun in the real Tamsui?  My regret for the day was that I didn’t have time for the historical precinct about a mile north of the MRT station.  It’s where the Spanish and the Dutch established the first fort and port on the Damshui River, and it was one of the first points of Christian missionary contact with Taiwan as well. 

11-11-11

Sizihwan:  I cannot say enough positive things about Taiwan’s Metro systems.  Both Taipei and Kaohsiung have MRTs, and they are the most easily navigated in the world.  Tokens are cheap; vending machines are intuitive; enough English is provided for easy navigation; subway line maps follow the international grammar pioneered for London’s Underground; map placards of surrounding neighborhoods are posted exactly where you need them; riding escalators and entering subway cars have rules that people follow; above ground MRT stations are easily found; design standards are very 21^st century.  Kaohsiung’s MRT system dates back only to 2008.  It appears as if they used the 2009 World Games, which they hosted, as the motivation to build a world-class subway system.  (The World Games are held quadrennially for select non-Olympic sports.)  I took the Kaohsiung’s Orange Line to its western terminus today, Sizihwan, which means Sizih Harbor.  Of course it was raining, but only lightly at first.  The harbor neighborhood is old but now reinvigorated by a new university on its edge (Sun Yat Sen University), by a tourist trade that gravitates to the waterfront, by a tunnel through a mountain that leads to a beach, and by a series of ferries that offer easy connections to other waterside places.   As in every neighborhood, I found the morning market on a series of side streets.  I also found a few temples, one in a store front looking very humble and one rising above the neighborhood looking very elite.  

High Speed Rail Back:  I found myself thinking about New Jersey on the HSR trip back ‘home.’  Then, my mind went to Kent in England.  Then, I paid homage to Johann Heinrich Von Thunen, a German proto-geographer who taught me what I was seeing even though he died in the mid-1800s.  He bequeathed humanity a set of bid-rent curves that give us some perspective on rural land use around cities.  On this trip, though, I never got out of Zone 1, Von Thunen’s inner ring where market gardening predominates.  By this time, you should see the connection to New Jersey, whose nickname is:   The Garden State.   From the earliest days of Colonial times, New Jersey found itself between the two big cities of the Atlantic seaboard:  Philadelphia and New York.  They are only about a hundred miles apart.  New Jersey’s farmers had a market at either end of their state, so they used their land to provide perishables for urban populations divorced from the soil.  Perishable fruits and vegetables (like the bitter melons in the picture) must be grown close to the market (think pre-refrigeration and pre-superhighway).  Now, transition to Taiwan.  At the northern end of the island is Taipei, with its metropolitan population of 7 million.  Near the southern end is Kaohsiung, with its 3 million.  These two cities are a little bit farther apart than NY and Philadelphia, but the same rules of economic geography hold true.  Von Thunen’s bid rent curves have turned the landscape in between each set of cities over to the production of vegetables and fruits.  Once we cleared the industrial landscapes of greater Kaohsiung, rectangular fields took over.  Irrigation ponds and canals tethered them together.  The variety of crops I saw was immense, but my ‘low altitude flight’ over the fields allowed me to identify only a few with distinctive signatures:  sugar cane, bananas, cabbage.  Nevertheless, I knew that all those vegetables and fruits I saw in the Sizihwan market earlier in the day had come from this agricultural hinterland.  Changing that landscape now, also reminiscent of New Jersey, is the urbanization that is going on as the two cities expand and drive the growth of smaller cities in between.  As for County Kent:  it’s the Garden of England, just south of London.  At 2 pm sharp (and I mean sharp!), we were back in Taipei.

Rain Culture:  It’s Friday evening; it’s raining; and it’s as busy as ever on the streets of Taipei.  Everyone’s umbrella is at hand.  As people open and close them, the city looks like a garden of morning glories (evening glories?) choreographed by mother nature.  Somebody ought to write an umbrella symphony.  Here is a video taken not far from the Central Railway Station.

An etiquette goes with the use of umbrellas here.  Never take wet ones into stores and restaurants.  Rather, you are expected to do one of two things:  (1) deposit your umbrella in the receptacle outside, or (2) take one of the free tubular plastic bags available at entranceways and use it as a tote.  Should you leave your umbrella by the door, don’t worry about theft.  This has to be one of the low-crime capitals of the world.

Rain Riders

Rain, Rain, Go Away:  I had the hotel window open last night, so I heard the rain begin around 2:30 am.  It was still pouring when I woke up at 6.  It has rained all day.  In fact, it has rained every day since I arrived.  I checked the climate statistics, and they confirm that this amount of rain is abnormal.  And an article in the Taipei News announced that the red bean crop had been devastated.  November and December are always Taiwan’s driest months.  The law of averages is just catching up with me, I guess.  I traveled for almost three months earlier in the year and had no prolonged periods of rain.  I guess my luck couldn’t last.  People here seem prepared; the scooter jockeys all have raincoats, some quite fashionable.  And pedestrians have umbrellas, which are used in sunny weather (parasols) as well as in the rain.  If you forget your umbrella about 3 US dollars will buy you one on the street.

Coffee with Ronald:  My umbrella and I ventured out a little later.  This city does not come alive as early as US cities, so I actually had a hard time finding a place to sit down and have a cup of coffee.  Even though it was after 8, the café by the Kbus (Kaohsiung Bus) station was not open.  There were a few places to get coffee (mostly 7-11s), but nowhere to sit, and sitting outside was out of the question.  Plus, I wanted somewhere to work on my laptop.  After scouting out quite a few blocks, I found myself outside a McDonald’s.  I must admit it was perfect for my needs:  coffee and a place to sit.   I dislike patronizing American chains while I am traveling, but when the local economy presents no alternatives, that’s the only choice.  Judging from the number of Taiwanese patrons (every table occupied), this city’s economy could support some entrepreneurial competition.  Regrettably, I find myself patronizing McDonalds all over the world, but I have my reasons:  (1) They are open early and late, and on holidays; (2) they have tables where you can read or work, and no one will bother you; (3) they usually offer free wi-fi (but not here).  Kaohsiung needs to give the western chains some competition.  Serve  better coffee, dream up some Chinese/international fusion fast food, offer plenty of seating, make sure the heat and air are working as appropriate, keep the premises clean (a real virtue in this part of the world), and provide free wi-fi.  I would say that Taiwan lags a bit in the wi-fi department.  In two hotels, now, I have had ethernet cables, and in one hotel I had a weak internet signal.  Nevertheless, this trip has convinced me to move Taiwan into the category of developed countries.  It would easily qualify as our 51^st state.

Shopping Precincts:  Despite the rain:  I ventured beyond the city’s old central business district around the central railway station (where all the hotels seem to be) to see some other shopping districts.  The others are more modern and chain-ridden, but when you move into the alleys and sidestreets, people live their days as they always have.  I wandered through a thriving street market that covered multiple city blocks.  I couldn’t even name a quarter of the foods that were for sale, and some, like the dragon fruit, I had learned to identify only last summer.  The rain eventually became so heavy I ducked into the only sit-down establishment I could find, an Italian restaurant.  For lunch, I had spaghetti, mushroom soup, and pomelo tea (it’s like grapefruit).   I waited for the rain to let up, then returned to the streets.  Shortly, it started again to pour.

To Kaohsiung

Crossing the Tropic:  I boarded the High Speed Rail line today for the trip south to Kaohsiung, Taiwan’s Chicago.  High speed means that we travelled about 300 kilometers per hour.  It took us 2 hours because we did make about half a dozen stops along the way.  The direct trains make it in 1-1/2 hours.  Somewhere between Taipei and Kaohsiung, I crossed the Tropic of Cancer, so now you know where to position Taiwan on your mental maps of climate.  As I ascended from the depths on my way to street level, the goddess of the escalator began issuing warnings:  “The hand rail has been sterilized periodically.  Hold it.”  It made me think of the ubiquitous face masks you see here.  She also told me to “step inside the yellow box” as I approached the escalator.  Each step is divided into two boxes, and one must not cross the line.  In the United States, things like this cause me to mutter about government telling us what to do, but here it seems normal.  I don’t know why.   Finally, I found myself on the street.  Finding a happy hotel was easy.   As in European cities, they cluster around the main train station.  Actually, my hotel was named Happy Hotel.  I had a nice view of a side street and the canal. 

Sidewalk Culture:  Kaohsiung is a modern city, but tradition owns the sidewalks.  Sidewalk space here deserves a study of its own.  In American cities, sidewalks are meant as places to walk; they are considered public space.  The private sector (i.e., businesses with sidewalk access) is prohibited from infringing on the public right-of-way.  In fact, local governments in the US connive copious ordinances to regulate anything irregular that might take place on sidewalks:  art fairs, sidewalk sales, outdoor cafes, etc.  Heaven forbid that anyone would ride a bicycle on a sidewalk!  And local governments would not think of giving permission for parking motor vehicles in a public right-of-way.  In fact, sidewalks in the US are far from mixed use spaces.  In the US, sidewalks are definitely not mixed use spaces.  Here in Kaohsiung, they are.  (And this holds true of Taipei and cities all over Asia.)   Space by the side of the road is conceptualized differently and therefore managed differently in different cultures.  There is constant competition among pedestrians, shop owners, and drivers for domination.  A segmentation of space results and creative mechanisms for complementary uses take shape.  To anyone from over-planned cities (yes, most American cities are over-planned), the result may seem like chaos, but it serves the urban needs perfectly.  Multiple use sidewalks make for vibrant cities.  I have spent the day documenting competition for sidewalk space.  Rainy days bring that competition into focus since many sidewalks offer some shelter from liquid sunshine.

Sanfonzon Street:  Proudly posted at both ends with its name in English and Mandarin is Sanfonzon Street, maybe the most famous in Kaohsiung and one of the oldest.  It is the closest I have seen here to a Middle Eastern spice souk, but the dominant commodity seems to be mushrooms, though garlic and other cloves are extremely popular, too.  Ditto, little wrapped candies.  The huge bags of mushrooms in storefront after storefront are the clue that this is where the restaurants and hotels come for their ingredients.  Mushrooms are tremendously popular in Taiwan, and there are so many varieties.  I am reminded of the bananas I saw throughout Southeast Asia this summer (and here, too).  In the US we have one variety of banana and, until the last decade or so, we had only one variety of mushroom.  In both cases, we chose the most commercially viable species, not the best tasting.  In Taiwan, fungi are for sale in infinite varieties.  Did I say fungi?  I meant mushrooms.  Of course, mushrooms are fungi; they aren’t green and can grow in the absence of light; their nutrients all come from the soil.   Remembering my days as an economic geographer investigating Pennsylvania’s mushroom industry, I recalled that Taiwan was the source of major competition for the US mushroom market.  As for fungus, I did see one variety that looked like the plate-shaped tree fungus that grows on the trunks of trees in First Landing State Park back home.