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.