Taiwan was rad. So much fun stuff to see and do. A brief rundown follows. Click on each picture to see a collage of pictures from that day. Sarah just started a
blog which has lots of her pictures from our time in HK and TP together (as well as beautiful snaps of Japan, Singapore, etc). Check out hers too. Thanks again to Patrick, Tien-Tien, Sean, Alonzo, and Sarah for such good times!
Thursday/Friday
I arrived in Taipei at midnightish Thursday (Oct 21), where I was surprised to find the airport was pretty ghetto. It was very 70s, and curiously reminiscent of the airport in San Salvador. After figuring out how to work a payphone, I called Patrick to let him know I was on my way, then piled into a cab with my print-out of his address in Chinese characters. I kept instinctively trying to speak Cantonese to the taxi driver (which obviously didn't work). We sped through nighttime Taipei, and I was amazed by how much it looks like Los Angeles-- endless freeways, palm trees, no building over 5 storeys. I don't think we're in Hong Kong anymore, Toto. I was delivered safely to Patrick's streetcorner, where we met, bought some Taiwan Beers (yes, that's the national brand's name), and caught up in his cool, 60's style apartment (Chow Mo Wan chic!) which is on the 5th floor of a bakery his family owns (the famous
Kuo Yuan Ye Pastry Company-- Patrick, you didn't tell me there is a
museum!). I fell asleep breathing the smell of yummy cakes from downstairs.
On Friday, Patrick and his girlfriend Tien Tien took me to lunch at a spicy Sichuan restaurant, and we walked around in the early afternoon streets of Taipei. We stopped into a cafe where Patrick used to work, and he was enthusiastically greeted by the large golden retriever that remembered him. I checked out a 24-hour bookstore called Eslite while he did preparation for his photo show. Then back to Shihlin to meet Sarah, who arrived around 5pm; our trio reunion is cut short by needing to rush to Yuanshan for the opening of the
Taipei Biennial at the
Taipei Fine Arts Museum. We met up with Sean, brother of my friend Ava from L.A., who writes for the China Post and so with his press credentials was able to waltz Sarah and I into the exhibit even before they were finished installing it. It was exciting peeking around the massive rooms before the crowds packed in, and watching the artists scrambling frantically to finish tacking things up on the wall, fiddling with video equipment, etc. Later we moved back outside to see the opening speech by the museum director, the Taipei mayor, the Dutch curator (who spoke for about 25 minutes in critical theory-packed English, which the translator shortened down to 5 minutes for the Putonghua version), and a performance by
The Kingpins, an Australian drag king/performance art troupe (kind of blah: chicks dressed up as Axl and Slash doing a campy rendition of "Welcome to the Jungle." Their Beastie Boys installation is much more interesting though). Mingled. Met up with Alonzo and other friends. Joined the frenzied rush for the buffet table-- we shouldn't have worried, however, as we then taxied on to a restaurant called "People" for the post-opening dinner party. After that, loaded into a doily-covered mini-bus with all the (now incredibly drunk) visiting artists and curators from the biennial to a bar whose decor featured fresh pieces of grass sod on concrete ramps. Somehow at the end of the night, Sarah and I found ourselves being driven home by the bar's owner (who also runs all of Taiwan's skate shops?) in his Lexus convertible.
Saturday
Sarah and I woke up to fresh Tofu Fa (Dou fu fa in Cantonese, I forget what it is in Putonghua) brought over by Tien Tien-- cold sweet tofu with peanuts and sugary syrup. Also big Pomelo-type fruits, about the size of a baby's head and citrus intense. Green tea. (Why don't I eat this for breakfast every morning?) While Patrick and Tien Tien went to install his photo exhibit, Sarah and I went to the
National Palace Museum, where they keep all the treasures Chiang Kai-Shek and the Nationalists smuggled out of China. It was much smaller than I expected-- the collection is huge but they only show a tiny bit of it at a time. Someone told me that if you visit the museum every three months for twelve years, you'll see the whole thing in rotation. Then to Ximending, teenybopper fashion district, kind of like Shibuya (much more like Shibuya than Causeway Bay, which is what everyone says is Hong Kong's version). On the whole, I thought Taipei fashion was much tamer than Hong Kong's, but there were some cute coats and shoes here. When we got hungry we MRT'ed onwards to the Taipower Building station, and the university district, and ate at a noodle shop after much indecision on a bustling restaurant/shopping street. So small though and so charming-- the whole sense of urban space is totally different. Then Patrick's photo opening at
Mo Relax Cafe-- lush color prints of Asia, America, woods, friends, fireworks, kids. Really nice. His stuff is reminiscent of the Japanese "girl photographers" (Yurie Nagashima, Hiromix) in the best possible way. We sat by the big glass window of the cafe (see
picture), drinking coffee, chatting with friends. We were only slightly rattled by the sudden
earthquake that jolted through Taipei (and made sitting next to a big glass window temporarily very scary). Luckily this earthquake was small, but the one that just a few hours earlier had rocked Japan was
not. The night wore on. Patrick and some of his friends took us next to a tiny bar on a back alley called "83", which had Hoegaarden (my favorite beer), a Che Guevara poster, and some older Taiwanese people having a passionate argument about politics (I kept overhearing "Kuomindang", and when I asked Siu Pei what they were fighting about, she confirmed my hypothesis). The older female bar owner kept coming out and trying to get the people to calm down, but to no avail. Late that night on our way home we went digi-photo crazy in an empty playground.
Sunday
Went up to Danshui, an old district on the river at the north of Taipei. Ate waffles at a historical hilltop cafe (after we spotted a half-drowned baby rat crawling on the stairs that lead up to it), then back to Pat's for napping (and more fun with the bunny hat). Sarah and I took off through the pouring rain for Huashan Arts complex to see some noise music. Huashan is so cool-- like Cattle Depot but much bigger and more people in attendance, even for this
weird little event. The main attraction, Japanese noise musician
Keiji Haino (Haino Keiji if we're being proper about it), was just sitting in the hallway near the entrance when we arrived, and Sarah got to speak Japanese with him and get our CDs signed! The Taiwanese opening band Weathermen was really good-- long, loud, droney, but faintly rocking in a Neu-ish way. Keiji was amazing, at least from my vantage point of one tall-boy Milwaulkee's Finest combined with space to lay down on the rubber floor amongst piles of white cotton fluff. Surreal. Relaxing in the most abrasive way.
Monday
My last day plans (Wisteria Teahouse, Peitou hot springs) were promptly cancelled by the massive
typhoon that hit early Monday morning. It was intense. We stayed in Patrick's apartment drinking tea and watching movies until the coast was clear, then went out to eat and survey the damage. Huge metal signs had been blown sideways, or detached from buildings and launched down the street. Trees were bent over. We had a last delicious meal, then Eslite shopped some more until it was time for me to catch the airport bus (for a flight that was many hours delayed). Bruce Lee VCDs played on the bus monitors until we pulled up at Chiang Kai Shek, and it was time to go. Oh well, all the things I didn't get to do are just more reasons to return to Taiwan.
