Taipei

I travelled to Taipei in Taiwan after spending a month with family and friends in New Zealand.

🌹: Foreignness is used to delineate differences between what we know and know not, who we are and who we aren’t. Being a total foreigner in Taipei forced me to rely on intuition to feel at peace. It removed external stimuli that impact what you think you want and need in your life. In this sense, it brought me closer to myself. It also awakened a renewed sense of curiosity in me, something that the novo-colonial paradise of Bali and post-colonial New Zealand failed to do. The feeling of Neugier helps dampen the noise in my mind to discover what is truly dear to me.

🌱: If you asked your average university-educated westerner what they know about Taiwan it’d probably be their flourishing semi-conductor industry. The more informed reader may also note that this industry makes risk of Chinese invasion particularly relevant to the west. I - probably like many - had assumed that economic success in the industry that is providing bare metal for the AI revolution is an accurate proxy for how developed a country is. Taiwan and its capital are bustling places, but they still lack some important indicators of western metrics of “development”. Cash payments are common, housing quality is often poor, and many buildings resemble cheap Mediterranean housing. This is set against high consumer availability, innovative tax incentives like VAT lotteries, garbage trucks playing Bach and some truly eclectic architecture (lined up next to those cheap apartment blocks): collections of novo-rich flats reminiscent of Moscow; tasteful new builds with sharp edges and great views as well as winding side streets with gorgeous modernist pieces which boast bountiful balconies of tropical house plants. How Singapore and Munich are strict and sterile, so Taipei and Berlin are individualistic and imperfect.

🥀: Despite an amazing tea tasting session, I was shocked by how little drinking tea featured in Taipei’s food and drink culture. Many tea houses were food first, and deciphering which tea shops were selling good stuff was much harder than I expected. Despite being one of the world’s top tea producing places, gong fu cha still seems to be something too niche for businesses to consider viable.