Gianni
Junior Member
Registered: January 2007
Location: London
Posts: 9
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IN THE 1990s "MADE IN TAIWAN" became a familiar inscription on clothes labels and electronics equipment, synonymous with byte-size and cheap technological innovation. And yet Taiwan only gained indipendence from Japan in 1949, in the aftermath of the Second World War. The economic significance and prodigious productivity of this little state on the isle of Formosa, within striking distance of China and Japan, is testament to the industriousness of the Taiwanese. Phisically Taipei (meaning "North Taiwan")reflects Taiwan strengths. Inelegant, it is laid out like a massive circuit board of skyscraper chips and broad tarmac avenue conductors, criss-crossed with neighbourhood loops of fuse-box apartment blocks and wire nexuses of solder-coloured streets. Japanese concrete, glass and aluminium have all but replaced the traditional 18th century homesteads, although one beatiful example, Lin Antai, still survives,nmoved painstakingly brick by brick, Abu Simbei-like, to avoid being flattened by a motorway. Above it all soars Taipei 101, currently the world`s tallest building. Yet despite its macrochip order, close-up the city is organised chaos, its streets possessing some four names, one Cantonese the other Roman, neither connected in meaning or sound yet both mistranslated into the other alphabet. At the turn of the 19th century this flat northern corner of the island was home to a few thousand rice and vegetables farmers. The provinces were attracted by the gold-paved streets of the industrial and technological explosion, some of them creating multinational success stories, others ending up in the sweatshops that shod the trainer empire of the West.
Taipei`s weather makes no distinction: the perennial smog and humidity here make sweat a by-word for all forms of work. But for all industry and mini Hong Kong capitalism, Taipei is also a cultural centre, its National Palace Museum, a centre for Chinese Art, accidental home to the vast and priceless collection of the Chinese and imperial Song dynasty, including so many pieces of prehistoric pottery that fragments are only exhibited on a rotational basis.
Away from the wide technocrats, Taipei chills to the slow grace of Taichi Slow-mo shadow boxing and the seren lotus ponds in its botanical gardens. Nightime revolves around markets, specializing in jade, flowers and, more unusually, snakes. Down Louche Huahsi St. (branded Snake Alley)locals perform with live cobras, slurp snake soup, and worship the eastern viagra of snake bile and penis pills.
People of intoxicating energy, the locals are famous for their renao, liveliness and this boisterouss 24-hour spirit ensures that among the fibroptic alleyways of its nightmarkets the city is a neon-eating orgy of smiling students high on serpentine aphrodisiacs, brothels and the joy of thousand karaoke bars.
Gianni Dibiase
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