Ah Wong Sees Taipei
I had visited the city many times when we were living in Hong Kong twelve years ago; mostly were to visit my wife's family. After we moved to the U.S., I hadn't been there much. This was my first visit in probably four or five years. During the visits, I spent most days at the same corner of the city wandering the same streets, looking at the same stores, and may be even the same people. In all, I probably had seen the city less than any average tourist.
This visit I was disappointed. It was not that I became dislike of the city, nor the city had turned less friendly, nor its charm diminished. It simply was a feeling that not enough progress had been made. Arguably some had been made, but considering over a period of more than a decade, it simply was too little and too insufficient.
My first impression of Taipei from my very first visit fourteen years ago was that it was dusty, choking, haphazard, contradictory and near chaotic, yet warm, friendly and inviting. Most of the dust was probably created by the heavy pollutants exhausted by the old diesel fuelled bus and the smoky scooters. They fouled the air, and left everything standing in the street with a sooty, grayish coating. It was unpleasant.
This visit I found the traffic was still the same, polluting, anarchic and hectic. The roads were crowded with taxi and scooters. Buses were plentiful, but dirty, old and sluggish. Cars were more in number, bigger body and bigger engine. I guessed it reflected the prosperous progress of Taiwan. Every alley was fully occupied by the parked cars. Funny thing was that many alleys were marked two-way, yet with the parked cars on both sides, they would barely let one full size car squeeze through the middle. The evils of the out of control and heavily polluting traffic were in no evidence being improved nor going to be improved.
Of the many new developments, it did not seem there was any city planning. What I meant was the ratio of parking space and green open area like parks to the number of occupants. Developers certainly were not going to mind such lack of oversight, because it simply meant they could maximize their developments for sellable units thus their profits. Although I don't claim to know anything about architecture, my impression of many of the building designs was that they were ugly. My attention was drawn to the overly busy lines and overly decorative colors. Their net effect was dizzy and confusing.
Of the older buildings, they were crawled with wires or may be cables on their faded and sooty outer walls. It did not seem it was anyone's business to care about the aesthetic of those once charmingly standing buildings nor put order to anything. It was pitiful the attention of the elite of Taipei nowadays were on something else rather than on how to manage a fairer, more pleasant and healthy living environment.
Throughout my stay, the sky was cloudy and rainy. It either biased me or accentuated me with a grim thought of Taipei. Of the old and new buildings-filled view of the city, the car lined quiet alleys, the fully scooter occupied commercial sidewalks, the smoke spewing buses and scooters, the common view of luxury sedans, the maddening traffic, the dust filled yet beautifully tree lined boulevards, the extravagant high life of town, the no frill bargains from the street vendors, I was left with an incongruous picture of the city. The dusty tree-lined boulevard image really stood out in me. The trees were spewed upon, thickly covered with dust thus kind of grayish and pitiful, yet seemed determined and thriving. It reminded me might be this was the spirit of its residents. I understood there was an order and logic to the city, which was hard to be comprehended by an outsider like me; aspects of life would be more agreeable were I able to comprehend that.