Believe what they tell you on TV

...when it tells you Taiwan has some of the yummiest food in the world.

All those Taiwanese variety shows on street food, theme cafes, and those well-designed restaurants - they are not lying.


Our 30min dinner in 3 eateries (L to R):
Wan Kuek or literally "bowl-cake" - rice flour paste with yam, tender pork chunk and salted egg yolk, to eat with the gravy, chilli sauce, garlic and vingear;
You Yu Gen or Cuttlefish Starchy paste noodle;
Ba Bao Bing or literally "eight treasures ice", shaved ice covered with groundnuts, red beans, kidney beans, gingko nuts etc that's been stewed with sugar.

However, don't believe what you are led to believe about Taiwan from watching those scenes of fighting Parliamentarians in the news. The fights may actually happen, but what you should conclude from watching this, er, demonstrative commitment to political participation is not that everyone's a gangster in Taiwan. On the contrary, I think this is just one extreme end of a culture that values civic participation and social responsibility. So when compared to Singapore, where the parliamentarians are spotless in their public conduct, the average Taipei resident demonstrates his civic mindedness in the simplest of ways:

1. Standing on the right side of the escalator going up and down the train stations. Grandmas and grandpas, aunties and uncles - everyone observes the general rule that you should stand aside so that those in a rush can have a clear passage. It's this simple, but it doesn't happen in Singapore.

2. Queuing and waiting for train commuters to get out of the trains before they get on.

3. Don't use plastic bags unnecessarily. Most stores don't give out plastic bags. You have to pay NT$1 for a bag. I think this is part of a campaign to reduce waste. In the cinema (haha, yes, it's our second day and we couldn't resist catching a film!) and the public spaces, the ads are by civic groups or government departments on protecting the environment, learning MinNanYu (or what we think of as Hokkien. I guess this is just a policy of Chen Shuibian's government, to assert Taiwan's "nativeness" apart from China), reporting child abuse etc.

Taipei is a city of books And Singapore, despite the official desire to be a "renaissance city", is not. They may have gangsters, loud Grandmas, media-loving politicians and gossipy media (well, aren't those 2 the same everywhere?), but they have a healthy culture of critical thought, discussion and learning. We haven't made our way to the giant Eslite bookstore, but most of the public buildings we've been to have specialty bookstores, and there're smaller bookstores along most streets.


The bookstore at SPOT cinema, where we caught Hou Hsiao Hsien's Three Times

And to top off a pretty good day, we visited a lively designers' art exhibition at the National Contemporary Art Museum. Outside the museum were these giant illustrations we participated in:


That's all for now friends. It's 10.30am and we're off to explore more bits of Taipei...including going down to Ximending where we hear the Taiwanese pop stars hold their weekend free concerts to crowds of screaming teenagers. We'll go and act like one of them.