one-woman Taipei

Are you romanced by the idea of solo travel?

Solo travel seems to be the rite of passage for some folks. But I don't fully understand this romance....Perhaps for some, they need the distance and independence from not just family and friends, but also from all things familiar to create an awareness of one's singular existence and identity. Or maybe it’s just the encounter with the exotic and what it promises. 

As a young person, I was often comfortably alone - reading, in the cinema, wandering the city. So I harbour no real romance about solo travel. In fact, whenever I travelled, it was always with a group of friends. The safety of a group meant more freedoms when backpacking in more remote places, especially with boys in the group. The work of planning for a trip could also be shared when it involves the logistics of getting to more exotic spots.

The closest I got to solo travelling as a young person was when I wandered about Central Europe with a Malaysian university friend for a month with no fixed itinerary. Looking back on that trip, it was a miracle us 2 petite Chinese girls emerged safe, given some very stupid and dangerous things we did (including attempting to walk and then hitchhike across Lichtenstein, getting thrown out of the train at the border of Poland at midnight, taking a stranger's car to his mother's flat which had a room available for cheap, and staying in a Hungarian gym hall that was supposedly converted to be a hostel)!  We were both introverts and had quite different interests, so the month was spent comfortably in silence. No quarrels. No girlish chatter. We took turns tallying the budget. And watched each other’s back. 

For those of you who have followed this blog since 2005, you would have read about the many Taiwan trips J and I went on. Taipei was our favourite city and we visited it at least once a year. I continued visiting Taipei or Taiwan for holidays after James died (although not many of those trips were documented here). I didn't see the need to avoid those memories or deny myself the pleasure of being in Taipei. But maybe God knew something I didn't, because even though I did not always plan to have company on those trips, there would be the happy coincidence of friends who joined in. 

March 2024 in Taipei was the first holiday I would count as solo travelling. 

If you click the "Taiwan" label on this blog, it will bring you to the many blogposts that recorded the trips, itineraries, and various recommendations and tips to that country since 2005.  To that collection I am happy to add this little record of being one woman in Taipei -

A Lucky Escape

By sheer luck, I escaped Taylor Swift fever in Singapore, arriving early in Taipei the weekend ahead of a work engagement.

It’s a cold and wet Taipei, the kind of weather that makes everything slow, sleepy and nostalgic. Which is to say it is perfect! Perfect to rest, read, stroll.

And what’s the perfect meal for this kind of grey nostalgic weather?

Mee Sua and TianBuLa of course! I had both of these ol’skool Taiwanese street food in a little shop at Yong Kang. The Mee Sua is served with shredded black fungus, well-cleaned and tender pig’s large intestines, vinegar and coriander. The TianBuLa is like a mangled mandarin pronunciation of Tempura - although the ingredients are more like that of Oden, and served in a spicy and sweet sauce similar to that of YongTauFu. The bowl of TianBuLa had stewed radish and tofu, various seafood balls, and a slice of blood pudding (rice cake congealed with pig’s blood, which is tastier than it sounds).

The sgd5.60 meal was consumed with 3 poems and the brief exchanges between the shop uncle and a handful of working adults in their heavy coats or rain gear who are picking up dinner on their way home. From where I sat, it was a cinematic kind of view: the constant drizzle outside the shop front, the reflections of light from the shop signs and passing scooters on the wet narrow lane, the bodies rushing about to get home, that clinical florescent glow in the sparse shop with the small metal tables and stools, and the overweight shopkeeper whose smile looked at times friendly and at times sarcastic.

Before going back for an early night, I took a short stroll around the streets of Qing Tian - a genteel district off Yong Kang that has a mix of old Japanese era homes, shophouses and tastefully subtle modern apartments. I always enjoyed walking around Qing Tian after dinner with J. We would try to peer into the homes on the ground floor of the fancy condominiums and there would always be little details on the gates and doors of the old walk-up apartments and shops that spoke of time past.

At QingTian I walked by an empty shop unit, maybe previously an art gallery, that left behind this quote on its wall: 

像我這樣的人，

在這樣的時代和環境，

沒有餓死已算萬幸。 

（殷海光， 16 March 1966).

When I got back to the hotel, I googled and learnt to that 殷海光 (Yin Hai Guang, his name literally meant ocean light) is the pen name of philosopher and public intellectual Yin Fu Sheng who was persecuted during the White Terror period in Taiwan for criticizing the nationalist government. Translated, the quote reads: “That someone like me, in such a milieu and environment, has not starved to death - this alone is to be counted extremely lucky.” He died in 1969, soon after he wrote this.

I suppose to be able to count your blessings, whatever situation you are in, is itself a kind of blessed state of mind.

Unbroken time

Taipei weather continued to pretend that it is London weather. Notwithstanding this and some touristy incursions, my long day still felt authentically Taipei to me!

Dihua Street is in the old DaDaoCheng district. It specializes in dried provisions - seafood, herbs, fruits. It is also known for fabrics. The second storey of Yong Le Market is devoted to this. On its ground floor are fruit and fish stalls, sushi shops, alteration shops…and an unpretentious coffee stand that served me a pour-over in an auntie cup and saucer 

Dihua is a decent balance of traditional residents, new trendy cafes, and shops selling nostalgic souvenirs and crafts. Lunch was at a good example of a traditional business with a modern revamp. I had cuttlefish and fuzhou fishball soup, veg in shallot oil, and braised pig’s ear! 

My second destination is Zhongshan - a shopping district first known for its independent design shops and cafes. Off the main road around the Zhong Shan subway station are Ci Feng Street and lanes. Over the years it has gotten touristy. Some of its side streets are still inhabited by old residents and you can still tease out shops with character, but it takes effort. There, I returned to a very small and old single-story Japanese-style home that I visited some years ago. It didn't bear any signs and you would never guess that it housed an electic mix of micro shops in its 4-5 rooms. It is left mostly in its original state. Among them, probably located in the original kitchen, is a 6-seater daytime cocktail bar that is alcohol-free! I had 2 refreshing drinks with mock gins. 

When I was the only one at the bar, the young bartender-owner snuck both of us a shot of DOM and we had a nice chat. He then revealed that he was actually Malaysian, and after finishing his engineering or computing university degree in Taipei, decided that he would settle here instead. His parents lived in Kuala Lumpur and used to run a bookstore. From his description, they sounded to me like Chinese intellectuals. He started working in Taipei's many Japanese bars, and that was how he learnt bartending. As you can tell from this other blog post, I do like talking to bartenders. 

Having spent a fortune on Taiwanese fashion designers, dinner was another cheap meal. The oyster and shrimp omelette at a small side street nearby that was recommended by the bar owner is one of the best I’ve had, with very crispy edges and a generous bed of greens. 

Post-dinner destination was Witch Cafe in the university district of Shida. In the posts on this blog about Taiwan, you would see Witch Cafe appearing many times - captured in text, photographs and sketches. This time, the performance was led by a young jazz vocalist called ZZ. She sang her own compositions, some written in her aboriginal language. Many songs were about her childhood in a village, and her life moving from the village to Taipei. You would expect such stories in folk music more than jazz. It was refreshing.

As I walked out from Witch Cafe after the performance into the cold night air (it was still drizzling and the temperature on my phone app said 17 degrees), I felt tired in the body but not the spirit. 

Taiwan’s openness to the influences of aboriginal, Chinese and Japanese cultures, which have been integral to the island's history, is its charm. This openness also distinguishes them from the mainland, whose rulers have always sought to eradicate the culture of those they have conquered in order to unify a vast continent. 

A Day of Favorite Things

Sunday is a day for favourite things. What are yours?

Everyone has a favorite SoyBean breakfast place. @contralto introduced 五湖豆漿 (5Lakes Soy) when both her and WWY (my two closest girlfriends) accompanied me on a trip to Taiwan a month or so after J's funeral.  五湖豆漿 (5Lakes Soy) has been my go-to since. One trip, 五湖豆漿 (5Lakes Soy) was closed! That was when I discovered their competitor across the street, aptly named 四海豆漿 (4 Oceans Soy). Well, I say that 5 Lakes are way more superior to 4 Oceans, vast as the latter sounds. 

One of my favourite things about 五湖豆漿 (5Lakes Soy) is its location. It is on the street level of a sprawling residential development that has seen better days. Think of Waterloo Complex, but decrepit and labyrinthine, with a garden of dried out water fountains right in the middle, and built in the 1970/80s Japanese style where every part of a building was tiled. 

My usual is a salty soy bean, but this time I also treated myself to the extremely sinful egg-and-spring onion pancake wrapped round the crispiest doughsticks ever. The former tastes better than it looks (i.e. it looks like puke): a curdled soy milk with a magical concoction of preserved radish, spring onions and shrimp fry. 

The morning street market nearby has a Sunday vibe that is all the goodness of (grand)mothers shopping for the family dinner. Along both sides of the narrow lane are makeshift stalls selling vegetables, fruits, meat, seafood, sundries and other goods that mirror the wet markets in Singapore.   

But the market I really want to get to is under the JianGuo Highway! If you have the final book of Furrie and Shortie, they make a trip too to the JianGuo Weekend Flower Market. It has EVERYTHING a plant parent would ask for.

I had a late lunch at 林記 - a tiny corner shop at one of the junctions of the Highway that serves fried beehoon and fried rice. This, too, is a Sunday fave.

Plant hunting can be exhausting so I scrapped my visit to the Taipei Fine Arts Museum and made my way to the aptly-named 優咖啡. Furrie and shortie visited it too! This 1973 coffeehouse in the Japanese restaurant district (Tian Jing street) just south of Taipei station is run by the cutest old couple. The patrons are middle-aged regulars, catching up on gossip. Grandma makes a punchy cup.

Not far away are 2 art book shops. Pon Ding has more graphic design books while 荒花 (Wildflower) is more illustration-based. And because I spent my money on plants and books, dinner was simple: Chive potstickers and corn soup for $3.50. This is also because I was preparing to get to the bar round the corner as soon as it opened. 

Bar Otani. What a bar. 

It’s an absolute nightmare if you are claustrophobic. But perfect if you are me. An 8-seat counter, dark as hell, silent as a library, no menu. The bartender was dressed in a white dining jacket, black bowtie and white gloves. I could not see his face as he was wearing a surgical mask. In front of every seat is a clear acrylic sheet that separated you from the bartender. He shifted it to hand you your drink. On each acrylic sheet is a small printed sign. If you can read the sign in the darkness, it instructs you to speak softly and that there was a minimum spend expected of each customer. It is the kind of sign you expect in a library. 

The bar is like a strange Murakami set-up and I should expect a sheepman soon. But more of that another day. In the meantime, despite it being so quiet, I managed to have a conversation with the Japanese bartender who spoke Mandarin with a barely discernible Japanese accent. When I entered the bar, at the other end was a foreigner with a Taiwanese young lady in a tight dress. She has been taking him around different bars the last two days. I could not figure out their relationship and why her partner was so intent on drinking... it seemed professional, their relationship, but in the dark, everything just appeared more mysterious. When they left, two hipster young men came in with their bags of hipster shopping. They sat quietly beside each other the whole time and just drank their cocktails. Just before I left the bar, a middle aged woman who looked like she was touching sixty entered alone. She sat at the seat right next to the entrance. She was dressed like a secretary and spoke Japanese to the bartender.  So those were the characters in this story so far. No one was murdered. No one disappeared down a manhole. The bartender worked quietly but with such precision and grace he was clearly an assassin by day and only a bartender in the night. 

The most important thing is that the drinks are downright delicious! The best way to end a day of favorite things in my favourite city. 

Afternote - A Gardener's City

Taipei is a gardener’s city, which is not quite the same as how Singapore envisages itself as a city in a garden. In spirit, Taipei is closer to the everyman corridor efforts of an old HDB block. It is hard to ignore the unpretentious gardeners’ presence in Taipei along its shopfronts, windows and balconies, side streets, in front of all buildings and in the small city parks that punctuate all their neighbourhoods.

Our key similarity is that we both have some beautiful tree-lined boulevards and streets. These beautfiul roads in Singapore are lined with mature and majestic rain trees and flame of the forests, while the most beautiful streets in Taipei are often lined with the Chinese banyan 榕樹. 

Singapore’s British colonial past means we have inherited the English desire for manicured gardens, plus our over-compensation given that we are essentially a completely urban city-state (think Gardens by the bay). At a very practical level, our tropical weather does mean plants require some taming in the city. The Taiwanese naturally inherited the aesthetic of the Chinese scholars’ garden with its bonsai and “borrowed scenery” approach. Their weather also allows for more varietals of semi temperate trees, ferns and epiphytes to thrive. More importantly, in their background are their central green mountains. And when this wild majestic nature is everyday in your sight, the gardener knows to whom they give their tribute.

p/s有時候我覺得這些照片是我為你拍的，有點埋怨你。其實只是我看台北的角度有你的存在而已 - 照片仍是自己喜歡、享受、開心而拍的。所以還是謝謝你啦！👹