The other China
Taipei, Taiwan

Penghu adventure

It’s been a long drive to the ferry, we’re not feeling our best and the sea isn’t helping. About half an hour into the two-hour journey, Poseidon has claimed multiple victims. The sound of passengers losing their lunch is getting too much and I’ve broken into a cold sweat. I need to get out. 

The plastic floor is sodden with human ejecta and my flip-flops pop and suck and stick as I slip-slide to the bathroom. A child screams and erupts a roiling litre of liquid hell. All around me a battalion of miniature Linda Blairs scream while their mothers, pale and sweating, clutch them weakly to their chests.

On dry land, we are fed a lunch of seafood that would probably be delicious in the normal run of events but, given our current state, might as well be the meal from the Temple of Doom – all tentacles and eyeballs on stalks.

The prospect of another four-hour round trip in the van is raised, this time to see a windmill.

Inside me, something snaps. Someone says, “I’m not getting back in the van”. I notice everyone is staring at me and realise the voice was my own.

Instead, I go to a picturesque beach and try to summon the zen wisdom of the venerable Yi Jih Shih. Eventually, I give up and summon a taxi and then room-service.

If you want to experience the difference between East and Southeast Asia, try watersports. There’s a relaxed permissiveness that pervades much of Southeast Asia. If your boat is pulling into a pier, they’ll often just let you hop off when it looks safe. They’ll trust you not to do something stupid. East Asia, at least in my experience, is the polar opposite. Maybe it’s a result of population density or cross-pollination with communism, but you will occasionally find yourself being treated like a moron with no sense of self-preservation. Which is why snorkelling probably isn’t the best option. But here I am, on the back of a boat chatting to Anthony, our snorkel ‘coach’, a friendly young guy wearing a headband without irony. 

Anthony is bubbly and friendly, but he emphasises several times how important it is to stay right by him when we are in the water. It turns out he wants us to hold on to a little rubber ring and be dragged about, rather than propel ourselves with our arms and legs – you know, like swimming. As a result, most of our party ends up getting cold and bored and heading back to the boat, despite the waters being amazing and the coral reefs unspoilt. It’s a tiny issue, a non-event really, but emblematic of a running theme. But if you’re heading to Penghu of your own accord, it does offer more than 200 miles of pristine, white-sand beaches and cerulean waters that are home to an incredible array of tropical fish, marine plants and coral reefs. 

Back to the city

We head back to Taipei for a final jam-packed day. Everyone jokes about temple fatigue, my own notes contain the helpful and evocative line, ‘Confucius Temple, yet another temple’, so I’m no stranger to the ailment. But the Longshan Temple in Taipei is well worth your time. It’s a modest, low-rise, red-and-gold building with all the dragon and tiger adornments you’d expect. But it’s interesting as a community hub and for the peculiar rituals you’ll witness within.

Taoism is a polytheistic tradition: there are gods for everything from exams to health, to doctors. Many of those gods have individual shrines at the Longshan Temple. The shrine you pray at will depend on what you need. It’s like a metaphysical market bazaar. Long lines of young women queue up for the matchmaker god to ask for a boyfriend or husband. Elsewhere, expectant mothers try to get the goddess of fertility to nudge the sex of their baby one way or the other, leaving flowers if they want a girl or sticky rice if they’d like a boy.

In front of one shrine, an old woman kneels, rattling two halves of a wooden shell in her liver-spotted hand and dropping them on the tiles. One side is convex and the other flat. If they land with matching sides, the answer to whatever she’s asking the god is ‘no’. If one side lands convex and the other flat, it’s ‘yes’. The woman repeats the process half a dozen times before nodding to herself. Turns out, you can keep asking until you get the right answer. The process is merely advisory then, like an Irish referendum.

The Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall is no slouch, either. It’s a huge, imposing hall dedicated to Taiwan’s founder. A gigantic statue of him sits in the main room, gazing down at us like a benevolent god. We are lucky enough to catch the changing of the guard and it’s quite something. Immaculate soldiers in white uniform carrying out complex choreography, stomping and swinging their guns about. It’s all very solemn, but it still reminds me of an early-1990s Janet Jackson video.

We take the sky-car high into the mountains, floating over a vibrant forest. At the top, we stop for a rather delicious lunch at the Mao Kong Liu Ji Xiang Tea Restaurant, a family-run business. Mr. Liu himself is here, smiling at us under his Roy Orbison-haircut. I sip an ice-cold beer, looking out over the lush jungle that threads through the heart of Taipei, as though nature herself were reclaiming the gleaming city.

For our last night, myself and some friends head to the gay district in Ximen, or the ‘rainbow area’, as Lily modestly refers to it. We meet Teddy, a high-heeled cocktail barman with hair like a Kardashian and legs like a catwalk model. He’s fascinated by us and effectively shuts the bar down so he can drink with us. Teddy loves Taipei. He tells me there’s still progress to be made, but it’s generally tolerant. There’s no gay marriage, but a form of civil partnership was legalised back in 2017. 

“As long as we don’t kiss in front of a church, they’re fine,” he says with a shrug and a waft of cigarette smoke.

The Taipei section of our trip is smooth and polished. It’s all temples, night markets and skyscrapers; everything you’d expect from a hyper-modern Asian city. Outside Taipei, there were hiccups. Had we been Americans paying top dollar for that snorkelling trip, for example, I suspect the shit would have hit the fan. There are parts of this country that don’t ‘get’ foreign tourism just yet. Too much of the itinerary involved driving for long periods to take a picture of something before climbing right back into the van. Why? Because that’s how the Chinese do tourism. 

Let me spin this as a positive, though: we’ve all heard friends gush about a country being ‘unspoilt’ by tourism. This, of course, ignores the fact that – just like the billboards put up by Dutch satnav-manufacturer TomTom, which read ‘You are not in traffic, you are traffic’ – we are tourism, we are doing the spoiling. 

Taiwan is a strange, occasionally inconvenient place, but it is well and truly experiential. Yes, you might end up being a bit of a guinea pig for the foreign-tourism industry, but isn’t that just about experiencing a place in its true form? That in itself is far more interesting than just another run-of-the-mill holiday.

For more inspiration about Taipei and the rest of Taiwan, visit www.taiwan.net.

Zack also visited Tainan and Kenting, popular getaways for Taipei city folk looking for a respite from the big city. Both places make adequate stopovers for OutThere travellers looking to explore more ‘authentic’ Taiwan. In Tainan, Zack stayed at the Tayih Landis Hotel, in Penghu, at Discovery Hotel, and in Kenting, at the Caesar Park Kenting.

Photography by Shamosan, Victor Huang, GoranQ, John Crux Photography and Gfed

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