Taiwan

Time Out visits Taiwan's capital city of Taipei to find hysterical teenage girls, pork-belly art and the world's smelliest food

The 'Taipei 101' building which is the tallest in the world

A couple of teenage girls are weeping openly in front of me. I look around to deduce the reason for their disquiet. My attempts to offer a tissue are rebuked. Looking down in front of me I see two red moon-shaped wooden blocks lying on the floor. Another teenage girl, this one dressed in high heels and a denim miniskirt comes over and touches their arms. Before long all three of them are shedding tears. Gazing around the courtyard I see many other groups of girls doing the same thing. Visiting the average Taoist-Buddhist temple in Taiwan seems to be as emotional as a Take That reunion concert to the adolescent female visitor. Who on earth is to blame for all this upset?

The only thing I knew about Taiwan before my visit was that my very first ghetto blaster and Walkman were made there in 1988. Yet this rebel nation has far more to offer than low-cost technology. Take, for instance, the Lonshan Temple, a sanctuary of calm in the middle of the bilious excess of scooters and dim sum vendors that dominate the streets of the capital city, Taipei. Against such chaotic modernity, its 300-year-old exterior provides just one of many contrasts in this small, tropical and mountainous island.

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Increasingly overlooked due to the mercantile revolution in its colossal neighbour China, Taiwan is losing out economically at present. The shopping malls beneath the syringe shaped ‘Taipei 101’ building (the tallest in the world at a neck-straining 508 metres) stand immaculate but empty, the factories having long-since packed up and moved to the mainland. Life goes on however, albeit often in a state of dewy-eyed disconsolateness for the city’s young, judging by what I’ve seen in the temples. The majority of Taiwanese have both Buddhist and Taoist beliefs and the combination creates vibrant places of worship with hundreds of different deity statues from both religions, huge dragon pillars, courtyards and visitors all holding pungent incense sticks. Many people leave food on trestle tables as gifts to their gods in the courtyards creating an atmosphere somewhere between a village fête and the Green Fields at Glastonbury.

People come here to communicate with the various gods. One Taoist way of doing this is to play zhi jaio (pronounced ‘bar-boi’ in Taiwanese). This involves throwing the aforementioned moon blocks onto the floor three times. If both land flat side up it means a negative to the question you were asking. Flocks of teenagers come here to have their exam, family and (mostly) love questions answered by the gods in this way. As the scenes I witnessed prove, the answers are taken very seriously.

Taiwan is also a great place to sample many varieties of Chinese cuisine: food from Shanghai, Fujian, and Sichuan is all available. Dim sum here is sensational with queues pouring out of the doors of the Din Tai Fung restaurant in the central Daan district whichserves steamed pork dumplings that your chopsticks puncture like a balloon, such is their freshness (unlike London’s Chinatown where dumplings tend to collapse like slow tyre punctures). The Shillin night market is an enormous draw on Saturday nights for locals. For barely 50p per dish, you can take your pick from the more unusual Taiwanese cuisine, which includes pig’s brain soup, oyster omelette and the legendary ‘stinky tofu’, made of over-ripe vegetables (in order to bring out the healthy enzymes apparently) and deep fried with an odour that could paralyse a rhino. Surprisingly, it tastes far better than it smells.

Taipei is undoubtedly a modern city with an incredibly cheap and reliable metro network and takes noticeable pleasure in its status as David to China’s Goliath. To get a sense of this, ask anyone about the National Palace Museum. It’s a gargantuan collection of Chinese art that was shipped over by Taiwan’s modern-day father Chiang Kai-Shek when he fled the mainland to escape communism in 1949 to create Taiwan’s economic miracle. Jewellery, sculpture and fine art dating from the Neolithic period right through to the end of the final dynasty of Qung (which was crushed in 1911) are on display though the most popular item is, oddly, a piece of agate stone sculpted to look like a piece of pork belly in soy sauce. It’s accompanied by a piece of what looks like a real head of cabbage with an insect clinging to the end but is actually an incredible piece of sculpture made on a piece of jade. Both made by craftsman in the Chiing Dynasty in the mid-nineteenth century, these items perhaps sum up the appeal of Taiwan – a culture that may seem familiar to anyone acquainted with China, but with an allure and strangeness all of its own.

Getting there EVA (www.evaair.com) flies from London with a brief stop-off in Bangkok from £850 return inc. taxes.
Staying at: Landis Hotel in Taipei (www.landishotelsresorts.com), where room rates start at £85 per night, including breakfast.

For more information visit the Taiwan Tourist Board at www.taiwan.net.tw

Rob Crossan