Gestation - Taipei 1987

In 1987 Taipei was a bustling metropolis of cash, currencies, gold, smog, dust where a Benz SLK shared the same lane as a wooden cart pulled by a water buffalo, where a traffic accident involving 3 Benz's was not unusual. It was too much for me. I missed going home to the quiet pastoral suburban dorms of Pohang Iron and Steel Company in Korea.
I spent 10 days and 10,000 NT touring the island looking at alternatives. I returned
to Taipei and decided to give it a chance.

There was no escaping the noise of construction, traffic or destruction. In 7 months I lived at several different locations.

I got to know the pubs. I networked more than I drank. A year in Korea had increased my tolerance. There were no discos, the nightclubs catered to Taiwan businessmen. But there was a growing number of western style pubs which attracted foreign business people, English teachers and local women trawling for foreign men either to practice their English or for long term or short term relationships.

I was thoroughly unprepared for winter in Taipei. The cement buildings and marble floors magnified the cold. The thin blankets that came with my meager rented room were inadequate. One night, as a last resort I poured out a puddle of Kao Liang liquor on the floor and lit it on fire. I fed the fire a cup at a time until I warmed enough to stop shivering.

While living in Mucha, 3 blocks from the graveyard, weekends were impossible. The funeral processions started early Sat and Sun mornings. Enjoying the wrong lifestyle, pub crawling until sunset. We closed the pubs, bought bags of beer and climbed the unfinished stairs of the steel cement skeletons which would soon be the skyscrapers you see today. In the darkness from level to level we saw pairs of eyes peering out at us, and a strange language which was definitely not Chinese, nor Taiwanese. Dark skin, broad shouldered, swarthy men and women, were sleeping on the levels of the raw cement building, on layers of cardboard, wrapped in sleeping bags and blankets, strumming guitars, drinking Whisbih.

After 9 months, human gestation period, I decided Taipei was not for me; New York with single fold eye-lids. I found that I was getting nothing while spending a lot of money and body fluids. I grabbed the opportunity to move south.