Hard to imagine now, forty-some years ago Taipei was a somnolent Asian backwater. Though heavily militarized by the warlord forces of Chiang Kai-shek and by the American military that manned airbases ready to strike communism in China and Southeast Asia and radio listening posts, the ambience of Taipei was slow and close to nature in the languid humidity. On a typical summer afternoon, the blue of the sky above one-story tile-roofed Japanese-style houses was broken by sudden lightning and a tropical downpour, and then forty minutes later the sun broke through again and glistened on wet hibiscus bushes and tree branches pushing over the concrete walls topped with broken glass. The lanes were quiet except for neighborly foot traffic, pedicabs with their bicycle bells, and vendors hawking roast sweet potatoes or ice cream.
Such was the daily scene just a few blocks from the main gate of National Taiwan University, where the Japanese-era red brick buildings sat arrayed along a long broad boulevard. NTU was the south edge of the city; and beyond that were green rice fields of manicured neatness, every bit of land cultivated intensively. At the side of NTU, “New Life” Road, named for Chiang Kai-shek’s program of austerity, was divided by a canal with grassy sloping banks where goats grazed under trees; one direction of traffic flowed on each side of the canal. As on nearby Roosevelt Road, half the roadway was for bicycles and pedicabs, and cars were few – generally only government bureaucrats, almost invariably mainlanders, and American military had private cars. Buses, crammed to suffocation, charged ten cents local currency. Pedicabs served for hired transport, and only gave way to small red taxicabs in the late 1960’s.
The major landmarks in student life just across from the NTU gate were the Cantonese restaurant and the Good Friends Photo Studio. The restaurant, well frequented by the few round-eyes at NTU, served up mounds of rice topped with Chinese sausage, roast duck, and char-siu pork. The cracked teapots displayed repairs with metal staples, now a lost art. Good Friends Photo Studio was the standard for graduation pictures. The upper stories were cubicles for students. Faintly dangerous and forbidden discussions of “the other China” and repression in Taiwan flowed among overseas Chinese and the round-eyes in this rarified intellectual environment.
Even here at the south side of the city distant from the main U.S. military compounds, PX, and Officer’s Club on Zhongshan North Road, the American military was present, though the Thirteenth Air Force compound was partly hidden behind the police station at the Gongguan traffic circle. The low buildings painted light military green extended towards the hills; the location is now the grounds of a technical university where a jet fighter is incongruously displayed as it was then.
In those days we could not imagine that Taiwan would become an industrial powerhouse and the forefront of global electronics. But the lush green rice paddies under clear skies have also receded into that agricultural past.
Comments
Lynn Cornberg
Dear Linda,
What a lovely quiet picture you paint. Thank you for the calm. Yesterday I traveled by high speed rail to Hsinchu. I have lived in Taiwan, mostly Taipei, for 10 years. Coming out of the high tech beautifully art-adorned high tech HSR station I was greeted by friendly professional cab drivers who spoke friendly familial Taiwanese to each other and clear Chinese to me. As the cab rolled toward Hsinchu, I realized how peaceful the place felt. The cab driver told me that we were driving over "rice paddies." He told me so much more but my Chinese is hun lan. Thank you for your lovely memories of Taipei. I think I felt a tiny bit of the energy that must still be etched in your eyes for the beauty of this island and its people. P.S. The wind is Hsinchu made an impression as have you.
November 8, 2007 9:12 PM