Taipei, Taiwan... Chinese, but not really China ;-)

After 7 weeks on the road, and 13 time zones, we've made it to our last "new" country - on the island of Taiwan (formerly Formosa).  Depending on who you ask, it is technically either the "Republic of China," or a province of the People's Republic of China (mainland China) called "Chinese Taipei," though most people here just say "Taiwan."  Politically, it's more complicated (a LOT more complicated!), but from what we've seen and heard, this is a distinctly different place and culture here.  Mandarin Chinese is the main language spoken, but there are strong influences from Japan, which controlled the island for more than half a century up until the end of WW II.  On our two days in Taipei visiting museums and taking a local walking tour, we've learned a lot, including the basic fact that we don't teach much about the post-WWII history of China/Taiwan in the US (Google "228 incident," and you'll see)!  

Taipei is the capital, and like many of the Asian cities we've visited on this trip, it is very large (pop. about 3 million), busy, and densely developed.  In contrast to pretty much every place else we've been, however, Taipei is neat, clean, and orderly -  lots of scooters, but zero scooter chaos!
Note how each scooter is neatly parked in its own marked space!  Traffic lanes and lights are not only placed and clearly demarked at almost every intersection, but they are actually observed and obeyed ;-)... Amazing!  

It's also much cooler here(about 55F) and even rained on us yesterday, but not enough to cause issues with getting around.  We began with a visit to the National Museum -  which turned out to be a great place to begin to learn about everything from local culture and geography, to recent politics and regional history.  We then joined a walking tour of "old town Taipei," which further updated us on the local political situation, and gave a nice introduction to the physical development of the city and country.  
Today we spent wandering around the Dihua "old street" neighborhood, which is filled with traditional food stores and street food vendors.  We enjoyed an "interesting" lunch of local fresh spring rolls that were the size of burritos, as well as giant strawberries wrapped in tapioca.  We'll never go hungry here, that's for sure!After lunch, we went through our first Taoist temple. Similar in many respects to the many Buddhist temples we've visited, but distinctly different in design and detail...
The most unusual part of this particular temple was the forecourt acting as a picnic spot, with street food vendors in stalls wrapping around the courtyard...

Tomorrow, we'll be leaving urban Taipei and heading down the east coast in our first car rental of the trip.  So... More news soon on what it's like to drive in Taiwan, and what's out in the countryside that we've not seen here on foot!
Cheers -


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