re-education camps. Photos of men and women who disappeared during Taiwan’s so-called White Terror. Death sentences, written in Chiang’s signature red pen.
It’s hard to believe a national museum would put two competing versions of history on display, side by side, and make no attempt to reconcile them. But it’s fitting. Consider Taiwan’s parliament, riven by two warring parties and bitterly divided over Chiang’s legacy and Taiwan’s ties to the mainland. A couple years ago, one legislator grabbed a rival’s proposal to allow direct flights between Taiwan and China, shoved it in her mouth and chewed it up, setting off a brawl. An actual brawl. Legislators have thrown food at one another and drawn blood (actual blood) on the parliament floor.
My translator, Julia, and I walked out and descended the steps to the plaza. For all the conflict inside, it was a peaceful spot. Couples walked with young children. Teenagers improvised a game of badminton. An imposing wall quieted the noise of rush hour traffic. There had been talk in recent weeks of tearing it down and planting trees in its place.
It was starting to get dark. “Hungry?” Julia asked. We hailed a taxi and headed for one of Taipei’s famous night markets, where vendors pack a maze of streets and alleys when the sun sets. Wandering, we dug into a pile of floury, handmade noodles, followed by pig’s-blood cake covered with crushed peanuts and cilantro; fried buns stuffed with bitter greens; pungent soup with slivers of fresh ginger and whole pigs’ feet; big hunks of melon, just in season; and heaping bowls of sweet, slippery douhua — chilled tofu pudding with azuki beans, mung beans and boiled peanuts.
I was struck by how many people in Taipei wondered aloud about the future — whether the city would continue to change for the better. It boiled down to this: Ten years ago, iPods would have been made in Taiwan. Today they’re made in China.
“Everything is drawn to China,” Pao said. “It’s like this big magnet.” But it’s hard to tell what that will mean for Taiwan in the long run. “I think people notice Taipei because of China,” he continued. “A few years ago, you would never have taken this trip.”
There was a new teen movie out, called “Exit No. 6,” about my next stop: Exit 6 at Ximen Station, in Ximending on the city’s west side. It was Friday night, and I was meeting Michelle Yeh, a 31-year-old film producer whose debut, a gay dating comedy called “Formula 17,” hit No. 1 at the box office. Yeh is tall, with a heart-shaped face and black hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. She wore a baggy black T-shirt, black jeans and white Adidas Superstars.
We ambled down the middle of the street. Pushcart vendors sold corn on the cob, sweet pork sausages and Taipei’s famous “stinky tofu.” Somewhere high above us, the stars had come out, but at street level, it was Vegas bright. It seemed like every third or fourth building was a movie theater; the rest were restaurants, arcades and cheap shops (like the concisely named Real Hip Hop Doobiest 911 Street Style International).
Yeh’s a west side person, she told me; east side people, “they’re more