Taipei not only for business travelers

Mehru Jaffer, Contributor, Taipei

To not be involved in business means to feel terribly out of place in Taipei. Everybody is friendly enough here in this sprawling city, but they are all very, very busy.

The people in Taipei do not seem to have anything against tourists except that they don't, perhaps, know what to do with them.

The pretty receptionist in the quaint Feeling Hotel was happy to take and return the key to the room but was clueless about a tour of the city. She found me a needle and some thread but could not help me with a tour guide. Worse still, most taxi drivers do not speak anything else except Chinese.

But just round the corner from the hotel in the heart of Tienmu, one of the 12 business districts in this huge metropolis, there is an entire walkway where shop-houses from the past are slowly being converted into western style showrooms, cafes and bakeries. In the midst of all the shopping, eating and drinking is a plush language school with a transparent glass door and many a colorful poster. The smartly dressed staff in the front office are very businesslike.

Long after the lights have dimmed in the Japanese shabu-shabu and the Italian restaurants nearby, the doors of the foreign language school remain open. People of all age groups come and go from the school until the late hours of the day, and young children accompanied by tired-looking adults fill one with hope that it may be possible one day to communicate with the Taipein (as Taipei people are known) using more than just a smile.

It seems that even up till a few years ago all traffic signs, names of streets and even the MRT stations were only in Chinese. This is no longer the case. The waitress at the Laurent Cafe wrote down the number of the bus that would take me to the nearest train station.

But walking there in the shade of the verandas running along the main Chung Shan north road was not such a bad idea, especially since the sun was out and it was a cool 14 degrees centigrade on a pleasant winter morning in March.

At the train station, I followed the sign to the information counter and was promptly given a map of all the train connections in town, free of charge.

It is always interesting to head toward the point where everything is said to have started in the first place. Just remember not to eat or drink while inside the train and to look out for the central railway station on the blue line, from where it is possible to reach any corner of the city.

The oldest area in this fast modernizing metropolis is the Wanhua district where the Lungshan Temple has stood for almost 1,500 years surrounded by the equally ancient market on Huahsi Street (Snake Alley). This is now a covered night market very popular with tourists for its exotic eateries offering lip- smacking seafood dishes. Here it is possible to unwind with a vigorous massage and reflexology treatment.

Some of the oldest buildings with low, unpainted wooden roofs can still be seen here. As the center of all commercial activities for centuries, this is also the place where many temples are found. The Tehshing shrine was built as a meeting place for the members of warring clans.

The Hsihai City God Temple has always been a popular center for social and religious occasions. The Tachiao church is also nearby. The Fachukung Temple is next, an important place of the mighty tea merchants.

The compound of the Lungshan Temple is constantly crowded with elderly people who sit in the sun not doing much except exposing their gnarled faces, which provide living testimony as to the ups and downs of life on the island. But Taipei is not really a city of antiquity. It is one big marketplace stocked with row upon row of foodstuffs and wares for sale, astrologers and medicine men, that is far more lively than the temples and the monuments.

Taipei was always a trading port and remains an important center for buying and selling to this day. At Tihua Street, the century-old trade in canned goods continues with mountains of dried mushrooms, tree fungus, fish and squid, herbal medicines and textiles all still lined up for sale.

While the origin of the Chinese name of Taiwan is shrouded in mystery, the island was named Formosa, or beautiful, by the Portuguese explorers. A farmer from Fukien province in China introduced farming to the fishermen here. Soon Taipei was flooded with immigrants and divided into several neighborhoods of people from different parts of China, who often battled with each other. It was those who traded in tea and camphor who were the most prosperous.

The Japanese were happy to wrest Taipei from the Chinese and made it the island's capital in 1895. The Yuanhuan, or traffic circle market, was built by the Japanese in an attempt to improve the traffic flow. It is to be hoped that this charming traffic circle will not be destroyed to make way for more high rise buildings.

After total destruction during World War Two, Taipei and its environs were resurrected half a century ago to expand into a vast industrial sprawl with factories churning out textiles and electronics parts.

The production of machinery and appliances, wire and cables, canned goods, refrigeration machinery, ships, motorcycles, rubber goods and handicrafts have eventually turned Taiwan into one of the wealthiest countries in Asia today.

At a cost, of course. June sat in the next chair to me for a foot massage at one of the many parlors lined up under the covered market in the Snake Alley. She spoke English and told me that she worked for an export company. Due to sitting in her office for hours on end, she now suffered from severe backaches and came here to treat her feet to acupressure twice a week, along with getting a back massage.

These treatments helped her to get over the fatigue and the stiffness in her shoulder, she said, as the boys continued to knead the soles of our respective feet to stimulate both the sexual organs as well as the sinuses.

But before all this Taipei was nothing but water. Once the lake dried up, the descendants of Pacific islanders already living in the elevated areas surrounding the lake settled here. Eventually the first group of Han from 120 miles, or a missile- shot, away on the southeast coast of China across the Formosa Strait, came to settle alongside the aborigines of the western Pacific island. More Chinese immigrants followed and they eventually became the majority population.

Tourism officials are now also trying to get tourists interested in the way of life of the aborigines, whose population has shrunk dramatically and are hidden away in the heart of the island.