Word: taipei
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Elizabeth Knup Taipei...
...instead the blocks of inner-city residences that were torn down to make space for it, the families displaced by the construction. And some are embarrassed by its size. There is a joke among Taiwanese students that when a young man from the southern city of Kaohsiung came to Taipei for the first time, he walked all the way around the memorial wall to see the designs of the windows which decorate it, no two of which are alike. At the end of his walk, he could comment only: "There is more than one Great Wall in China...
Alex and I are drinking in a bar in Little Australia, a section of Taipei near the Ambassador Hotel where Australian businessmen go to drink, carouse, hire prostitutes. The bars have names like Victoria Pub. The Ploughman, the Waltzing Matilda. Alex, who is New York Chinese, looks around us at the beaming, red faces of drunken Australians and observes that there is nothing in the whole goddamn place that's written in Chinese. We decide we have to do something very Taiwanese the next day. We take a bus to White Sand Bay, one of two sandy beaches...
...posts driven into the sand. In Taiwan, tanned skin is frowned upon; the ideal beauty is pale. If your skin is tan it means you have to work outdoors, farming or building. Even on the hottest days, workers stay covered from head to toe. Some car washers in Taipei wear detachable sleeves to keep their arms out of the sun; they remove them when they rest in the shade. So Alex and I are not surprised that many of the "bathers" are fully clothed...
Outside the largest gate to the monument in Taipei, a bridal party stops to have its picture taken against the striking white background of the plaza and the pyramid. It is something of a tradition in the city to have wedding pictures taken there...