Taipei 101 Quotes

The scale of what Taiwan had accomplished, in just six post-war decades and under extremely straitened circumstances, was astonishing. In 1952, 42 per cent of Taiwanese were illiterate. Fifty years later, nearly 60 per cent of Taiwanese went to university. (Tellingly, the illustration on Taiwan’s 1000-dollar note was four schoolchildren studying a globe, though it wasn’t apparent whether they were learning their foreign capitals or plotting Chinese missile trajectories.) Taiwan’s 23 million diligent, dogged and courteous people had built the seventeenth-biggest economy in the world, and accrued the third-largest foreign reserves. Their tiny island boasted six domestic airlines, trains you could set your watch by and, in the shape of Taipei 101, the world’s tallest building. And they’d made their transition from military dictatorship to pluralist democracy without getting any blood on the carpet. For a country that didn’t formally exist in the eyes of most of the world, this was decent going. Having visited many broken-down, violent dumps where everybody insisted that The Struggle superseded all other considerations, like picking up the rubbish and teaching kids to read, and invariably blamed someone else for all their problems, I fell hopelessly in love with the place. Were I a George Soros-style billionaire eccentric, I’d establish a program under which the world’s nationalist crazies, idiot warlords and dingbat terrorists would be sent to Taiwan, to see what can be accomplished when people stick the grievance schtick on the back-burner, put in a day’s work and behave in a civilised manner. Taiwan

On Saturday morning, he'd chosen his favorite place in Taipei to show me, Chung-shan Park. We wandered on a beautiful walking path around a lake with spraying fountains, surrounded by trees, and under the shadow of Taipei's iconic skyscraper, which was called Taipei 101. It was a great place for people-watching, with young couples on romantic walks, parents pushing babies in strollers, older people practicing tai chi, kids riding bikes, and nature lovers snapping photos of flowers. Best of all were the baobing- delicious shaved ices with a super-thin texture and condensed milk that added an extra sweet flavor. I topped my baobing with mango chunks, while Uncle Masa chose sweet potato chunks on his, an addition I never imagined could be delicious until I sampled his for myself.