Wresting ourselves from a very cosy apartment was not easy on Sunday as the temperature waxed and waned between single and double figures. There was a wind snapping away outside as well as a depressing drizzle stopping and starting with annoying regularity. Despite all this, we’d been cooped up for a couple of days and needed to get out and stretch the legs. We decided to do an old fashioned walking tour of a few local haunts and eventually wander down through some markets before coming home a different way.
Going down the back roads near home, we’ve learned when to hold our nose and when to avert our eyes, almost to the point where it’s become automatic. I decided I was going to get “back to basics” and take another good hard look at our everyday surroundings. The market alley ½ way to the night market in the shadows of the buildings beside the Damshui river is an at times alluring and at times revolting sensory mix. We wandered into the surrounding streets after a leisurely stroll from home down the new raised river path, under the subway, through car parks and over the new bridge. The world transformed about 100 metres down a side street on the southern side of the river. Hawkers bellowed and cawed, touting their vegetables straight from the back of the tiny ubiquitous blue trucks that transport all goods around the city streets. The soil of the Yangminshan hills still clung to the roots of some of the produce and as we advanced further into the labyrinth of stalls, the fresh seafood began to appear. Huge, plump prawns writhed in fresh water and the fish lay on an angle on a bed of ice, just for show really as the fish had only just stopped twitching. The seafood just oozed freshness: the colours were vivid and alive, the red of the Chinese New Year much sought after. Most of the shoppers were dressed in red of some sort, the produce had a reddish tinge and even the foreign women wandering through the stalls had red clothes on!
The police nudging their way through the throng on their scooters were the only discordant note: one wondered why they even bothered; this Taiwanese crowd was not prone to violent outbursts. Perhaps they were there to quell the savage rush that came at intervals when wild entreaties to the crowd about super special bargains enticed a sea of shoppers to flock to their stall. The stall itself was sometimes little more than a rudimentary cart being pushed slowly down the centre of the alley, causing great crowds to build up around it, the humanity forcing people through the little gaps left around it.
Then chickens in cages were standing and squawking beside a table where a man plucked their feathers and skinned their recently departed brothers. You could select your bird from the cage if you could handle the killing process. The end result, packaged neatly just two tables along was strangely unlike the real thing: best not to dwell on this for too long especially if you’re about to eat!!
Further along, men and women and the tiniest of children implored the crowd, bellowing their heart felt belief in their amazing product. Shoelaces and baby clothes, fat reducing tights and “fashion” skirts compete for space amongst sweet cakes and red bean dough cakes, fried trotters and shell fish, nuts of all kinds and peculiar local lollies.
A dose of the real Taipei was just the tonic before we depart for another adventure later this week: off to the south west coast of Sri Lanka, to surf, to relax, to look, to see, to wonder. We just can’t wait!