Travel Photos:
Tofu: Taipei is famous for their beef noodles and noodle houses; traditional Chinese cuisine with a Japanese flair (the country was colonized by the Japanese from 1895 to 1945) but we loved the marinated dried tofu as well.
Orderly City: Taipei is a city of 2.7 Million people. A small city by Asian standards, as Bangkok has over eight million people while Hong Kong has over seven million. With a smaller population, compared to the other metropolises, Taipei is very orderly.
Visual Clarity: When we went into the MRT station by where we stayed, my friend and I was struck by one thing immediately. It wasn’t an object, nor an image, but something that was missing: advertising. In this vast architectural space we found something difficult to come across in Asian cities and subways stations around the world. We found a place devoid of visual pollution. We found clarity.
Secret Playground: While walking along a night market, we came across a stretch of the street where the restaurants were closed, but further inside we could hear a cacophony of beeps and music. Upon investigation, it was a small local arcade with rudimentary and home made arcade games. My son and I tried our hands at popping balloons with darts.
An Old Village: An hour out of Taipei by train, we visited an old mining town. It was practically a ghost town with only a few families left in the area.
BIO: Yan Sham-Shackleton is from Hong Kong and lives in Los Angeles. Her collaborative works are archived in NYU’s “Riot Grrrl Collection,” and the Glasgow Women’s Library. She loves to travel and been to over 30 countries. She is on the last draft of her novel.
Wanderlust 