I get the feeling...

Sometimes, I get the feeling that I am in Taiwan during a golden period of it's history. To understand what I mean, you must understand a little of the back story of this fresh country.

During, what is known as the Kuomintang Martial Law Period, the Cairo conference in Egypt declared that Japan was to return, "'all the territories Japan has stolen from China, including Manchuria, Taiwan and the Pescadores...' This ultimatum was accepted when Japan signed the Instrument of Surrender.

"On October 25, 1945, ROC troops representing the Allied Command accepted the formal surrender of Japanese military forces in Taipei (then called Taihoku). The ROC Government, led by Chiang Kai-shek, announced that date as 'Taiwan Retrocession Day'." (Wikipedia)

From here on, it remained a one-party state and was controlled by martial law until 1987 (the year of my birth, coincidentally) at which point Chiang Kai-Shek's son, and heir, began the process of liberalization of the government and the creation of Taiwan's first opposition party to the KMT.(Wikipedia)

A few years later, President Lee Teng-hui was elected by the first popular vote held in Taiwan during the 1996 Presidential election. "In 2000, Chen Shui-bian of the DPP (Democratic Progressive Party), was elected as the first non-KMT President and was re-elected to serve his second and last term since 2004."(Wikipedia)

This young country has undergone more change than Madonna's had face lifts in it's most formative period, occurring during the past few decades. The Taiwan that you find today is characterisized by a deep connection with the past, even the most bustling street corner of the city can hold a small temple with guilded statues of dieties and long, pungent, sticks of incense burning at all times. While the street itself shows a dialectic striving for everything new and modern. It is on the cutting edge of technology and yet most people still shop at local night-markets for dinner, where vendors display fruit and meat grown locally and displayed with little more than a table top and a meat hook. This give and take of past, present and future is perhaps the most mesmorizing part of this country. You cannot help but get wrapped up in the spirituality and yet, one trip on the spotless MRT system will prove without a single atom of doubt, that these people are efficient and savvy to a degree found no where else in the Western world.

Add to this a friendliness that is hard matched on any other patch of Terra firma in the known Universe and you can understand my infatuation. It is not uncommon to be approached in a restaurant, while you desperately try to communicate with the woman behind the counter, by an English speaking Taiwanese native who wants to help you with your transaction. I have been saved from ordering some heinous foul smelling meat products more than once by a keenly observant Taiwanese patron who leans in affectionately to say, "you don't want to order that," with a smile on their lips. It seems a natural part of their nature to be friendly and helpful at every turn. Even people with no English capabilities have come up to me in the street to try to help in any way they can, as I stand befuddled in the street staring at signs in characters that I have no understanding of. "The one that looks like a box with a line through the middle... I think that means bar, let's head this direction guys."

Yesterday, I was eating some beef noodles in the park when a light drizzle began. A very concerned elderly woman on a bike with a quintessential straw paddy-hat came my way and began pointing to some benches under an awning. She kept on explaining in Chinese that I was stupid and needed to get out of the rain, to which I smiled, like a dope addict being approached by an apparition of a childhood friend and kept nodding my head. "Thank you" I kept repeating in Chinese, every time she came over to point and make very clear that I was being rained on. After the third time this played out, I decided to humor the poor woman before she had a heart attack due to excessive hand gesturing and went to sit beneath the awning, though I was nearly finished with my food by this time. She came over a minute or two later and handed out some New Years candy to the two other occupants of the picnic area and turned to me, offering me a small candy and bowing her head. I accepted, gladly, and spouted off a phrase that I picked up during the Western New Years festivities "Xi nien quai la," or "Happy New Year!" before making my way to a friends apartment. The candy was interesting, but not to my taste, as is the case with most of the candy I find here that is not from the West, but that is far from the point. This woman was genuinely concerned for my well being, despite it being gruelingly clear that I understood nothing of the wisdom she was trying to impart.

That is the way it is here and I can only wonder as to how long this friendliness is going to last. At what point will the throngs of westerners become a plague, instead of a curious anomaly? At one point will we wear out our welcome? I can only hope that I am not alive to see that day, because I am so affectionately touched by the people here. It would be a shame if the entire hoard of Western influence came and trampled this poor island down to the bare bones of blown out tourist hell. Another tragic vacation destination. Just one more pick-pocketers haven.

I wake up with cold sweats at night, nightmares of arriving in the city and being thrust into a crowd of hawaiian shirt wearing middle-classers trapesing around Guting with cameras round their necks and children standing beside them looking bored and hot. "Would'ya just look at this place?" He remarks to his permantenly bedgraggled wife as she desperately claws for another tissue to wipe Kelly's running nose. "Yeah, yeah it's pretty impressive, can we find a McDonald's soon? Kevin's getting cranky and we haven't eaten since breakfast."

I shudder to think of it, and yet I know that my coming here is just the scouting party. I am every bit as guilty as this soon-to-be tourist and I know it. I feel like one of those jackass hipsters who "discovers" a band when they only have 300 friends on MySpace and then they get a record deal. Their single begins to pour out all hot and sticky on every media outlet the world has to offer while I sit in a coffee shop, wiping my greasy locks out of my eyes muttering: "I liked Taiwan before it was cool."