While landmark structures in every country articulate the idiosyncratic visions of eminent architects, those public spaces that are closely intertwined with our everyday lives have a greater emotional resonance for us. Traditional markets are important sites in popular culture. In recent years, many of Taiwan’s tin-clad old markets have been rebuilt, but what else has changed aside from physical renovation?
Whenever I go abroad, I like to visit local markets to check out the local produce and get a feel for how people interact. It was with this mindset that I strolled through two markets in Taipei City. One is Shi-Dong Market, known as the “five-star food market.” It is spacious and comfortable, and the vendors’ booths are presented with a sense of design. It feels like a department store, but with a friendlier atmosphere.
Britain is the world’s most discerning market for black teas, whereas Japan takes the lead with the production and cultural appreciation of green teas. Taiwan, meanwhile, reigns supreme when it comes to oolong teas. In black teas, the tea leaves undergo oxidation during processing. Green teas are not oxidized, while oolong teas are partially oxidized.
In discovering a city, markets are full of clues, while shops are the guides to these clues. To explore the tastes and style of Taiwan, let’s visit Dihua Street, the oldest street in Taipei’s Dadaocheng area, as well as the Taipei Flower Market, which adds color to daily life.
In Chinese the word for “fish” (yu) sounds the same as the word for “surplus,” so fish has always been an auspicious symbol. Fish is de rigueur at Lunar New Year, and the older generation will say it’s best not to eat it all, so that there is a “surplus” in the new year.
As far back as the Qing Dynasty, gentry visiting Taiwan would return home with sleeping mats woven from triangular club-rush. Even then they made great souvenirs and gifts. During the Japanese era, rush products comprised the third largest category of exported agricultural goods, and the rush weaving industry brought prosperity to the town of Yuanli. It wasn’t until the 1970s that the industry there gradually began to fade away.
The idea of the “metaverse” has been taking off in recent times, but many people still have questions: What is the metaverse? How do you use it? Is it a technology that can even be realized?
There are others who are trying to use sound as the medium through which people can get to know Taiwan. For example, the American Andrew Ryan has recorded the sounds of daily life in Taiwan and transformed them into an English-language radio program. The artist Wu Tsan-cheng shares soundscapes from around Taiwan on the Radio Aporee website—just click on the map of Taiwan and you can be surrounded by local sounds.
“Non-fungible tokens”—NFTs—seem to be everywhere these days. Here in Taiwan, the hype has been growing ever since Christie’s auctioned an NFT of Everydays: The First 5000 Days, a work by the American digital artist Beeple, for US$69 million.
Charles Darwin, author of On the Origin of Species, loved flowers. He wrote to the English botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker: “I never was more interested in any subject in all my life than in this of Orchids.” The morphological structure of orchid flowers is simple—three sepals, three petals, and a “column” that contains the reproductive parts—but these flowers lure insect pollinators by many clever mechanisms, such as color, mimicry, scent, deception, and traps.
