A Very (Republic of) Chinese Time in My Life

I have spent the last week mostly eating, walking, riding bicycles, and riding trains. I’ve been drinking green tea all goddamn day. Basically, I'm living the dream and Taiwan is the best place on earth.

I know, I know, I know. White man in his 20s goes to Asia and is immediately like "whoaa it's the best place on earth." But, like, mine's not in a weird way! Like, none of my exes are Asian! Not because I have anything against Asian women, though. Asian women are beautiful! But, like, not more beautiful than other women. But also not less. They are the perfect amount of beautiful so that there is nothing weird about my relationship towards them in a way that I either like them too much or don't like them enough.

Nailed it. Perfect start. Well done, Jamie.

Anyways, here’s too much detail about all the things I did in Taiwan. TLDR: It rules.

June 2: Arrival in Taipei

Turns out Taiwan is pretty far from the US. Who'd have thought? But after an 8 hour flight to Amsterdam, a 3 hour layover, a 14 hour flight to Taipei, and a 12 hour timezone difference, we’d left the US on May 31st and arrived on June 2nd. With the combination of jet lag and Taiwan's heat/humidity, it felt like I spent most of the first day in one of those dreams where you're underwater but can still breathe, everything's just a little muffled and blurry.

Regardless, my parents and I put on a brave face, dropped our bags at the hotel, and went to meet my brother Henry. He's been living in Taiwan for the past couple months, doing research for his doctorate in Latin American Studies from Oxford. Yes, that's correct. He's studying Latin America at a British university, and he's doing research in Taiwan as part of that. Super normal.

We met him at a breakfast spot that had been recommended to us by a Taiwanese family friend: Fu Hang Soy Milk. That’s the name of the restaurant, not the name of the family friend. The line literally wrapped around the block, and after a 20 minute wait, we reached the second floor of a shopping mall food court, where the restaurant churned out bowl after bowl of soy milk along with every possible combination of bread, egg, and scallion that you could think of. For the soy milk, you chose hot or cold and salty or regular. The hot and non-salty was exactly what you would expect: hot soy milk. Not a whole lot more to say about it. The "salty" included chunks of the bread (similar to scallion pancake texture) and what seemed to be tofu curds, sort of like a Taiwanese porridge. It was... I mean, it was what it sounds like. It was tasty but bland. We were the only white people there, and everyone else seemed to be LOVING the food while my dad asked us several times "wait, sorry, this is just a bowl of hot soy milk? Huh."

We continued on to the Taiwan National Museum and the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial. The museum was a fine natural history museum, not much to say about it, but the memorial was nutso. It was like someone had taken the Lincoln Memorial and made it 50% larger, 80% less crowded, and 100% more Chinese.

Chiang Kai Shek has a... complicated legacy... especially to Taiwanese people. While he is possibly the most important figure in the history of Taiwan, essentially the creator of the Republic of China (Taiwan’s official name), he was also a dictator that ruled a single-party state for 30 years, killed thousands of dissidents, and committed quite a few atrocities. Taiwan has since become a true democracy—side note, Taiwan's parliament is amazing because they go FERAL. There are so many videos of full-out brawls breaking out, and my personal favorite is the following video where a MP grabbed a bill he opposed and sprinted out of the room to try and prevent its passing:

Taiwanese Christian McCaffrey is a policy nerd. Hell yeah. And while it's amazing Taiwan has reached a level of democracy where MPs can full-out brawl each other, under Chiang Kai Shek, the Republic of China was nothing more than an anti-Communist dictatorship to counter the People's Republic of China's Communist dictatorship. Henry assured us that in response to these critiques of Chiang Kai Shek, there was a museum in the basement of the memorial that acknowledged this. We searched for this museum, and managed to find a tiny, tucked-away exhibit that explained some of this, but in very limited terms that did not point a finger at the man whose 50-foot-tall statue sat above us and who was directly responsible for them. It was dwarfed by the exhibit further down explaining the Tiananmen Square Massacre and every other human rights violation committed by the People's Republic of China.

After some bubble tea and dumplings—I must re-iterate, most of what we did was eating and walking—Henry left us to do some work and my parents and I went to a temple that my mom had been saying we NEEDED to visit. There is a temple on practically every block in Taiwan (this is not an exaggeration—even in rural Taiwan we randomly stumbled upon several), so why was this the one we needed to see so badly? Well, the Xia Hai temple is dedicated to the "matchmaking god", meaning that it is full of single people asking for his help in finding a romantic partner.

When I asked my mom why she was so insistent that I see this temple and participate in the 12-step prayer process, she reminded me that she is hoping for grandchildren at some point in the near future and is not beyond asking for divine intervention. In response, I reminded her that if things go really well for me in the next few months, she could have dozens of grandchildren scattered across several countries and we wouldn't even need to ask the matchmaking god for help. She politely requested that I shut up and light my incense.

After permanently solving all of my romantic problems, we walked along Dihua Street, which is full of tiny shops selling dry goods, teas, and just about everything else.

At this point, we could finally check into our hotel and take our first shower in 48 hours. Absolute bliss. I chose to forego a nap, thinking I'd power through and then be immediately un-jetlagged the next morning. This is not exactly what happened. We went out for Hot Pot in the Ximending Walking District, a fun and young neighborhood with lots of crowds and lights—exactly what you want when you're so tired you're not sure if the thousands of Labubus surrounding you are real or just your mind beginning to decay. But the food was amazing and I didn't fall asleep at the table, which is good because the table is mostly a giant pot of boiling soup, and so day one was a roaring success.

June 3: Taipei Sights

Sharing a single hotel room, my parents and I discovered that all of us are very capable snorers. The morning started with lots of accusations and lots of gaslighting. According to my dad, he is only capable of snoring when he naps. Not sure how that works, especially when he had multiple witnesses claiming otherwise.

Regardless, we all woke up feeling way more rested and clean than the previous day, and after a delicious breakfast of scallion pancakes cooked with bacon, egg, and cheese, we headed to the National Palace Museum. This museum is beautiful architecturally, and also contains tons of amazing art and artifacts taken from mainland China (the museum was originally established in Beijing) when the government of the Republic of China fled.

Their most famous pieces of art are several jade cabbages, some of which have grasshoppers carved into them as well. They were stunning and for not the first time in my life I found myself wanting to eat a completely inedible rock (see also: marbles).

We then planned to see the adjoining gardens. We thought we had found them, and sat on a shaded bench for nearly half an hour, only to discover that we were sitting on the wheelchair ramp to enter the museum, and that the actual gardens were next door, huge, and gorgeous.

We walked through them as fast as possible so that we could catch an Uber to lunch with Henry. He had chosen a restaurant near our next stop, Chiang Kai Shek's Shilin residence, but by the time we were heading there, it had closed (many restaurants in Taiwan close from 2:30-5:00). Thankfully, checking Google Maps, I found a restaurant next door which had thousands of five star reviews and was open during midday. The only thing was...

It was called “The Modern Toilet” and it was a toilet-themed restaurant.

My mom insisted that it was absolutely 100% necessary that this is where we eat lunch, as this is something that does not exist in the US. After Googling, I now know that someone tried to bring this concept to LA in 2017, but it did not last even a single year.

I have never seen my dad look so upset by a meal. He kept saying over and over again "I don't get it." I have also never seen my mom laugh until she cried while perusing a restaurant's menu. Items included "whose shit is this?", "dog shit", and "constipated turd sub sandwich". We sat on toilet seats, and our food (Japanese-style brown curry) came served to us in miniature toilets.

It was the most unique dining experience I have ever had in my life. I would absolutely recommend it to anybody visiting Taipei. I have zero desire to ever do it (or anything like it) ever again in my entire life. I am someone who has always loved poop jokes way more than is appropriate for my age. That being said, eating food that looks like poop out of a toilet (shockingly) does not encourage a strong appetite. Maybe Nathan Fielder put it best:

We continued to Chiang Kai Shek's Shilin residence, a beautiful park with a small mansion where he and his wife lived for decades. Placards around the house taught us all about the Generalissimo—he is the one and only person in Taiwan's history who will ever hold that title—and his glorious rule, along with some minutiae of his day-to-day life. My favorite was a glass display case containing a bottle of Coca Cola, which informed us that the Generalissimo loved to drink a coke in the afternoon, at which point he would burp several times and feel content. Henry peppered in some of his favorite facts about Chiang Kai Shek—he has been reading Chiang's diaries in the Taipei City Archives as part of his research—and provided beautiful, inspiring historical quotes such as:

OKAY NO MORE POOP-RELATED CONTENT FOR THE REST OF THE BLOG POST I PROMISE!!!!

That is a sentence I did not expect to be typing when I started writing these.

We took the Metro to meet up with Mark, a Taiwanese friend of Henry's from Oxford. Mark showed us around Tamsui, a beautiful riverside/coastal part of Taipei that is far outside of the main piece of the city. Mark said it was an extremely popular date spot, and also the best place to watch the sunset in Taipei. I completely agreed, and so did the dozens of Taiwanese people who had set up their cameras on tripods.

Hundreds of stalls lined the walk, and I had a fantastic skewer of... Guess what?

Amazing that 15+ years after "Guess what? Chicken Butt." was something I would say on a daily basis—middle school Jamie had a very sophisticated sense of humor—I finally am able to legitimately ask "Guess what?" and answer "Chicken butt".

We got back on the Metro to head to Shilin Night Market. On the metro, we discovered that Taipei Metro has an official mascot by the name of JAMIE. This was very exciting for me, as my name does not appear in pop culture very often, and the most famous fictional Jamie (technically spelled Jaime) is best known for sleeping with his sister. JAMIE, on the other hand, is "a galactic scout from Planet M727, [who] has touched down in the Taipei Metro, along with their good friend WAWA." Their main purpose seems to be to teach people about courtesy on public transit. As someone who loves Wawa the sandwich shop and who lives for subway etiquette, this is the most I have ever related to a fictional character who I share a name with. Well done, Taipei MRT.

We met up with Henry's roommate, Hercules—someone who I imagine has not struggled quite as much with their name's representation in fiction—and went to the Shiin night market. My parents and I bought a few sharable bottles of beer and grabbed a table while Henry, Mark, and Hercules ran around the stalls and returned with a smorgasbord of traditional Taiwanese food—oyster omelettes, braised pork rice, bubble tea, dumplings, stinky tofu, and more. It was all fantastic.

We capped the night off with a visit to The Grand Hotel, a landmark of Taipei with a gorgeous interior. We made our way to the basement, where we went to "Meet by Bar Mood", which is consistently ranked one of the best cocktail bars in Asia. It did not disappoint, and I will be dreaming of their Taiwanese take on an Old Fashioned for the rest of my life.

June 4: Jiufen

We hopped in an Uber to take a day trip to Jiufen, a town about an hour outside of Taipei which is nestled into the mountains. We walked along the "old street", where traditional lanterns guide the way past shops and stalls.

At the insistence of my mom and her guidebook, which she keeps so readily available that I think she needs a quick-draw holster for it, we decided to go to the temple her guidebook recommended. This required weaving through dozens of staircases and tiny pathways, climbing high into the mountains in the 90 degree heat. On the way there, we passed a temple—remember how I said Taiwan has a temple on every corner? But we got to this one, and it was... Pretty much the exact same as the temple we'd just walked past. Which is to say amazing and beautiful, but also not worth the sweat and steps it took to get there.

Before leaving, we stopped at a stall called A Gan Yi and got a bowl of taro balls in ice along with red beans and other various chewy things. It was the type of thing that none of us were excited about eating, but after trying it, liked it WAY more than we all expected to, and the ambiance—a tucked away patio that overlooked the sea—made it even better.

Our last stop was the Jiufen Teahouse. I did not know it was possible (or necessary) to make tea while using so many dishes, but the results were worth it and the ambiance of the tea house—the oldest building in Jiufen—made it one of my favorite stops on the whole trip.

We went on to Keelung, a port town outside of Taipei, where we explored the ruins of Sheliao Fort, originally used by the Japanese and then again by the Republic of China to house massive guns and a searchlight in case of a naval invasion from the north. The way the banyan trees had completely taken over the buildings was amazing. Someone probably could make a metaphor about nature conquering humanity’s perpetual desire for war if they wanted to... the most profound thought that I had was "whoa it's like 'The Last of Us'".

We finished with a nice walk around Keelung, seeing some amazing natural rock formations, and then took an Uber through a torrential downpour back to the center of Taipei.

We ended the night with our only dinner reservation of the trip, Impromptu by Paul Lee, a Michelin star restaurant inspired by typical Taiwanese food. It was (expectedly) phenomenal. The food and presentation were incredible, and we each tried a different drink pairing (wine, sake, and cocktail) along with the 13-course meal. And not a single dish was served in a toilet bowl, so that was a huge plus.

June 5-6: Tainan

We took Taiwan's High Speed Rail (aka bullet train) from Taipei down to Tainan. Taiwan's biggest cities all start with "Tai", and "Pei" means "North", "Nan" means south, and "Chung" means middle. In solidarity, I will only refer to New York as "USNortheast" from now on.

High speed rail is the best thing ever. I won't qualify that statement, and I won't expand on it other than to mention that I would do some truly sick and twisted things for a multi-city HSR line in the US.

In Tainan, we ate fantastic beef soup in the dingiest Michelin-featured restaurant I'd ever seen. We got caught in another downpour in another massive street market. We went to another temple, where, guess what? There was another matchmaking god. This time, after throwing some Jiaobei (Chinese divining wood blocks) to find my fortune, I received the following:

I don’t know that I would call my difficulties “innumerable”, but damn, the matchmaking god must have read my last blog post. My dad (aka future business partner/mentor/benefactor) was a big fan of this fortune.

We ate dinner at Sushiro, a conveyor belt sushi restaurant where the four of us made our way through approximately 7000 plates.

Before taking the train back North, we saw Lotus Lake, which features the Dragon and Tiger pagodas: twin pagodas featuring—you'll never guess—a dragon and a tiger.

The lake was surrounded by temples and statues, and we particularly liked a lengthy bridge with dozens of statues on each side, each statue featuring a different person riding a different animal and carrying a different object or weapon. It also featured an elderly man singing karaoke to an audience of zero. Goals.

June 6-8: Hualien

We took the HSR back to Taipei, and then took the regular-speed train—which is still awesome. I LOVE TRAINS—to reach Hualien. Upon arrival, we went to the Dongdamen Night Market, which felt like a county fair, probably since it was a Saturday night. There was music and dancing and games and hundreds of people wandering through the stalls. It included an "aboriginal street", whose stalls prepared typical food from the indigenous people. We ate snails, a fried seafood platter, and wild boar fried noodles, all of which were fantastic.

We took a taxi to our Bed and Breakfast, "Crossing the Rainbow Bridge", just outside of Taroko National Park. Teyra, the owner and a member of the indigenous Taroko tribe, greeted us warmly and had us sing a "welcome song" all together. He gave us a full tour of the BnB, introduced us to all of his cats, and provided bicycles for our ride through the park the next day.

Taroko Gorge was my favorite part of the entire trip. Following a massive earthquake in 2024, much of the park is closed, and the tunnel into the park is only open for 5 minutes at a time at 3 times throughout the day. We managed to time our ride perfectly, and got to bike along a nearly empty highway alongside the stunning Taroko Gorge. It rained nearly the entire time, and it was a mostly uphill bike ride to sights that were inaccessible due to closures, but the downhill ride back, flying through some of the most beautiful scenery I've ever seen is something I will remember for the rest of my life.

We decided to do one of the only hikes that was open. It was essentially a 1 mile staircase straight up the side of a mountain next to the visitor’s center. And yes, it was still raining the entire time. However, the view from the top was...

Almost nonexistent. The jungle was too overgrown. But we sure were high up!

After drying off and resting at the BnB, we discovered that we were out in the boonies, and so there was only one restaurant within walking distance. We set off down the country road until we reached it, and were shocked to find an extremely well-lit modern cafe built out of shipping containers. We were the only people there, and upon arrival, we ordered one of everything on the menu (there were 5 options). The staff (a family of three) prepared delicious home-cooked meals for us, including an indigenous specialty of rice stuffed inside a bamboo shoot and cooked, which they smashed on the ground in order to serve us. It was an unexpectedly special meal, and if you ever find yourself in the boonies near Taroko, make sure to stop by Nine Cozy Grill & Cafe.

On our last morning, we began with a bike ride to the beach near Hualien. It consisted only of large pebbles, and when the waves crashed, you could hear the pebbles smashing into each other like a giant maraca. The water was gorgeous and warm, and the views were spectacular. Attempting to get out of the ocean was like being tackled into a pile of jacks, according to my mother, whose bruised feet and knees seemed to agree.

June 8-9: Taipei, departure

Upon returning to Taipei, we had one mission: find JAMIE. Nearly every person in Taiwan wearing a backpack—from children to elderly—had a keychain featuring some sort of plush figure. So, when in Taiwan, do as the Taiwanese do and get yourself a plushy keychain. Obviously, mine had to be JAMIE.

Turns out, JAMIE is not a particularly popular figure. To be fair, they're competing with Pokemon and they were created for the sole purpose of promoting subway etiquette, which is not quite as fun as shooting fireballs out of your mouth. However, the Taipei Metro has an official merchandise store, so we knew there was a chance of finding a JAMIE.

The Taiwanese women working there could not believe that Americans were in the official Taipei Metro Store, and were extra surprised that we knew exactly what we were looking for as we made a beeline for the JAMIE merchandise. They helpfully informed us "JAMIE is alien!" and their heads nearly exploded when I said "I know! My name is Jamie!!" Mission success.

OKAY SORRY I’M WRAPPING UP!!! THIS TURNED OUT WAY LONGER THAN I MEANT FOR IT TO BE!!!!

Did you like how I started off describing every single minute of every single day and then got more and more to the point as this went on? It’s definitely a commentary on life and a metaphor for the way that time speeds up as we age and each year is a smaller fraction of the life we’ve lived. That’s definitely why it is that way.

To anybody still reading... Hi! Wow! You either really like me or really want to know what to do in Taiwan. Either way, thank you!! I will try to be more concise going forward unless literally one of you tells me that you liked how detailed I was or that a single thing that I wrote was even a tiny bit funny in which case I will continue being long-winded and attempting to be funny.

All in all, Taiwan is amazing. I cannot recommend visiting enough, with the caveat that it was WAY easier since we had someone conversational in Mandarin to guide us. Henry somehow has done this in the last couple years and it is so impressive and also makes me feel even worse about myself. He's already a Rhodes Scholar, and then he spends his free time learning one of the world’s most difficult languages!? We get it, bro, you're smart. But it's definitely possible to navigate without knowing any Chinese—most signs are in both Mandarin and English, most people speak some English, and there's always Google Translate or wild gesticulation when all else fails.

As I travel more of Asia, I'm definitely going to gain a deeper understanding of what parts of Taiwan were uniquely Taiwanese and what parts were more Japanese-influenced vs. Chinese-influenced vs. uniquely Taiwanese, but it is such an interesting place simply due to the fact that so many cultures and places have impacted it, and they've all blended together to create such an amazing and functional society. Turns out that when you have universal healthcare, amazing public services, a skyrocketing GDP, and a relatively cheap cost of living, things tend to work pretty well. Who'd have thought?

But if you're someone who loves nature or loves experiencing different cultures or loves food or loves places at the center of complex geopolitical machinations involving the world's most powerful countries, definitely put Taiwan on your travel list, make sure to say hi to JAMIE for me, and maybe eat some “dog shit.”

Next up, Hong Kong!