Free from the Communist Grasp

Now that I am in Taiwan I can officially say that I am no longer in a Communist country. Though I pretty much felt that way in Hong Kong now I have really and truly escaped CCP grasp. I don't know how to celebrate this power... Throwing open the windows and yelling "FREE TIBET" seems extreme.

Yet again I'm pressed for time since I can't bear to sit inside on the computer rather than heading out to The National Palace Museum (one of the top 3 museums in the world)Of course none of it is about Taiwan, it's all Chinese artifacts the Nationalists literally stole from the Mainland.... so yeah.

Anyway I'll do some more fun bullet points about HK/ Taipei

* On one of my first days in Hong Kong I went to Man Mo temple on Hollywood Street. It was pouring rain so I was concentrating on not slipping down the hundreds of steps rather than finding my way but the instant I smelled the incense I was certain of my navigation skills. It's a fragrance that I don't think I've come across in the US but it's powerful and very beautiful. The reason it was so intense is that this temple is crammed to the brim with the stuff. There are the normal dozens up dozens sticks infront of the altars but hung from the (rather low) ceiling are layers of incense coils made of long long sticks twisted into cones. The entire temple is so smoky that it's difficult to see and everything has this solemn and mystical glow around it. I also saw someone offering an entire cooked pig which was... new and fun.

* On Saturday I went up Taipei 101, currently the world's tallest building. First of all,I think it's a beautiful building which is good cause it towers over everything else in the area. It's supposed to resemble bamboo but you can think of the shape as boxes of Chinese take out containers stacked on top of eachother. To get to the 89th floor you take the world's fastest elevator (took 37 seconds to get to the top) and then you can see a huge gold damper suspended from cables that acts as a shock absorber for the building to keep it from swaying. Pretty amazing if you ask me. I did a free audio tour so I found out the identities of all the surrounding building including places I'd visit that day or in the upcoming week. I had such a good time. My uncle has trained me to be an engineering nerd but even if I wasn't I think I would have freaked out over how enormous and beautiful the place was.

* Yesterday one of the places I went was the 2.28 Peace Park and Museum that finally lifted the ban of silence surrounding the White Terror and allowed people to talk about this massacre. It was a very well done museum and sobering to see the bloody shirts and bullet-ridden shirts they had on display. Even though I was surprised and refreshed by the honesty (in stark contrast to the Chiang Kai Shek memorial "lah lah lah so happy! Want to see his cars? They're black and cool and no one hated Chiang Kai Shek lah lah lah") but the only people there were me and a young Taiwanese couple so maybe the honesty is being wasted.

* I just want to say that ever since Connie mentioned that the uber swanky apartment complex down the street houses Taiwanese celebrities I've had visions of me running into Ella from S.H.E! It's such a sad dream because I doubt it will happen (that complex is a ghost town....) but I can imagine!

Ok, time to go. I need to get the museum in time for the English tour. I'll try for another longer post in the future!