5 - China: HK, Beijing, Taiwan
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China!
→ Hong Kong
→ Beijing
→ Taiwan
😁High: A tough tossup between the Great Wall and all things Taiwan - If you are one of the many who’ve recently asked me “what’s been your favorite place” I quickly say Taiwan! Although I was sharing airspace with Chinese fighter jets on my flight into Taiwan, I’ll elaborate my trip to the tropical island in the full section below, otherwise, everything about the Great Wall was spectacular. I hiked an unrestored section for hours solo and woke up a 3:30AM to watch the sun rise over the wall, constantly looking both ways on the horizon and all you can see is the massive remains of a important piece of Chinese history.
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| Great Wall on film |
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| Look at tropical Taiwan! (Film) |
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| Amongst droves of domestic tourists |
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| Terrible pic but only one from the badminton courts |
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| “Hey go practice your English on that bearded guy over there” |
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| He was actually a Chinese student who came up to me in the library. We walked around together for a couple hours after he told me he would “love to show an American his country and practice his English” |
Recap:
After a liberating month on the motorbike, I was excited to be back on two feet for next month’s plan: China & India. Backpacking two countries that account for nearly half of the worlds population! China was up first, and after Laos it would be the second communistic country I’d visit, out of a remaining five still in existence globally.
It’s been difficult to summarize my time in China as day to day experiences were both unique and incredibly polarizing. From dull Hong Kong to the awe of the Great Wall, the isolating feeling of Beijing locals to the welcoming nature of the Taiwanese, my time in China was a rollercoaster. It was a short 18 days across such a vast country with the three destinations being Hong Kong, Beijing and Taiwan. Once after telling that itinerary to another backpacker, they immediately said “you must be American, visiting all the geopolitical hot spots huh”. Well he wasn’t wrong, that was precisely my intention. Fortunately looking back I felt I got a “taste of it all” visiting those three hubs.
I was beyond excited to visit China, but ofcourse that came with a bit of uneasiness knowing both the culture shock I was told I’d experience and the current US Chinese ties. I entered with fascination of the people, excited to learn more about its long history, and of course ever so curious and mindful of the Chinese sentiment surrounding US culture. I wondered what I could learn, and how I could gain the Chinese perspective of our side of the world. Ofcourse weeks before I left, mainland China had recently been elevated to a Level Three travel advisory by the US Dept of State for the “potentiality of wrongful detention and arbitrary enforcement of laws”. And truly everywhere did I witness the “security theatre” of the People’s Liberation Army.
For as long as I can remember we’ve been inundated in the US with news on the US China relations. As two of the world’s great powers, it’s an agenda topic on nearly every presidential race and economic agenda. The last five years, both during and after the COVID-era it felt more fuel was added to the fire. Beyond the questionable Chinese support of the Russian war, private US businesses have been pulling out of the country and foreign investment into innovative Chinese companies by Americans was recently banned. With the trade war escalating, for For American companies like LinkedIn (who I was told by someone I had met in Beijing had also recently pulled out of China) one could understand the complications of doing business in a country which considers Mao Zedong its patron saint.
During my China trip I felt I experience a commendable taste of modern day China and the current status of it’s SARs (Special Autonomous Regions) HK & Taiwan, which have painted the recent news. I had the dichotomous nature of “celebrating” Hong Kong’s 25th Independence Day (or Establishment Day as they call it) a short few years after China reinstated their full control of the city (who can forget watching the insane 2020 protests while wearing masks in your living room!), visit Beijing as Janet Yellen from the US Federal Reserve arrived in a hopeful trip to alleviate the tensions & trade wars, and fly into Taiwan as I shared airspace with Chinese fighter jets, sent by the mainland in a flex of power over the small but mighty independent island.
Side rant on traveling to China without a visa:
For a mix of reasons, I didn’t have the a Chinese visa, which is necessary to visit the Mainland. Why? First off, they’re not guaranteed, especially for US citizens right now. Plus, it would’ve required more advanced planning - I read Americans are often randomly selected for fingerprinting in their nearest consulate (which for me would’ve required getting to Chicago) before visas are approved, the high cost of the visa itself, and fact that it’d mean give even more personal information to China.
Therefore I planned to leverage the China “144 hour / six day visa free transit scheme” which required quite a bit of research and coordination that was ultimately well worth it. The transit-free visa required no application, just confirmed airfare ticketing of a destination outside of mainland China within 6 days that was different than the originating flight. You also had to stay within the designated city or province, which for me would be Beijing & Heibi Province. This made for some fun airfare booking, including playing on google flights / sky scanner for way too many hours, configuring the best routing between the Hong Kong<>Beijing<>Taiwan trio I knew I wanted to do. After a bit of gymnastics I was excited to fly from Bangkok to HK to begin the Chinese adventures!
Continuing the theme of “slow travel”, during this next month that meant exclusively public transit. Transportation and routing became a game, and I rarely allowed myself to rush it. Matter of fact I was even a bit relieved to have the duty of transit out of my control vs the motorbike. At the end of the escapades I became an expert in the HK and insanely complex Beijing subway system (yes, even for a New Yorker) and looking back, the longest day was 10 hours on three Taiwanese busses and one local rail!
Hong Kong
Landing in Hong Kong, I was quite impressed with the hundreds of small islands you can see from the plane window of HK bay. And hard to miss the dozens of 50+ story skyscrapers crowding the shoreline. Arriving into downtown Kowloon, I was curious about all the street banners and bus paintings with both the HK and Chinese flags, painted with unsurprising bright red lettering. I quickly learned that the banners were up to celebrate the Hong Kong Independence Day, which was on July 1st in just a few days. Lucky me!
Researching the festivities of the weekend, I was excited to witness the cultural celebrations, the strong police force (which in the paper said that any protestors would be immediately arrested) and engage in conversations on “Independence” which of course is quite the recent hot topic in the HK SAR (SAR stands for Special Administrative Region of China, which HK & Macau are treated as). In my mind the 2020 HK protests were a major staple to the COVID-era news where millions were glued to the TV watching the madness unfold. “One country, two systems” is the mantra sprayed by the Xi & the Chinese mainland, and I saw it stated everywhere, from the street banners to multiple references in the HK Independence Day special edition newspaper I read. As a major celebratory weekend for the City, last year Xi visited Hong Kong in his first trip out of the mainland since COVID.
Leaving SE Asia also meant saying goodbye to my $12/night four star hotel rooms. After a relaxing quiet month in queen bedrooms, was time to experience my first hostels (or guesthouses, as I wouldn’t consider what I stated at in HK a hostel). My sleep in HK was the worst of the trip so it’s hard not to tell the story…
I booked accommodations at a guesthouse in downtown Kowloon. The location and hostel was central, not the cheapest option, and only required sharing a room with three others in bunks (which I thought would be a nice ease in to shared living as many hostels have bunks that sleep 8+). Walking up to the stairs of the skyscraper where the guesthouse was located, I was immediately approached by street vendors to book other hotels, buy drugs, check out watches, or exchange money at the 12 Forex counters on the ground floor of the building. It was an interesting start…the entire ground floor was currency exchangers, Indian food stands, and shady iPhone repair businesses crowded with hundreds of people. Approaching the one elevator servicing 20 floors, I learned there were 18 floors of “guesthouses”. I say guesthouses as its hard to describe how commoditized, unique and truly awful the experience was. It was far from a hotel and not quite a hostel as there was no common space and folks of all ages and smells. You walk out of the elevator to folks smoking cigarettes, sign a paper guest book, and walk a tight hallway down with countless rooms jammed with bunk beds. My shoulders would touch the bunk bed and other side of the room. Unfortunately I made the mistake of pre-paying for three nights before arriving. Never made that one again! Every night in HK I had folks checking in at all hours in the morning, unpacking in the room at 3am with the lights on and smoking in the bathroom.
I learned a few days later through other travelers I met that the building I stayed at is infamous. Called Chungking Mansion, it has a hilarious and well written post about it on Atlas Obscura.
“Teeming with illegal goods and services, this towering maze of vice is also a popular tourist accommodation. “
Although I was half awake for the HK tourist activities: the tram to Victoria peak, walking tour of the historic district, the street markets, the waterfront, I enjoyed exploring the big city.
The best meal of the trip was a beef dumpling soup at a Michelin rated restaurant on HK island, suggested by the great Justine Allen, a renown Asian food critic!
My last morning was July 1st, the official HK Independence Day. Curious about the celebrations, I decided to get up for the 7am flag raising. Would they raise the Chinese flag first before the HK flag? Would the HK flag even be displayed? Who would attend the event?
Taking the ferry across the bay, I saw both Chinese pageantry and security at it’s finest. No boats or cars were allowed within a mile of the courtyard where the flag raising was taking place. Disembarking the ferry which was next to the courtyard, a few hundred of us (us being me and what I’m guessing were Chinese tourists or HK locals that wanted to attend such an awkward short ceremony) were ushered by the HK police to a viewing area, which was up on the elevated crosswalk. I was a bummed but unsurprised that we couldn’t get any closer, the event was for “special diplomats and invited guests only”. Watching the flag raise at 7am sharp, two helicopters flew overhead, the first tailing a large Chinese flag and the second tailing a much smaller HK flag.🤔 I use the word pageantry as the celebrations continued with fire boats spraying water in the bay, people cheering and a band playing during the flag raising. Although short, it was quite an in interesting event and allowed for a unique experience representing the current HK<>China relations that stood out from an otherwise “big city is a big city” experience in Hong Kong.
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The Mainland: Beijing & Great Wall
I was fortunate enough to find and stay with a Homestay host Lucy, a kind and helpful Chinese national in her mid-sixities who lived alone and loved guests. She made my trip palatable and I was only her second foreign guest since before COVID! Otherwise traveling around Beijing during a record 100+ degree heatwave with millions of other domestic Chinese tourists on summer break for the first time after a three year lockdown made it one of the most difficult travel weeks of my life. It was so hot Beijing actually suspended all outdoor work, and the heat wouldn’t have been so bad if every tourist attraction didn’t require a long line for identification checks and airport-style security.
Besides for when I was home enjoying breakfast or a hangout with Lucy, I had never felt so alone and frustrated traveling. It’s hard hard to enumerate or describe the number of looks I got. Yes, the Chinese are known for their shameless staring, but being only one of ten “Western” tourists I saw the entire week, in a city of 20 million, the isolating feeling of being an outsider was only magnified. One side of me tried hard to embrace the staring in hopes it was their cultural curiosity of the outsiders and the same lack of outside socialization we’ve all had for years, but after a week of constant stares and people moving away from me on public transit, it wore me down.
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| Daily 6am Chinese-style breakfast with Lucy <3 |
In April ‘90, TC & Big Man took the 26 hour train from Hong Kong to Beijing (it was called a “through” train, as you weren’t allowed off as immigration happened when you arrived in Beijing). I was crazy enough to research whether I could take the same train, however I learned the service had been paused during COVID and never started back up. Maybe for the best as the alternative was an easy $140 three hour flight to Beijing. Onto mainland China!
I was the only westerner on the China Southern flight from HK to Beijing, which meant I had a quick awakening to the shameless staring I heard I would experience in mainland China. I woke up on the plane to “We are preparing for landing, the current temperature is 39, or 102 degrees Fahrenheit”. Oh great! Somehow Beijing was going to be hotter than Thailand during monsoon season.
Arriving into the Beijing Daxing airport, I went to the “transit pass” counter as instructed by the China Tourism website. Things weren’t off to a great start, was no one was at the counter and I had to ask someone from immigration where they were. After about an hour, the transit pass agent didn’t seem too familiar with the transit pass process, and looked at my itinerary for far too long. She said “oh youre staying for 6 days, why. Why didn’t you just fly to Taiwan from HK directly” - feeling that “tourism” wasn’t the best answer (as the transit pass is designed for folks with layovers) I responded “it was the least amount of money” which in hind sight made no sense as flying from HK to Taiwan would certainly be cheaper. Fortunately the agent nodded her head, counted the six days on her fingers and gave me a passport sticker which would allow me to exit through immigration. We made it! And even better, I was able to enter China without giving my fingerprints, telling them where my mother’s place of birth or list every single country I had visited or president I had voted for (usually the visa applications ask rediculous questions). No surprise China was the only country still doing health declarations at the airport.
Wanting to hike the Great Wall at sunrise, I decided to boogie three hours north of the airport towards the wall. This was not an easy task on public transit, particularly without my trusty Google Maps (banned in China).
Part of the spontaneous travel was dealing with when things wouldn’t go your way. “Oh the next three trains are full, no problem I’ll sit on the ground with a book for a few hours waiting on the next available train”. “Missed that bus, oh well, lets find another” “Arriving late to a hostel and no one is around, guess I’ll have to find another place to sleep.” I bring this up because my first night on the mainland exemplified this too well. Commence story:
It took five hours from the airport across three subway lines, one 2 hour bus ride and one memorable taxi ride with a crazy driver to arrive into Guibeko, a small historical village of 300 at the foot of the Great Wall. I had a room booked at the Great Wall Box Hostel and emailed to let them know I would be arriving late at 11pm to check in. The taxi driver dropped me off in the pitch black outside the hostel. I wish I could’ve communicated with him to ask to wait for a few minutes to see if I could get into the hostel, but there was no English and my phone wasn’t working for translation (another long silly story about getting my phone fixed at a sketchy shop in Hong Kong, where the guy actually broke my phone further).
Banging on the door of the dark hostel, ringing the doorbell, yelling - all to no avail for over a half hour, I wasn’t thrilled. The bigger issue is there was seemingly no one around, or still awake in this dark town at midnight. Although Kial made fun of me for packing so much gear, I was glad I had my headlamp as I threw it on my head as I started to walk through this desolate town, having given up on getting into the hostel. With no working phone to make another plan, it was either I find somewhere to sleep asap as it was already late, or blow up my inflatable pillow (another piece of gear kial laughed at) and find a nice bench outdoors.
Walking through a small rice field, I stumbled into the only lit area in the Main Street of the “town” that was no longer than two city blocks. Everyone was asleep, and after circling the streets one more time, I heard voices. I poked my head into this small courtyard and said “Hello, Nee-How”. After speaking English to two gentleman in the courtyard, I quickly realized they had no idea what i was saying as they pulled out their WeChat app for translation. After a bit of translating back and forth, they were kind enough to drive me back to the hostel to bang on the doors with me one more time, again to no avail. Nonetheless we drove back and hung in the courtyard, as they assured me that I could at least sleep in one of the bedrooms they had at the house. After several beers with Mr Wu until 2AM and a fascinating conversation taking place over Google Translate’s live feature, it was safe to say the situation from sleeping outside was quickly remedied. Crisis averted! We hung for hours, conversing slowly via goggle and WeChat, discussing topics from tourism in the area (he said I was the only white guest to walk into his place in years), US China relations, and COVID. It turns out Mr Wu was hired by the Chinese government to rebuild the tourism of the Great Wall in the town of Guibeko - and how lucky was I to get some of his advice - he even wanted to hike the wall at sunrise with me!
I have a couple meaningful and comical translations from our conversation that night.
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| Hilarious. Should I send this to the CCP or have they already seen this post? |
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| Only needed a couple local Chinese brews to begin solving the worlds problems |
Setting off to hike the Great Wall the next morning, I intentionally planned a (long) route which would allow me to hike the “wild” section, or unmaintained, and the restored more touristy section. Seeing the wild section was the main reason I spent the extra hour traveling to the town of Guibeko.
When you’re travelling constantly it becomes harder to be impressed, and you soon realize that a lot of things don’t live up to expectations, but seeing for the Great Wall for the first time, this was not one of those moments! It’s a place I’ve always wanted to visit, and those pictures don’t do the wall justice – it’s even more impressive in person, when you look both ways on the horizon and all you can see is the massive remains of a important piece of Chinese history and it’s most reveled attraction.
Spending six hours hiking the Great Wall and having nearly half of the time alone, I was in utter amazement. I listened to a Podcast on the history of the wall while hiking, walked a few sections with a young Chinese student also visiting for the first time, took an insane amount of pictures. The next morning at 4:25AM I watched the sunrise over the Great Wall. The entire couple days around the wall were majestic and certainly a highlight of the trip.
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| The only person I ran into during 4 hours on the unrestored section . Young man studying in Beijing. Mom is an English teacher so we had a great conversation |
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| 4:30AM Sunrise. Stunning |
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| Dinner in Beijing with George Church’s former coworkers Ginny & Echo |
In Beijing, identification checks and searches were required at every tourist attraction. Everything was tied to your Chinese National ID card or passport number. “Just scan your card and shove your face into the camera so we know who you are and where you are going”
There was airport level security and often long queues at every tourist attraction and subway entrance. Guards on every subway car and “civilian forces” scattered through the city, from street corners to libraries and shopping malls.
The craziest was the red arm bands are civilian volunteers (or spies) to monitor the community under the CCP. They enforce moral and disiplinary code. Xi’s eyes and ears! I am writing this from a long line to enter Tiananmen square, where the police asked me for my passport and shouted “What is your job? Where are you going?” before letting me through. Insane!
Another aside on the staring: (written while getting hawked down)
I wrote above how the Chinese are known for shameless staring. I was told before going, but nothing could prepare me. I read most of the stares as “woah that guy looks different” to “what is that beard” or “what is this guy doing here”. Entire groups of Chinese students would turn around and gaze. If I sat for too long, children and adults alike would ask for a photo, but not talk or say hi, just take the photo and leave.
For an entire week I would notice people sneaking pictures, others blatantly asking, and funny that the first few times I thought they wanted me to take a picture OF their family, not WITH. Can’t make this up, as I sit at Summer Palace right now with an urge to write about this a father and son tap me for a photo. And it was the father who wanted the picture, so I threw up the deuces (peace sign) and smiled. However the curiosity slowly bled into lack of consideration when people would blindside me with pictures, while walking, while reading an info piece at a museum. Fortunately most people asked to take pictures and waited until I have a “Thumbs up” saying it was ok
…Anyways as you can tell, it got in my head and wore me down.
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Taiwan absolutely blew me away! It’s easy to pass by such a small island on the map of the world, but the stunning tropical island still remains my favorite destination of this trip and high on the all-time list. Taiwan came recommended by several travelers from the past month in SE Asia, and was on my Dad’s itinerary (one of the last destinations) but he never made it. This beautiful island country is home to a developed west coast with a buzzing economy, a more remote east coast, in and between towering 6,000ft mountains, old growth forests and stunning beaches along the coastline.
My fascination to visit stemmed largely from Taiwan’s history and its current, or unfortunate status as a “cork” in a geopolitical bottle. Ever since Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan with the Chinese nationalist party in 1949, communist China has looked to re-control the island and currently claims it as part of the CPP (Chinese Communist Party). In the last few years the Chinese mainland has stepped up efforts to assert dominance over the island, even telling its citizens that it will eventually recover the island. This has caused western countries like the US to try and formulate stances whether or not to recognize the island as independent and determine what forms of military aid, if any, would be given if Chinese aggression translated into a war aimed at controlling the island. In the eyes of China, Taiwan would fall into the same “one country two systems” mantra as Hong Kong and Macau.
Coming from Beijing, I was curious how the island would feel and differ from the mainland. After circumventing the 600 miles around island by train over the course of a week, the life and locals in Taiwan are uniquely their own and couldn’t have felt more different. The people certainly operate as, and believe - they are independent. Nearly a dozen conversations with locals and tour guides where I asked the “taboo question everyone asks” cemented this strong independent belief. Yet the pride was coupled with a nervousness with both increased presence of China in the Taiwan Straight and the upcoming Taiwanese elections next year which could sway the island closer to the Chinese control.
Yet China continues its provocative nature, sending fighter jets near daily to the international border line in the Taiwanese straight, which I was told by a hostel employee causes the sirens to go off on the coast every morning. This has caused Taiwan’s military and Air Force to be ready, and it was insane to catch glimpses of fighter jets overhead performing drills and monitoring the skies.
My flight landed into Taipei with Hainin Airlines playing Sweet Home Alabama over the loud speaker. Interesting start and first indication I was no longer in China!
After being too nervous to have a sip of alcohol during my time on the mainland, to my amazement I was able to buy a draft beer on a Taiwanese street! The people actually started to smile at me, there was music in the streets, and kids were also wearing helmets on motorbikes (yes, this surprised me after so much time in SE Asia). Only a week in Beijing and it was good to see what freedom looked like again - it didn’t take long to notice the stark differences in the culture of the “two countries, two systems?!”
Looking at the train route around the island I devised four stopping points based on “must see” parts of the island from a list given to me from two friends in HK who had just spent months living on the island. The stops would be quick (1 or 2 nights max) but allow me to get a taste of the entire island: the mountains, the beach life, the famous national parks and the local historic town.
Beginning clockwise from Taipei, first stop would be the Alishan forest, a gorgeous old growth forest in the high country where Oolong tea originates. The train on the west side of the island is an impressive network, cutting through massive mountains at 200MPH plus, spending minutes in tunnels and you hardly notice you’re moving. Dare I say it could be better than trains in Japan?
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| Alishan Forest |
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| Film shot of the historic Alishan Forest Ralway |
Once I made it around to the south east side of the island, I wanted to explore the beach life in a small home to 40 expats.. I stayed a couple days in Dulan, an undeveloped beach town on Taiwans remote east coast, which lies between the towering mountain peaks and the blue ocean. Look one way and you have 9,000+ foot peaks, the other, desolate pockets of rock/sand beaches and palm trees. The town is also home of the Amis people, an indigenous Taiwanese population who have lived in the area since roughly 1500 BC.
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| Film shot of the Dulan beach. Hawaii in the 80s? |
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“International” Hot Air Balloon festival outside of Dulan on the SE of the island |
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| Rented a moped in Dulan |
Next stop after riding another 100 miles up Taiwan’s east coast was Taroko Gorge outside of Hualien. The eastern railway winds through cities and villages, carving through mountains, and running feet from cliffs along azure-blue shores and into sprawling farmlands. Safe to say it was incredibly scenic.
The highlight of my trip to Taiwan was my cycle through Taroko National Park Gorge. Usually regarded as the country’s premier scenic attraction, the 20KM gorge cuts is the world’s largest marble canyon. It boasts the highest peaks in Taiwan and is home to villages with the few remaining indigenous populations on the island.
I decided to borrow the bike from my hotel and explore the gorge. Leaving at 7am and returning just before dark, I probably cruised about 45 miles, including the 2k of vertical in the ascent up the gorge. Big day! I’ve never stopped so much for pictures - even along such a windy sketchy road with tour busses flying by you, but I couldn’t help with breath taking views around every corner
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| Gorge-ous |
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| My hotel didn’t have a helmet so I borrowed one of the spelunking ones that the tourism board provided for free ofcourse! |
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| All-time day |
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| Finishing the long day on the beach with a couple beers and mango ice cream. Could barely walk, but look at this view! |
Taipei
After stopping in the old preserved town of Jiufen for a night to explore the ancient tea houses and streets, I finished my trip to Taiwan with a couple days in Taipei.
One of the first things I do when I arrive in a new destination is to take a free walking tour. It was fascinating to cement a week of learnings from locals with a professional guide on the history of the island and current politics. Everything from the elections next year, the semiconductor production, to the fact Taipei is looking embassies that are choosing China over Taiwan, the current discussion on extending required military service - we covered a lot of ground.
Couldn’t help but to notice all the signs for air defense shelters locations scattered throughout the city.
Stopping into a temple during the walking tour, I was amazed by the diversity of passerbys, business men, young adults and families coming to pay respects at the end of their Wednesday afternoon. It was quite comedic to witness what I understood as a “folk religion” in practice. At the temple, folks grab “dice” from the reception and use the outcome of the dice roles as a guru. They roll the dice and ask yes no questions to the gods, giving their name and birthday in the thought process and based on the binary outcome of the dice roll they’d get their future, or fortune.
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| Dice throwing. Just like shaking the 8-ball right? |
Chips
Bit of a personal curiosity with this topic, being both enthralled with the tech industry and having done quite a bit of reading on Taiwan’s position in the global economy and the impact it has on the small but might island…
Called the “Silicon Shield” against China, many argue that Taiwan’s position as the top semiconductor manufacturer make a Chinese invasion less likely. Said another way, Taiwan’s crucial role in the digital economy would deter Beijing from going to war given the economic interdependence between the two nations (China is Taiwan’s top trade partner and China relies heavily on the Taiwanese chips). The economic costs of losing access to the chips is much too high
Taiwan produces 90% of all the advanced semiconductors & microchips used in critical industries and electronic devices globally, from your iPhone to the computer on a fighter jet. Although other countries like the US are ramping up production to make them more self-sufficient - or less dependent on Taiwan (we can all remember the global chip shortage during COVID) currently no country can make faster & smaller chips than Taiwan - which makes phones faster and use less battery power. Pretty important.
Although we’ve realized that concentrating that much manufacturing of high strategic importance with a single company located on a disputed island is not the best idea, it is taking years to unwind that neglect and develop these manufacturing bases.
Let’s hope the Silicon Shield and Taiwan’s growing diplomatic ties with other nations remain strong. Although the island will likely remain a geopolitical hotspot for years to come, I’m optimistically excited for the future of this island and hope to be back one day.
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| Jiufen, historic old town |
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| Friends from the walking tour atop Taipei tower 101 |
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| Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial |
