| Taipei Diary: IN THE LAIR OF AN ASIAN TIGER |
The city’s spirit and its people’s enthusiasm are deliciously infectious.
Dev Nadkarni
The high wattage arc lights, concert scale acoustics, giant video screens and coruscating spotlights on two pairs of rapid talking, smart, young bilingual hosts at Taipei’s biggest indoor stadium give you anything but the impression that you are here really for the inauguration of the wealthy country’s new President.
The pomp and pageantry preceding the oath taking ceremony and the President’s inaugural address has all the swashbuckling glitz of an international celebs do—like the Oscars or the Academy Awards. Only, the celebs in attendance here are none that you would recognise. But they are celebs all right—even if only in their own little spheres of influence scattered across the planet. More of that in a while.
Hours before the event, some 200 of us multimedia journos from all over the globe are cleared for security with no fuss at all before being led into the gigantic stadium for a ring side view of Taiwan’s rich tapestry of performing art. The two-hour long programme is a one of a kind visual treat with slices of Taiwan’s diverse art forms—from puppetry and calisthenics to martial art displays and mellifluous western-influenced singing.
The back to back performances last barely a few minutes and each one needs different arrangements and backdrops on the stage—yet there is nary a delay between items nor a single glitch.
The stage management is flawless and the programme proceeds like clockwork: a veritable metaphor for the country’s long-standing reputation as makers of precision electronic components.
The President’s oath taking followed by that of his Vice-President’s is a simple five-minute affair telecast live from the Presidential Office some distance away.
By now, the stadium’s central arena is filled with a sea of black suits—and some exotically dressed VIPs from the world’s remotest outposts take up the upholstered sofas closest to the stage.
These are the leaders of tiny, mostly impoverished countries from Africa, Middle and South America, and our own Pacific Islands countries that recognise the tiny Republic of China (Taiwan) as against its gargantuan big brother, the People’s Republic of China. Both China and Taiwan have been criticised for throwing money indiscriminately in many of these countries to gain their allegiance—but that’s another story.
At precisely the appointed minute, President Ma ying-jeou walks in to a standing ovation with his entourage comprising senior officials and both his and his deputy’s spouses to deliver his inaugural address. He speaks in his native tongue but the English translation is instantly flashed across all the big screens.
Every pause is punctuated with profuse applause from the audience: it is clear the youthful-looking former Mayor of Taipei has been elected to the country’s top job on a popular vote.
At next day’s international media conference, he fields questions with the ease, candour and panache of a seasoned statesman. His replies are brief and devoid of rhetoric. He lays out his all-important agenda—Taiwan’s relationship with mainland China—firmly, clearly and with a strong undertone of pragmatism and practicality.
A veteran American scribe, sitting next to me and is on his umpteenth visit to Taiwan, says he is impressed by his cool, restrained yet friendly demeanour. The previous president of eight years, Chen shui-bian—now under investigation for a raft of corruption charges involving him, his family and associates—came across as more spirited and volatile, he observes.
In the past couple of years, the roar of this phenomenal Asian tiger has been somewhat muffled. Its spectacular pace of growth has slowed down and much has been blamed on the previous Democratic Progressive Party leadership.
President Ma and his Kuomintang Party have been voted to power on the back of some very great expectations. Pivotal to Taiwan’s economic future as well as its international standing is how well President Ma deals with Beijing’s top leadership. His firm yet cool manner that was on display at that first media conference one day into his new job will be put to the severest test in the months to come.
A city in its youth
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Taipei has a vibrant night life. Pic: Dev Nadkarni
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Taipei is a young city in every sense. The streets are full of peppy, trendy young people, the pace of life is zippy, the streets chock-a-block with eateries, the nights are effervescent and long—and it wakes up late! Most shops keep an 11 am to 11 pm schedule and the famous night markets that dot the sprawling metropolis open up at 5 pm and are crowded with bargain shoppers well into the wee hours.
But for a city of nearly 3 million—Taiwan is one of the world’s densest nations—Taipei is incredibly clean, well maintained and disciplined (except on occasion for rush hour traffic—particularly of the lane-blind two wheeler variety).
Though it has the world’s tallest completed building, can boast of its own bullet trains and one of the world’s cleanest and most efficiently run rapid transit systems; has huge shopping malls with a who’s who of the world’s best known consumer brands and has many of the trappings of a western megapolis, Taipei lacks some very basic characteristics of the world’s great big cities.
One of them is ethnic diversity. It is by and large monoethnic, even in the city’s downtown areas, which is where you expect to find faces from different parts of the world. Even in this day and age of global mobility and the ubiquitous tourist, my wife and I were clearly a bit of visual curiosity in some parts of Taipei —even on subway trains.
For all its steel and glass structures, it has huge unaesthetic sprawls of blocks upon concrete blocks obviously built in a different phase of the country’s rapid growth, when perhaps, there was not much time to think of visual niceties in the face of pressing practicalities.
But the pace of the city and the spirit and friendliness of its denizens more than makes up for all that. The dynamism of Taiwan and Taipei that led to such sparkling economic success and lifted the entire country out of the morass of poverty into prosperity in so short a time frame is palpable as you walk every step on the streets of Taipei.
The city’s spirit and its people’s enthusiasm are deliciously infectious.
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