Eight Airplanes in Six Days: A Whirlwind Preview Tour, Part II

Modified from an email sent Thursday, August 17, 2006

I'm sitting in the Cathay Pacific Business Lounge of the Taipei Airport. We're on Day 5 of 6, three of which we've spent on an airplane. Testament to the tense relations between Taiwan and China that there are no direct flights from anywhere in mainland China to Taiwan - you can only get through Hong Kong. So although a direct flight from Shanghai south to Taipei would be about 90 minutes, we had to fly 3 hours south to Hong Kong, to change planes and fly north 2 hours to Taipei.

Our Dragon Air flight from Shanghai to Hong Kong was delayed due to technical difficulties. Passengers were relatively calm after the first announcement, made in Chinese and heavily-accented English, of a 15 minute delay. But by the second announcement of another 15 minute delay, many Chinese passengers mobbed the podium, making a three-to-four passenger thick ring around it and four Dragon Air employees. One man, short, thirty-something, with glasses and heavy, forbidding eyebrows, stood in front and began shouting, shouting at the airline attendants. One attendant, young and pretty, kept smiling, obviously trying to reason with him. At one point he was so animated, he began banging his palm on the podium counter. We kept looking around - where was security?

They made another announcement of another 15 minute delay. The man kept shouting and banging. When he was quiet, talking in urgent tones to his assistant, another passenger - not obviously associated with the angry man, would take up the harrangue. A uniformed man eventually came up and spoke with several other attendents who were standing back from the mob at the counter. Then he just walked away. We couldn't believe it. At any airport in the US, they would have hauled the man away.

The differences between Taipei and Shanghai were stark. Whereas in Shanghai everything seems brand spanking new, Taipei is older and grittier (Think Pittsburgh.) Taipei is more western: there were many American chain restaurants and chains - TGI Friday's Tony Roma's, Macaroni Grill, 7-11 - and almost everyone has a smattering of English. (They speak Mandarin and Taiwanese, predominantly.) Shanghai still has relatively few western chains and not much English beyond those who work in the big hotels.

Although Shanghai's roads are all new, wide and well-marked, the drivers there don't obey traffic laws loosely, sporadically, when they obey them at all. In Taipei, people seem more accustomed to driving, they are more orderly, but there are thousands and thousands of scooters, which mostly young people drive with abandon, whipping in between stopped cars, weaving in and out of traffic. (At least they wear helmets.) Our guide explained this was because there was so little parking space in Taipei - indeed you would see scooters parked on the sidewalks outside the entrances to many buildings in rows two-and-three deep.

Here in Taipei, our guide took me to a seafood buffet that was like something off the Food Network: sushi, many layers of whole boiled shrimp arranged artfully in a bowl, albino squid arranged on a round flat serving dish, so that they looked like hard boiled eggs that had sprouted eyes and tentacles. They had eight flavors of ice cream, along with fresh sqeezed orange juice and grapefruit juice, pureed watermelon and kiwi, as well as an assortment of wine, beer and liquor - including sake - all included in the all-you-can-eat price. There were lots of things I recognized only in general - fish filets, fish steaks, fish heads, dim sum - and several things I didn't recognize at all. Along one wall they had big pottery urns of soup, with huge wooden ladels, rough hewn. I took a peak into one urn my guide said was "Chicken Soup" and gave it a stir. The chicken turned out to be chicken feet, black, like something out of a voodoo brew. I declined to taste.

Later, he took us to something called a Wet Market, which was like a big covered farmer's market, very similar to ones I've seen in Cleveland and Seattle (Pike Place). In addition to the meat stalls where they were butchering chicken and hog, they also had stalls of fresh fruit and vegetables, impressive in their size, color and quality. I was introduced to something called dragon fruit - which has the texture and flavoring of kiwi, slightly sweeter, and whose flesh is white with little black seeds distributed randomly throughout.

In Shanghai, we went to a western market attached to the Ritz Carlton and a high-rise apartment building where lots expats live. (I'm told this is where many US dignitaries stay when they visit Shanghai, and because of that the US Marines have a base on the 17th floor of the Ritz.) There were lots of familiar brands: Pringles, Orville Redenbacher, Duncan Hines. Expensive, though - a bag of flour cost about $4.50 USD. (Flour is not something Chinese use in cooking. Ovens are a special request item, in most short term housing.) On the flip side, we went to a place called the Fabric Mart. A three story mall that houses stalls and shops selling tailor-made clothes. Pick a place who's fabric you like, pick a design hanging along the stall walls - bring a picture, or a garmet you love - and they will measure you and make it for you in about a week. Our host told me he got three suites and five shirts for $350 USD.