Here together are the two faces of Taiwan I keep seeing. The hyper-modernity of TAIPEI 101, at 508m the tallest building in the world (for another 2 years), and the popular Taoism on every corner. If anyone still thinks that capitalist and religious fervor are mutually exclusive, come to Taiwan. Both are booming!The base of TAIPEI 101 (the tower is shaped like a bamboo shoot garlanded with traditional ribbons) is a vast shopping center. It's taller by a factor of two or three than any other building in Taipei - only the mountains which surround the city on three sides
are as high - so the view is like that from an airplane, suspended in mid-air...This world-class building (we're told) is a product of Technology, Art, Industry, People, Environment and Identity, the very six factors that have created the TAIPEI of today. "101" not only reminds us of the zeros and ones in electronic technology but represents the surpassing of the 100% perfection mark as well.
This morning one of our symposium hosts took me and a scholar from the Chinese mainland to the top of TAIPEI 101 (89 floors in 38 effortless seconds, world's fastest elevator!), to the huge Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial (where you can see Chiang Kai-Shek's cars!),
and then to lunch. I'm not sure what this itinerary communicated about the two Chinas, although someone told me later that the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial is a place all Mainland tourists go.Only at lunch did the PRC scholar and I realize we had a language in common - Japanese - but this made things more rather than less awkward, as we had a perfect triangle of languages. The host spoke German to me and Mandarin to the PRC scholar, while the PRC guy and I spoke Japanese. Every time a conversation along one of the axes of the triangle got interesting it faltered, self-conscious about the person being excluded.
I suspect that this kind of awkwardness is standard fare for Taiwanese, China but not China, and increasingly overshadowed by an ever worldlier PRC. (Global capitalism and local religious traditions have this in common: they're untouched by the China question.) 101% may not be enough!
