In May, I had an unexpectedly amazing time visiting Taiwan for the first time, including meeting long lost family for the first time in 25 years (post about it here). I couldn't wait to return.

Two weeks ago, I flew back to Taipei. I landed and was immediately picked up by my relatives and enjoyed a delicious shrimp pot meal.

In the days to come I found a rhythm not just visiting, but living here.

Based in Da’an District, I found a breakfast spot to die for (豆浆油条，蛋饼), a reliable gym, a day-time third space that rivals any in the world in its beauty and serenity, a late night cafe for working, a go-to-bar, Taiwanese music I put on loop. I took the bus & MRT around; popped into 7/11 & Family Mart. I made friends, was invited to my first Taiwanese birthday party and office warming; met local Taiwanese people. I tried to avoid expat traps (but still went to KOR twice iykyk).

With the staff at Yong He Soy Milk King - they recognized me since I went…every day.

Here are some reflections.

A comfortable East Asian capital with something for everyone

At first glance, Taipei (2.6 million people) is not as epic or impeccable as Tokyo, sophisticated or dynamic as Shanghai, dense or cosmopolitan as Hong Kong; but it is comfortable and fascinating, a rare combination.

Comfort rests on safety, and convenience. Crime is low, and the level of safety you feel allows you to walk around at night.

The convenience rivals any major East Asian city. Need something? Walk 3 mins to the nearest family mart or 7/11. It is such a seamless experience walking and popping in to buy a quick beverage, or snack. One night, I lazily ate two sous vide chicken breasts and a non alcoholic Heineken beer at 7/11 instead of dinner. I got hungry one Tuesday night at 2 AM and walked 5 minutes to a late night food spot that was bustling, delicious, and $9 for five dishes plus rice.

The bus, subway, and rail systems are excellent — clean, modern. Every day, I took the 22 bus to my gym, and reveled at the quiet and ability to think my own thoughts. Uber is cheap and abundant (I never waited more than 3 minutes in Taipei proper for an Uber). Navigating is easy on Google maps. My cousin lives in Kahsioung on the very southern tip of Taiwan, only a 2.5 hour high speed rail ride away.

Taipei is an ambivert’s paradise. For introverts, the cafe scene is truly extraordinary, spanning classical tea houses to modern fusion cafes. In car heavy suburbs in America, the only cafes that survive are chains — Starbucks, Coffee Bean. In Taipei, density supports diversity.

Public third spaces are beautiful. I spent many afternoons at Chapter (how is this place free?), visited Not Just Library, and spent a Sunday afternoon reading in the serene Beitou public library, lost in the interplay of airy wood, green, and light.

For extraverts, there are of course the world famous night markets, and also malls, lounges, bars, clubs, and many types of cuisine for gatherings with 热闹 — e.g. hot pot，热炒. Seeing the Friday night locals, faces red, shouting with good cheer with bottoms up drinking, you notice an ever present sense of 热闹, aliveness. At private parties, when the liquor flows, the laughter and ribbing rival any American party.

Taiwan has God tier outdoors. Last time, my friends and I hiked Taroko National Park and stumbled upon natural hot springs. This time, friends took me out surfing in Yilan, a famous Taipei day-time getaway (thank you Sharon & James!) that had the warmest water and chillest waves of any surf destination I have been to. Multiple new local Taiwanese friends mentioned the great outdoors as their number one hobby. San Francisco is also surrounded by beautiful mountains, forest, and ocean, but you need a car to access them; in Taiwan you can hop on public transit.

Natural hot springs (!) in Taroko National Park

Surfing in Yilan with new Taiwanese friends Sharon & James (thanks for taking me out!)

Taiwan is not without its problems. As comfortable as it is — or perhaps because of the comfort — the most talented people leave. Taiwanese Americans who are born on the island, leave to study in America, and then return to Taiwan are revered status wise. The domestic market (21m people) is not large enough for huge companies, and earlier waves of electronics manufacturing dynamism have passed. People are paid poorly (average 45K NTD or 17k USD per year), and housing is so expensive people can’t afford to buy in Taipei. A lot of young people live with their parents and live for the present, not the future — they spend their money on food, shopping malls, and trips. The birth rate is the second lowest in East Asia (1.24 birth per woman) ahead of only South Korea.

Despite these problems, life is comfortable for locals. Healthcare is nearly free — the mother of one of my relatives was on weekly kidney dialysis for 40 years and it hardly cost them a penny. Higher education is nearly free. These social policies create a very high quality of life.

A diverse cultural layer cake baked by colonial history

Blessed (and cursed) with a strategic geopolitical location at the mouth of the South China Sea and abundant fertile land, Taiwan has been coveted by world powers since the 1600s.

The first residents of this tropical island were aboriginal. According to cutting edge linguistic and genetic research, the Austronesian people originated in Taiwan, and then migrated 5-6K years ago by sea out to the Philippines, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Islands including Hawaii.

Portuguese explorers made contact in 1544 and named it Formosa. After a period of Spanish colonization, from 1624 to 1662 and 1664 to 1668 the Dutch East India Company established a colony and forts on Taiwan. The Chinese pirate Koxinga defeated the Dutch forts and established the first period of Chinese rule in 1668.

From 1885 to 1945, the Qing dynasty in China lost Taiwan to Japan after losing the Sino-Japanese war, and Taiwan was the crown jewel of the Japanese empire. After that, the Republic of China (ruled by the KMT Party) took over Taiwan in 1945, and ruled under martial law for nearly 40 years before opening up Taiwan to democratic elections.

This history has baked fascinating layers in the Taiwanese cultural layer cake — aboriginal; Japanese, Chinese, western / American.

Though 78 years have passed since Japan surrendered Taiwan to China, there is nostalgia for the Japanese past and love for the Japanese present in Taiwan. Delicious Japanese ramen, sushi, and omakase is smattered all throughout Taipei. I met several half Taiwanese half Japanese locals, and heard stories of grandparents who spoke fluent Japanese (and hokkien/台語 but often not Mandarin) and studied in Japanese schools. My relatives vacation in Tokyo & Kyoto often, in the way Californians visit Hawaii. My younger cousins watch a lot of anime & listen to Japanese music. At a deeper cultural level, a strain of politeness and ritual propriety exists here — please and thank you — that was destroyed by the Cultural Revolution in China. Kawaii (cuteness) is a way of life: in the way girls do their make up and the way the boys style their hair.

Most people in Taiwan look Chinese — they are of Han descent, descendents of either earlier trickles of immigration from southern China during the Ming and Qing dynasties or the 2 million Nationalist Chinese who came to Taiwan (the Republic of China) with Chiang Kai-Shek after they lost the civil war between the communists and nationalists in 1947. When the Nationalist army arrived on Taiwan, there was an initial burst of joy and hope, and then a bitter backlash when they discovered the corruption and incompetence of the first wave of Chinese nationalists, followed by the White Terror (白色恐怖）.

Because the Cultural Revolution never happened in Taiwan, more traditional Chinese culture is arguably preserved better in parts of Taiwan than in China. On my final day, I visited the National Palace Museum, which preserved beautiful antiques from the final Chinese dynasty, the Qing dynasty, including a famous jade bok choy, and a stone that looks like pork belly…(yes we Chinese people sure love our food)

The cocktail of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism of a pre Communist China is alive and well in Taiwan.

Religion, spirituality, and superstition are omnipresent here — there are over 15,000 temples. A Taiwanese friend asked over dinner: “how often did you pray at the temple growing up?” I explained that my parents grew up stripped away of religion, so I grew up irreligious in the US. She could not fathom it. Tolerance of belief has its positives, and its negatives — the tap water is scientifically very healthy, and yet no one drinks it because of superstition; the child mortality rate is 3x that of Korea and Japan, and one hypothesis is because of the emphasis on traditional ways of having a child sleep on their stomach, which is a risk factor for SIDS. Cult activity is surprisingly prevalent here.

Pure land Buddhist temple I walked into one day

Taiwan loves western / American culture. Sitting in this cafe (literally named “This Cafe”), the Taiwanese guy next to me is journaling away in 中文 on Notion; the girl to my left is asking coding questions to ChatGPT. I overheard a girl talk about reading Naval Ravikant and listening to Andrew Huberman. The cafe across the street is an American hot dog brand that has a line of Taiwanese circling the block. Culturally, Taiwan feels more progressive than other East Asian capitals. Many girls have visible tattoos; I saw a number of LGBTQ couples walking the streets (though interestingly only lesbian couples); the #MeToo movement is currently rippling through Taiwan; I was a fly on the wall during heated political discussions at a party about whether young people would vote for Ko Wen-Je or another presidential candidate in the critical January 2024 presidential election.

This openness & love for America might stem from Taiwan historically courting America as Taiwan’s (popular kid) best friend. From the early days of the Republic of China in 1947, Chiang Kai-Shek and his charismatic, Wellesley educated wife Soong Mei-Ling charmed American presidents, Congress, and the press. On the outside, Chiang Kai-Shek presented a foil to communist China during the Cold War, but he ruled through one of the longest periods of martial law in the world. His son Chiang Ching-Kuo moved the country towards democracy, ending martial law, introducing freedom of press, and more. In 1996, Taiwan held its first competitive presidential elections and has been a vibrant democracy since.

Taiwan’s colonial history & democratic transition bakes a unique mix of Confucian Asian values — family first, host culture, implicit communication, emphasis on education, propriety & politeness — plus western liberal values of freedom of religion and press, democracy, progressivism, and tolerance.

Sitting on the two most important faultlines of the future

Taiwan is one of the Four Asian Tigers, with fantastic economic growth in the mid-late 20th century. A huge driver of this economic boom was electronics manufacturing, and in particular, semiconductor fabrication. TSMC, which is 15% of Taiwan’s GDP alone, locates its infamous fabs on the western part of the island.

In my home city San Francisco, AI is all the rage. AI relies on compute — nanoscopic silicon wafers with tens of billions of transistors. 90% of the world’s most advanced semiconductors are fabricated in one place — TSMC. NVIDIA, one of the hottest companies in the world, designs their chips using TSMC fabs.

In the science fiction novel “Dune”, “spice” is the most important resource in the universe; in an AI economy, compute is the new spice. Somehow, this tiny tropical island has become Arrakis, sitting on the first faultline of the future — compute.

The second faultline is as old as mankind itself - territory disputes.

On Monday 7/24 at 1:30 PM, I suddenly heard a foghorn all around and an amber alert on my phone — it was an air raid drill, and we had to report to the nearest shelter. That same week, mainland China flew more fighter jets than ever into Taiwanese airspace. Interestingly enough, I heard very little direct concern about invasion from China in my conversations, especially among young people who are overwhelmingly “green” or politically supportive of Taiwan independence. Yet, the drill reminded me that despite the comfort of daily life, the geopolitical faultline is tenuous.

On my final Saturday in Taiwan, I visited the grave of my Da Jiu Gong to pay my respects. My relatives drove me up the windy path of Yangmingshan to the KMT veteran’s cemetery on a sweltering 100 degree summer day. My Da Jiu Gong was a lieutenant colonel in the KMT army who fled to Taiwan in 1949. We first set a picture of my Da Jiu Gong down, along with offerings of food for the afterlife, and lit incense candles. Then, we went inside, to a vault with countless wooden boxes with ashes, where his ashes were. I felt deeply moved touching the wooden grain and reading my Da Jiu Gong’s name, knowing that he changed the trajectory of my life — without him, my parents (and I) wouldn’t be in the US.

On the way out, I noticed walls and walls of empty wooden boxes. I asked my Biao Shu (my Da Jiu Gong’s son), a retired colonel in the KMT army: “why are there so many empty grave boxes?” His answer sent chills down my spine: “that’s for the deceased soldiers in the war to come.”

Paying respects to a picture of my da jiu gong

In the past few hundred years, Taiwan has been a minor character historically. During the last 150 years, the main stage played out in Africa through colonialism, UK & Western Europe through two wars, the American continent, China, Russia, Japan, revolutions & wars in the Middle East. When the People’s Republic of China was reinstated in 1971 in the United Nations, taking the Republic of China’s spot, Taiwan also faded on the world stage.

In a future increasingly defined by the twin forces of the great power relationship between US & China and the development of AI, this comfortable, fascinating island, a place where I have family, sits on the faultlines of the future.

Recommendations to learn about Taiwan

There is no substitute for visiting and talking to local people, but here are some sources that have been helpful for me:

Green Island by Shawna Ryan - beautiful historical fiction about the white terror. If you liked Pachinko, you might like this.
Forbidden Island by Jonathan Manthorpe - good historical overview of periods of colonization
Tricky Taipei - modern culture blog for tourists by Kathy Cheng
Taiwan Foreign Correspondents Club Twitter (h/t Kathy Cheng)
Taiwan Daily News
Chip War (h/t Cat W)
TSMC podcast (h/t Nish B)
City of Sadness movie (h/t Amy H)

Thank you to my 表叔 and 表姑, Ed M, Kathy C, Katherine H, Nish B for being such amazing sherpas for me in Taiwan. Thank you to Kathy, Nina, Nish, for reading and giving feedback.