Brady Perkins's blog

Returned

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 Z

The landscape of the city.

I haven’t been blogging much this year. It’s been a busy past semester and an even busier past week or so.

Last week, I landed back at the Taoyuan Airport. It was a botched connection on Delta’s part, so we ended up getting moved to EVA Air flight that arrived here at about 5 AM last Friday. We then had an entire day to go after that, so that was a little bit tiring. But it was a good introduction.

The lab is a lot bigger now than it was in the fall. Most of the new people here are interns, so most of us are in similar situations (getting paid by TEEP, which doesn’t pay that much).

I came with a few friends, so I wanted to find apartments for all of us to try to make the living situation more comfortable. The apartment I found was on 591, and I secured it at the beginning of April. I kind of sped through the process of searching, applying, and paying, which probably wasn’t the smartest decision in retrospect.

Now that we’re all here, getting paid, and living in the apartment, we realize that it’s too expensive for all of us, and we’re already trying to get out of our lease and find another place to live (optimally, another apartment, but dorms are okay too).

That is a little bit stressful. I feel like I’ve been spending a little bit too much money lately in general. Ever since I’ve been paid by IIPP last fall, I kind of lost a lot of sense of frugality that I might have used to have had.

In our current apartment, the agent fee is about the same as the rent itself as set by the landlord. Reading over the terms of the lease again, I can’t help but feel like I got ripped off. And it makes sense that, being as stressed as I was looking for housing and how stressed I was in general during the semester, that I missed out on a lot of the details here. It makes me feel a little bit dumb.

Overall, getting back into the rhythm of how I was living in the fall (with the complications of having friends here and trying to rent an apartment) has me kind of looking to the future again. This past week, I told one of my friends in Taipei that I would go to his graduation. He told me it would be on “Saturday”, and the whole conversation I’d assumed he meant this Saturday. Yesterday, I went up to Taipei and went to the campus of the university, only to see a sign advertising it for next Saturday.

One of my friends who came here with me insisted on going up to Taoyuan to buy a SIM card from a particular vendor at the airport, though, which happened to be the same day, so he just finished the journey up and we met and I showed him around some places that I knew. I asked the friend who I would’ve met up with that day for dinner recommendations that evening, and he told me about a yakiniku place by Zhongxiao East Rd. It was excellent. So overall, it was still a worthwhile experience.

Taipei, overall, has grown on me over time. I feel like I somehow remember the positives there more than I remember the negatives, which doesn’t happen often these days.

It’s a cool city. Especially riding the bus down to Wenshan, you get a lot of nice mountain views, and the people in Taipei are more welcoming to Westerners than the people in Wufeng (for the most part).

That reminded me of a text that one of my professors sent me in the morning a few days ago. I know two professors at my home university reasonably well that happen to be Taiwanese, and both of them will be here within a month or so for various reasons. Me and my two friends have been planning to meet up with them when they do come here. At the beginning of this past semester, when asking me what I did here the fall, when I responded that it was research-related she offered to share with me some contacts at universities in Taipei that might be helpful. I thought that was a nice offer. I hope something can come from it.

Not to say that I don’t love Taichung, but maybe that I have too many mental associations with it now and that I’ve maybe done too much “learning” and “making mistakes” here. Maybe I’m kind of embarrassed to show my face in some parts… (I’m one to fall victim to all sorts of irrational fears).

I’m hoping that I can keep coming back in the future, but I’d like to try somewhere and something new whenever that is. I also want to leave on a high note from Taichung.

I can read back on the blog posts that I wrote last fall and I can just feel all of the learning that I’ve done. Some of it sounds stupid, some of it I don’t fully remember, but overall, I feel like this experience has been, and continues to be, worth it.

NMU Cafe on Zili St.

I definitely haven’t exhausted Taichung’s enormous cafe scene yet, though. Right now, I’m at one that I was recommended by a friend at the beginning of the past semester. He went with our class group in May and stayed afterward to visit a few other cities. From what I gathered, going to this cafe was the only thing he did in Taichung, a city he said was too boring.

He’s not the first person I’ve met who’s gotten that impression, but to be honest, I don’t really understand why people think Taichung isn’t an interesting place. I’ve, personally, found staring that this card next to my coffee wondering if “brandy soak” means it’s alcoholic or not extremely interesting for the past fifteen minutes or so.

At least I’m enjoying it and the music they’re playing in the background here.

I’m probably going to take some time before I head back to my apartment to see the park that the cafe is in and to try to relax myself a little bit. I’ve had a little headache all day. At least I got a chance to update my blog, though. This is nice.

Thank you for the read, again!

Sweater weather

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 00:00:00 Z

Taichung's Da An Beach.

For the first time in several months, I put on a jacket today. Just for the evening, but all day before then, people were asking me why I wasn’t wearing one.

I mean, everyone I know here is from Taiwan, Indonesia, or India, and I’m a New Englander, so that’s my excuse. After all, it was only around 18 C/64 F with some mild wind.

But for the amount of “stuck-ness” that I’ve felt over the past little while – feeling like I can’t finish this project I’ve been working on, like I’m not really learning as much as I thought I would here, and kind of like my summer just still isn’t over, I was a little satisfied to be able to wear a jacket even for just a few hours tonight. I think that’s what they mean by “the winds of change”.

Anyway, I think I finished the first build of my main project – an air-pressure control device. At least, the first iteration of it. Like, right now it’s a stepper motor, solenoid, and Arduino bolted to a wooden board with a Mean Well power supply and some wires. The stepper motor driver and pressure sensor are floating on the wires that they’re plugged into the Arduino with. It’s kind of hack-y, but it works.

I never thought I’d get there. And, even better, my professor today told me that the next thing I should work on is making it better by designing proper components for it, like a real case and a PCB! So now I get to actually finish this project in a state where I might be more proud of it.

So, overall, the stress is starting to decline a little bit.

I even went to Sanxia Old Street with some friends.

I left the campus again after I got out of work, just out of habit because I always do, not because I had anything in particular to do in downtown Taichung.

I’ve been riding the Green Line MRT everywhere, so my “downtown Taichung” world has become restricted to the best stops along Wenxin Rd – but that’s not too bad. I actually have a decent selection of Donutes coffee shops to choose from.

And if you ever need to use the bathroom in Taichung, ride the MRT to Wenxin Forest Park first. And bring sheet music, because there’s a piano in it. And your ears, because the in-bathroom speaker music is an arrangement of assorted full-length versions of TMRT station train arrival themes in the style of a cafe-study music compilation.

But today I rode the MRT to City Hall because I decided I wanted to go to the Shin Kong Mitsukoshi – it has a Muji in it, and those usually have nice things. I was looking to maybe buy a sweater for the newly-arriving fall. And my shoes have a big tear in them now, and the foam is coming out the side. So I wanted to maybe look at new shoes, too.

The Muji is on the eleventh floor, so I had to walk around a fair bit (just to find the elevators), and after leaving the Muji after having found nothing I liked and heading back down, I used the escalator. The entire building was covered in Christmas decorations, with Christmas music over the radio, too.

I know Western traditions and things like that are popular here, so it wasn’t unexpected. Actually, I’ve seen this kind of thing up and around since the beginning of the month. But the weather today made it feel a lot more “right”, and the Shin Kong Mitsukoshi building is almost styled like a New York City department store – I’m not from NYC, but there was something about riding down the escalator for ten floors and taking in the ambiance that reminded me of that one time I went to New York City for the holidays with my parents when I was 13. Oddly nostalgic.

The sky is clear and the trees are leafless.

After not buying anything at the Shin Kong Mitsukoshi, I got back on the MRT and rode to Sihwei Elementary School (the secondary name is “Erfenpu”, which I feel like is more fitting for a random MRT stop in the middle of a downtown Taiwanese city. I feel a little out of place getting off at an elementary school, especially as a Westerner here, although I’m used to people thinking I’m probably an English teacher by now).

I at least felt confirmation in my decision to postpone my participation in the holiday consumerism when I saw a giant painting of Jay Chou and a sea turtle supported by the International Wildlife Federation on the way down the escalator.

I’m now at, of all places, another Donutes coffee shop (these are great – they’re all over Taiwan and they all never close). Talking to the cashier was another one of those times where she kept insisting on using English and I could clearly tell it was because she wanted language practice, which I can really understand, so I smiled and said “thank you” when I picked up my order and then started eavesdropping on the people next to me who were talking about some guy’s transportation habits and some place in Taipei by Lungshan Temple.

They have their own mistletoe on the handrails around the waiting line and Christmas jazz playing over the radio. Maybe it’s corny, but it actually does feel a little homelike to have it like this.

But as far as trying to fit in a little better in the parts of Taiwan that are less familiar, I am progressively struggling less. Not successful just yet. At lot of it is definitely in my head, especially my language insecurities.

This morning, I woke up to the dormitory services people scooping my roommate because he forgot to sign his name on the late-night entrance sheet yesterday. That interaction was all in Mandarin and I could understand none of it except for my roommate’s 「但我在睡覺！」. I have an unread copy of a book I bought at the Eslite in Xitun a while ago still sitting on my desk shelf. I should pop it open. My reading comprehension abilities are way better than I think I give them credit for.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

You know, I think language learning is all about targeted practice. I’ve learned most of my Mandarin this year, with my lack of Chinese classes since April, listening to Mandopop on Apple Music.

I noticed the other day, when I was sitting on a bus and annoyed that whoever set the music changed the captions from Mandarin to English halfway through, that I was actually pretty good at translating the English captions back to Mandarin in my head (the only language practice I could come up with). A lot of the lines even rhymed, too! I’ve learned so much Mandarin from KTV that I think I’m fully fluent in cheesy love songs.

So, I thought, it’s got to work the same way with other language skills. I just have to find people who want to talk about things that I want to be good at talking about. There’s a conversation table here that I’m at that I could (and should) join – but if I read and do that, too, I think I’ll give myself a decent shot at getting much better. I’m only halfway through my internship, so I still have time to make progress.

I’ll have to pick that book back up. It’s about world politics and similarities between the geopolitics in and around Poland and around Taiwan. I’m not sure where the idea came from, but if I can read and understand more than just the first two sentences that I read in the bookstore before I bought it, hopefully I can at least be able to write about eastern European history in Mandarin soon.

As far as lifestyle, though, I’ve otherwise been doing well for myself here. Yesterday I went to get hot pot with a friend for dinner, and he took me on the back of his scooter. I’d never ridden one before, but it’s something that I could get used to.

The next receipt lottery drawing is in less than a week, so I’ll just have to win enough money there to buy one of those things.

Chilling in Wufeng.

After that, I’ll just have to take an LoA from RIT, get myself an ARC, change my driver’s license for a local ID and, umm… find myself a part-time job as an English teacher at a high school in Dali or something.

Actually, I need a work permit for that, too. But I already have a commemorative wallet bag from Taichung Municipal Dali Senior High School, which is very nice and convenient and I will definitely be in the only person in all of upstate New York with Dali Gao-zhong merchandise when I return.

Whenever I introduce myself to someone new here, they jokingly ask me why I don’t stay for longer.

Earlier today, I met the president of the university, and he said the same thing. He asked what my major was. I said electrical engineering, and he told me about this particular school’s (apparently well-ranked) electrical engineering program. I told him I knew. You know, I have already looked at these things.

So even if this isn’t my home, I feel like the people I’m meeting are doing well to make this feel like a solid second home. And, you know, it’s impossible to predict the future. The other day, I was talking with a coworker-friend and somehow we got on the topic of my future study plans. I think I said that maybe I’d ask our professor about graduate degree options here. He said I wouldn’t have to, because the professor would ask whether I did or not.

So, this is a cool place. And now, it’s got weather to match.

Until Saturday.

Thanks again!

少少發愁

Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 Z

很有感覺的公車。

我最近發現在公車帶我的電腦搭乘時可以用。

台中霧峰之間有兩個主要公車線：200路線和151路線。151從霧峰（朝樣科大）去高鐵台中站，200從亞大去台鐵台中站和北區（中國醫大）。

大部分的時候，好像亞大學生只要去市内搭200路線。但，搭151路線去高鐵站也能搭捷運綠線，151路線也躲霧峰和大里主要的馬路，只用高速公路，比200線旅途半時間。

捷運附近有台中的「新市區」，有市政府，新光三越，誠品生活，好多貴公寓。最近我過很多時間在那裡。

我下辦的時候，151公車也快到最近站，所以也比較方便。

一些天前，我去了新市區，帶了我的電腦，沒帶背包。我搭了151車去捷運，但回宿舍我不想等151車回高鐵站，所以我搭捷運到市政府站，就換車搭310公車去台中車站可以換車搭200路線。

那是比較長的那個旅途，所以搭公車用電腦。在公車沒電腦桌，但還可以工作。好用。

好玩的台中捷運旅途地圖。

我以前怕別人特看我，不要做任何讓我看得不同的東西。我就對「我一定好像不正確」的發愁就少有一點。

這就提醒我，好像在台中這時間，我已經學到好多生活的好習慣。我該把新的習慣帶回家。

我常常告訴在台灣的朋友們，我在台灣總有點不好意思：在這裡好久不知道該活得怎麼樣，不知道我對別人好像是不是笨蛋的那個人。但，一，兩月後我感覺更好。我發現不要太發愁，只要照顧別人和自己就一定能活得好。

我一前每次有人只要對我說英文覺得他們應該覺得我的中文不要好，他們有點「憤世嫉俗」。

但，我就想我要開始說話的時候，我隨時會用中文。只是因為我要練習，不是因為我覺得別人會聽不懂我說的英文。可能我的語言練習難過就是台灣人有一樣的想法。我以前就想太多了。

其實，我看很多次台灣人有很多信義，很多歡迎感。我有一個印度朋友，今天一個陌生人對她就開始說中文話，以為她該會懂。她不會懂，但有點可笑。

這位人好像特別朋友了！

我也最近跟附近社區做活動了，昨天我跟一些別的國際生去了大里高中學到些臭豆腐的歷史，做迷你臭豆腐。

那時，我學到台灣的三地區（北部，中部，南部）有別的臭豆腐做法。

好想「真的」台中樣臭豆腐有上面的坑可以放辣將。我也聽說中捷的起點站「北屯總站」有一家夜市，「總站夜市」，在那裡能試一試這樣子的真台中臭豆腐。

我就有兩個錯可以讓對了：我能去北屯總站（我還沒去的捷運地區）又可以吃好的臭豆腐。所以，我當然去了。

我這月沒拍那麼多照片了，但有這一張：

中台灣臭豆腐第一！

好像我有耐心就一定會找到最喜歡的地區和最喜歡吃的餐。我怎麼從來沒去北屯的這一部？

反正，我覺得在台灣我離開「舒服區」的想法對我從來有好處了。認識新朋友，讓自己緊張一點，就能讓自己更滿足。英文有那個成語：「不要殺你的就讓你更強」（可能是比較壞的翻譯，我不是母語者或教授）。

每一天應該提醒自己，不要太多發愁了。

在我寫完這文章的咖啡廳不發愁很容易：

台中民族路的時尚咖啡。

（咖啡者也對我只說中文）。

多謝你的看看！

再見。

中文版的未來

Wed, 29 Oct 2025 00:00:00 Z

我和西子灣的海邊。

我以前寫的中文版博客文章沒有那麼深度，我的中文能力不太高。有點難，但我決定了減我以前寫的中文文章。

我知道現在我的中文能力還沒那麼好，但我知道我的能力有什麼範圍。

現在，我覺得這樣最好的好處就是練習用注音鍵盤打字。其實，今天一個同事對我有點驚喜，因為看到我用注音寫中文字。

他可能以前不知道我什麼中文會說，他也是台南人，我就對最近的中文學有點滿足。

我一些天一前去了高雄，老師請研究生跟實習生看他的家鄉城市。我當然拍一些照片，可以給你看：

美麗島車站。

85大樓！很有空間......

最新的高好特色：輕軌。

在去旗津島。

佛光山。

高雄一定有未來的感覺！高雄怎麼把很大的大道，好熱的天氣，真大的大樓成爲可愛城市？

在國三往南車裡面我的頭裡當然只有宇宙人寫的那首歌「要去高雄」，非常朗朗上口了。

然後，我應該開始掛我的衣服，洗衣機洗完了。

我要更少寫博客文章：我覺得少寫就給每個文章更多質量。

謝謝！

Taichung redux

Wed, 22 Oct 2025 00:00:00 Z

Meatball bowl. With soup.

Sometimes, stories just kind of tell themselves.

Yesterday, I was told that the chest x-ray that I got at home before coming to Taiwan wasn’t detailed enough (no picture), and that I’d have to get a new one along with a blood sample done in order to be able to continue living in the dormitory. By Thursday (two days?).

So yesterday afternoon I was sailing around by bus and went to three different hospitals to find the one that could get me in. It was China Medical University hospital in North District, pretty far from the university in Wufeng by bus (although not if you want direct service: today I learned there’s a shuttle between the two because they’re sister institutions).

Anyway, I was in a little bit of a rush. And I was a little agitated and kind of stressed about this last-minute dormitory health check scenario, since I really didn’t have much time and, worst case scenario, I lose my living situation (?).

I went through the physical at CMU Hospital and headed back out to get back to school sometime in the evening. And I didn’t think to check my pockets or backpack, so I was surprised when earlier today I got a call from an unknown number followed by a message telling me that it was CMU Hospital letting me know that I’d left my passport with them and that they were keeping it at their desk.

I told them I’d be back tomorrow morning to pick it up, since I was kind of busy today, but then about an hour later I had a meeting with my professor and — through some tangent of whatever conversation we were having — I mentioned that I had left my passport at CMU Hospital and he decided that I needed to get there right now. I mean, he was probably right, it was important.

So he went to drive me to the university hospital with the shuttle service to CMU.

Unfortunately, though, when we got there, we learned that the timetable for the shuttle bus listed on the web page is old and inaccurate. The shuttle bus wasn’t going to come for another 30 minutes. My professor told me at first that I could just go sit in the lobby at the hospital here and wait for the shuttle, and then looked at me and back at the steering wheel and just decided to drive me straight there immediately, which was kind of surprising. I mean, he’s a busy person. I felt kind of bad for taking up his time like that.

We sat in the car and just talked to each other for around 20 or 25 minutes, since the trip to North District is a lot quicker by car without all the stopping (it’s Taichung’s turn to implement transit-priority traffic signals!). I ran into the hospital and ran out with my passport a few minutes later.

I was still thinking about how nice it was of him to be driving me like this on the same route back when he looked over the side of the road and asked if I wanted food. I told him I was all set, since I assumed he probably had something to go back to at school, but he just kind of actioned his way through my thin shield of politeness and we U-turned right in front of a meatball stand by the side of the road.

He asked if I wanted soup to go with the meatball. I said, “no thanks”. He bought two.

I’d love to imagine what the woman behind the stand was thinking seeing him sitting there on the seats right in front of the stand like that, with me on the side looking all like a clueless foreigner.

It was great, though. The meatballs and the soup. There’s bamboo in the soup, actually, which I hadn’t realized was edible before.

After I took a few bites, the professor said to me, “I bet you wouldn’t go somewhere like this by yourself.”

I admitted that that was probably true, but that I usually didn’t like going to restaurants by myself, anyway. I said, “I’ve been to some of the night markets, though. Like, Zhongmei St and Yizhong St and around there.”

“Sure, but those are for tourists. This is real.”

…

“I know.”

…

When you find someone who’s skilled at reading people, and at interacting with people, and at being a person, I think that that definitely goes way beyond languages and cultures and whatnot. Sometimes appreciation is necessary.

After work today, I went downtown with someone I know from work here and the weather had really cooled down. Actually, he asked if I needed a jacket, but it was still warm, which was kind of funny. The wind was strong for a little bit. It’s been pretty deafeningly hot and humid every day, so this is a nice change.

Then I went to the hardware store. I know I’m far from a local, but it’s still funny to me when I go to the hardware store to buy hot glue sticks and rubber tubes and the cashier behind the register isn’t sure if I speak any Mandarin, like maybe I’m a tourist who just came for the exceptional texture of Taiwan melting adhesive (?).

I know I tend to be obsessive, but I’ve stumbled across more of what I like in Taichung just living my life than I have walking around looking for it. And I think that’s by design. If you go looking, you’ll find the most obvious things first. And if that’s not what you’re looking for, you’ll never find what you want.

So, really, I do think that this city is a great one. But I’ve learned that the best way to appreciate it is not to try.

I’ll probably pause posting for a while. I always appreciate the read, though.

晚安！

Central City

Mon, 06 Oct 2025 00:00:00 Z

My new desktop wallpaper.

I’ve gotten most of the urban exploration out of my system over the past weekend and am now beginning to really appreciate the city that I was destined to discover.

The image comes from here.

Maybe that’s a somewhat dramatic way to put it, but as a new resident of the largest city in Taiwan that isn’t Taipei and, specifically, the district that is apparently home to the National Taiwan Symphony Orchestra (?) (!), I feel good.

I’ve toured a decent bit around with the help of the buses and a little bit of Internet guidance. I probably didn’t go the exact “tourist route”, but I did try to make sure that I could understand the city from the perspective of someone who is staying here (at least, who is here for three months or so).

I’ve also taken a lot of pictures, which I might as well use to describe what I think about the whole area. I could try to do one of those Internet urbanist-style city reviews, which I think I may have done enough photography to do!

Not until I was at a dinner on Friday did I get out into the city (since I came in the middle of the week and started working right away). The place that we went was in Dali, which is fairly dense but right on the edge of Taichung’s urban sprawl network.

A bike in the... bus lane! 差不多吧。

The morning after, I went to the Wufeng First Market, which is in Wufeng but out on Zhongzheng Road and fairly far from where I am. It’s also not bad, and I forgot how dense Taiwan gets given the smallest possible number of people living close by. The market was packed, and this really isn’t something that you see outside of a big city in the US. Impressive!

Zhongzheng Road in Wufeng.

Later on that day, I was too obsessed not to try to make my way downtown for the sole purpose of visiting the Green Line MRT. Some people say that public transit can’t be a tourist attraction, but clearly, those people have never seen an elevated traincar with cutesy eyes painted on it and a vending machine full of merchandise just out front.

The views from the TMRT are actually very nice because the whole system is elevated, but you can’t see it in this photo because it was nighttime when I shot it (being that the train is packed during the day and I wanted to avoid being insensitive with my phone camera out in the crowd).

Pastel colors and good views!

But, then, most of Taichung is still built on the bones of the relatively old structure that you see in most major Taiwanese cities — dense neighborhoods connected by enormously wide roads built during the early KMT years and cars and scooters whipping down at breakneck-and-end-your-life speed.

The sprawliest parts of the city are further north and west, where there’s more going on but less density to build on top of. It’s mostly Beitun, Xitun around Taichung Central Park (ironically placed way out at the edge of the city), and some parts of Wuri away from the HSR station.

Other than around Taichung Central Park, the worst part about Taichung’s car-centricity is that it tends to hit all at once: as soon as you get far enough from the urban core, even if the density stays, the sidewalks and tree cover will abruptly end and you’ll be plunged into a giant, wide road putting your life on the line walking directly next to traffic that doesn’t seem to mind getting right up to your shoulder and having nowhere to hide from the blazing sun and suffocating humidity.

Taichung’s weather is a little more stable than in the north, and seemingly more manageable than in the south, but it’s definitely best when you get some help. Being stuck in a pavement island in Taichung, even in October (still firmly “summer” in Taiwan), is pretty uncomfortable.

Kind of like Florida. Hot, and big wide roads.

Image above credit: WC-QHS, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

At the very least, Taichung’s bus system is pretty world-class and unlike anything I’ve ever seen or used. Chains of buses line the streets throughout the whole city, and a lot of the routes are fully electrified, too. Routes like 台中客運 Taichung Bus 200 and 304 make the TMRT’s lack of extensivity and 2034 completion timeline for the Blue Line easier to handle, provided you’re okay with fitting a metro’s worth of people onto a single-car-sized bus at rush hour (around 10 PM if going south. Just a warning).

It’s difficult to tell if the city knows what it’s doing and is building out urbanism in the same way that most American cities are slowly starting to do, or if they’re still stuck in the past’s version of the future. A strange thing to note is that the Green Line MRT, which runs along Wenxin Road, goes mostly through parts of the city that aren’t really pleasant otherwise. Either they want to ride over the heat and pavement of Beitun in an air-conditioned train as a victory lap or they’re trying to make up the difference by throwing these communities a bone. The center of the line is at a wealthy area and Taichung City Hall, but a lot of the outskirts don’t have much going on around the stops.

There are certainly a lot of places on the entirely other end of the spectrum, though. Xitun is really two-sided because of that contrast between Central Park and its other main attraction up in the northwest corner of the city, the Feng Chia Night Market.

Feng Chia at night has just about everything to see: music, stalls everywhere for food, drinks, clothing, anything else you’d find at a market, and it’s really huge and really dense.

What they mean when they say 「熱鬧」!

I stayed there for a long time, and the air conditioners over the crowds actually helped me get a little bit more comfortable after walking across a large chunk of Taichung Central Park (really a combination of the air conditioners, the cooling down as it got darker, and the massive apple milk that I bought from one of the vendors).

It was a lot to take in, but everything I was taking in was good. Night markets are like that. An easier-to-access one is the Yizhong Street night market, which has a good sweet potato ball vendor but otherwise isn’t as big or impressive. It is definitely functional, though, and certainly a good time.

Toward the east end of Yizhong Street is also a little neighborhood with a “Box Design Hotel” and some brick streets with colorfully-lit hot-air balloon sculptures. That would definitely be on my list of considerations if I were looking for a hotel to stay in in the future. For now, though, I have my dorm.

In the morning, there are also a good number of more centrally-located places to relax. I wanted to get some work done and found this really neat little cafe with good online reviews called the Fleet Street Cafe. If you’re in Taichung and you want to go to a Western-style cafe that doesn’t charge Western-style prices and where you can sit in a little miniature bookstore looking over the narrow streets of 中區, this is your place. I stayed for over two hours and actually got things done! It’s a good slow-grind environment.

Like being in an Internet chill-cafe-study video.

And into the evening, there’s another relaxing place not far away with a strange English name: “Audit Village”. It is, though, just a direct translation of the name “審計新村 ShěnJì XīnCún”/ShenJi New Village (I guess maybe it just sounds nicer in Mandarin).

When I was in Taipei I talked about how much I thought the Songshan Cultural and Creative Park / Songyan was cool, and this was kind of like that, except it was an old dormitory complex used by employees of the provincial auditing office. It actually converts into a little market-park really well, too, like those kinds of things seem to do, except without the intense tobacco smell that might either repel or draw you in in the case of the Taipei version.

Chill study music, too, but live!

Speaking of Taipei, if you miss the feeling of money and skyscrapers blowing out of the ground and ringing the bells of the cash registers and consumerism all around you while watching sports cars with “XXX 8888” license plates drag-race down the business district, Taichung’s 7th Redevelopment Zone has you covered (Qi Qi! 七期). Never before have I seen a city government do too good a job at reinvigorating the local economy.

Qi Qi!

Image above credit: Victor Liu, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

It’s this kind of place that serves to remind you that you do have it all right here. Or, at least, that those ones up in the towers have it all right here.

But, actually, not far from Qiqi is the 春水堂 Chun Shui Tang restaurant, apparently the originator of bubble tea (and, somehow, Taichung remains out of the imaginations of pop culture worldwide? Where are my anime-inspired Wenxin Road metro dark-mode Wallpaper Engine backgrounds?).

Most of the city, though, within the sprawly edges and in between the highlights, is fairly normal and honestly pretty nice. Especially around Central District just above and below the train station and a little into Nantun, West District and southern Xitun. A few more pictures for good measure:

A little greenway near Luguang Village.

Luguang Village isn’t quite the most notable neighborhood on Taichung’s map, but notably interesting to me is the fact that their FamilyMart still has the old doorbell tune (the one that plays in Japan and elsewhere but not anymore in most parts of Taiwan). Actually, it plays both (they just Band-Aided the new tone on over the old one, which I found way too amusing when I first walked in).

Nantun has some nice neighborhoods with the greenery and narrow streets that you see in some nicer parts of Taipei, but without exactly the same level of density:

Lots of plants and scooters!

And in some places, even when there are cars, at least they’re old, small, and brightly-colored (I actually saw a decent amount of this, and not one oversized pickup truck outside of the Toyota dealership near the Wenxin Yinghua MRT station!).

Green and orange for contrast!

For the busier parts of the city, Taichung Park (the park that is actually located in the center of town) and the canal along Zhongming South Road make for some decent urban environments.

Taichung Park.

Zhongming South Road isn’t around anything that I really needed to visit, but I did find myself walking around West District and, for the lack of sidewalks and tree cover in that area, especially, it was a good thing to see.

Zhongming South Road.

So, after all, I feel like I’ve explored Taichung enough to feel comfortable that I’ve seen it, and secure knowing that I have places to go on the weekends (whether it be to get work done or to buy sweet potato balls). And I can feel pretty proud to live what I choose to believe is both the world’s next great city and the home of the future Taiwanese president (當然是盧市長吧！). It’s not even a hot take, I’m pretty sure it’s just all political analysts’ prediction.

I’m writing this in my dorm with some roommates who I’m gradually getting to know. I’m living in the “international student housing”, which they keep separate (I guess maybe that’s worth doing).

I’ve been here almost a week. I’m grateful and I’m going to try to make the most out of the rest of this year.

I appreciate the read again.

來台中吧！

“bonus bopomoment”:

che ku!

And an addendum from the future: South District is nice too. The sidewalks not only exist, but they’re wide and there are trees everywhere. It feels like what I imagine one of those old New York City expensive neighborhoods feels like.

And there’s a big hardware store by Taichung Rd., the 大台中五金百貨, which is the only reason I ever go down there. There are closer hardware stores to my university, I just like having an excuse to walk through South District.

多謝大家！