BLACKBOOK on the ground TAIPEI, MY WAY In the midst of a cultural renaissance, Taiwan’s capital is slowly attracting more visitors. JENNIFER CHEN revisits the city to find out why Some writers recount life-changing first trips to glamorous destinations: Paris, Spain, Mexico. Not me – my first foreign forays were devoted to Taipei, which in the 1980s was neither life-changing nor glamorous. Family pilgrimages to my parents’ hometown yielded images of anonymous apartment blocks covered in dingy white tiles, rain-washed streets jammed with scooters and honking cars, and uncles who insisted on testing my shaky knowledge of written Chinese characters. Taipei might have been the engine behind a roaring economy, but the city’s entrepreneurial pluck NEIL WADE 46 departures-international.com
