Twilight of Transport

To ride in a Taiwanese taxi is to ride an unruly horse—occasionally placid, often roiled with manic, quick energy.  Traffic flows and darts around, organized and respectful chaos.  Cabs to the left, cabs to the right, scooters to the rear, scooters to the front, fear painted white like the surgical masks covering peoples’ faces.

Scooters, mopeds, motorcycles, taxis, cars, trucks, jalopys, food carts, and pedestrians all dance in a cacophonous concert that demands your attention else you’ll miss the truck that has a stack of pigs legs flopping as it hits ditches and potholes.  Or the jalopy bedecked with various geegaws and aerodynamic fins.  Maybe even the rickety food cart, slopping with used liquid and faded signs for chicken garlic rice or frog’s egg drinks.

Buses are covered with various advertisements, most predominantly the Deaflympics.  Between the buses hover all the mopeds that you have ever seen, and ever will see—a deep chiaroscuro in that twilight between buildings, between buses, both looming large when compared with the two-wheeled toys that dare cross their paths.

But the scooters and mopeds zoom from light to light, corner to corner, braving the wild streets, their only concession are masks that cover the mouth and nose—for what fun is riding the streets if you are coughing from the ever-present fumes.  Fumes that bedevil each doorway, each breath of the Taipei air, an odd miasma that permeates each taste and breath until you have become one with it.

It is with this breath, or maybe even this bated breath (for as you get used to the smell you begin to hate it), that you plunge forth again in the day, or night, as you go about your adventures; be it to the arena to watch a game of basketball, or an excursion to the Shilin night market.  And the smell travels with you happily, looking over your shoulder, as you go about your business.

You may get a brief respite as you descend into the subway, metro system, of slick greased fast trains carry you around Taipei and environs, fast, fast, smooth as you please.  Air conditioning embraces you while the smell dissipates, advertisements (both print and video) remind you of the future while the past is outside, waiting, with a knowing smile because you are doomed to repeat it, to return to it.