A visit to Taichung

When they fled the Communist revolution in the early 1950's, my father's family settled in Taichung (pron. tie-zone), about 150 km southwest of Taipei city, in a compound built by the Kuomintang to house the soldiers and their families. My aunt and uncle who still live in Taichung have neither ever driven a car and get around with their trusty bicycles. Their home is on a narrow street in the outer edge of the city, and almost all of their neighbours are seniors like themselves. They also don't own a computer, cellphone, and nor a microwave. They are very careful about what they eat, pop handfuls of vitamins everyday, and seem to be benefitting from their simple lifestyle. My uncle is eighty-two and my aunt is seventy-eight, and they are both fit as a fiddle and sharp as a whip.

My aunt and uncle were ardent members of tour groups and have travelled throughout Europe, Russia, China, Southeast Asia and North America. These days, they spend most of their time in their home in Taichung, occasionally taking the train to Taipei to visit my grandfather, their children and grandchildren.

Watching Ba interact with his sister is interesting. I've never seen them together before, and of his three siblings, he is closest to her. Ba told me that when he was in first year university, with his feet poking through the holes in his shoes, it was his sister who sent him money for a new pair. And my aunt, the eldest in the family, at seventy-eight and with bad knees, will still try to give up her seat on the train or try to wrestle her bags from my dad.

On our first morning there, Ba and I set off for downtown Taichung by transit. Our bus driver was holding a stewed chicken foot in his right hand when we dropped in our 50 cent bus fare. As he drove along, he spat out the small bones into his left hand. At one point, we passed a hog lumbering on the road. Sounds rural? Taichung is actually an urban, modern locale that exploded with growth and development all within the last 40 years. Ba doesn't recognize any of it. He remembers when he was a child, it was a small town with one or two mainstreets, and mostly dirt roads and farm fields. Today, it is a noisy, jostling city of a million inhabitants with eateries, 7-Elevens, McDonald's, Starbucks, highrise buildings, museums, an IMAX theater, a botanical garden, malls and designer clothing department stores. We learned later that the hog was probably someone's pet, unusual, but lately fashionable.



We met my father's university classmate, Ginger, and his wife, Hweili, who used to live in the States, but came back to live in Taichung about 20 years ago. They took us to a fast food noodle restaurant, where we began our meal by preparing our own little condiment bowls. We had beef noodle soup, fried dumplings, steamed dumplings and boiled dumplings, fried white radish cakes, chicken and green onion wraps, pickled vegetables, hot and sour soup, and millet porridge. We did have a lot of food on our table and although the Taiwanese do love to eat, they really don't normally eat that much at one sitting. Otherwise there'd be an obesity problem in this country. (Ba and I, on the other hand, need to look into some weight loss programs when we get back to Canada. ) Taiwanese people do like to eat, and although hot, cheap food is always just a step away, there aren't many overweight people here. Who knows if it's a high metabolism gene or something in the diet, but the Taiwanese don't have much to worry about with weight problems. I have also seen many Taiwanese seniors here and they are almost always wiry little sprites. Like Ginger and Hweili, they can be in their sixties, seventies or eighties, and still be in remarkably robust health.



Ba reminisced with Ginger about the 4 bunkbed university dorm rooms, the rice-heavy meatless meals and the blood-sucking bugs. Ba isn't complaining, because back then, university was free. Today, it costs my cousin about $2000 a year to put his sons through one of the hundred and fifty universities here. The $2000 fees also cover the residence and meals. Some universities are better than others, but even the best ones are equally affordable.