Our New Apartment

B and I finally found an apartment in the eastern side of Taipei, in the Sungshan district. It is very close to a large park, which is known as Animal Mountain Park because its peaks are named Tiger, Elephant, Panther and 9-5 Mountain. 9-5 Mountain is the tallest (374 meters or 1226 feet) and received that name because a 95 year old man climbed it on the fifth day of the ninth month in 1915. There is a rock decorated with calligraphy on the summit to commemorate his achievement. We climbed it already and it is very steep. In parks here, they have hiking trails paved with flagstones, perhaps because it's so wet, and whenever the trail goes uphill, they build steep stairs. Thus, hiking involves a lot of stair-climbing. The park is surprisingly uncrowded, especially considering its proximity to an extremely densely populated urban area, but the Taiwanese dislike exercise of all sorts. They don't like to be outside either, because that results in tanning. White skin is considered very beautiful here and every pharmacy sells numerous expensive whitening agents. When women go out, they always bring umbrellas for shade, and wear gloves to protect the arms.

Our apartment is 107-1 Fu Der Road, Taipei. However, Taiwan has no consistent transliteration system from Mandarin (one large street is spelled Chungshan, Zhongshan and Chungsan variously) and so the road can also be spelled Fu Duh and Fu Te. I think it will be OK if you spell it Fu Der, though. The characters are too complicated to write and I don't know how to type them anyway. The apartment is about 22 pings; a ping is the space covered by one tatami mat and is the area measurement used here. It has two bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen, a dining room, a living room and a balcony, and overlooks the Animal Mountain park. It's nice but it's built to Taiwanese standards, which means it only has hot water in the bathroom, no closets or cupboards, and no oven, only a stovetop. We bought a toaster oven for baking. We do have air conditioning though, which is very important due to the hot and sticky weather. Our neighbors are very quiet and I haven't heard them at all.

Our neighborhood, like all of Taipei, is very densely populated, so that there are 3 supermarkets within walking distance, as well as a night market, a police station, convenience stores, furniture stores (where they make couches in a workshop, for instance), auto repair shops, a gas station, knick knack stores, restaurants, etc. The apartment is right next to a massive high school, which educates all its students in Home Economics. All students must wear extremely ugly uniforms here, which are either slobby-looking sweatsuits in primary colors or ill-fitting collared shirts and black skirts or pants. Each student is known by a number, which is printed prominently on their uniforms, I suppose to better discipline them. Isn't that bizarre?