Taipei: Leave or Stay
20250520 14:46-19:54
I wore a transparent acrylic helmet shaped like a round fish tank. Twelve bells hung on my body: six Christmas-style bells on my chest and six tiger-head bells on my back, all bought from a Buddhist supply shop near Longshan Temple. I held two markers, one yellow and one red. As before, there was no fixed route. I set off from Songshan Airport and planned to return once the helmet was about seventy percent full of text
After crossing the road near the airport, a man in a red polo shirt popped out from the bushes. I asked if he liked Taipei. He immediately said yes. I invited him to write what he liked about Taipei with the yellow marker. He wrote “lively.” He said he had traveled to many countries in both the East and West, but still liked Taipei best because it was where he was born and raised
At a bus stop, a retired couple said they liked Taipei for its convenient transportation, especially for older people. The man wrote “transportation” in yellow. A woman nearby, who worked in Taipei but lived in New Taipei City, joined the conversation. She said Taipei’s strengths were its culture and daily convenience, but that traffic was chaotic and pedestrians couldn’t walk leisurely. If reality didn’t matter, she would live in Europe. I invited her to move one of the tiger-head bells from my back to my chest. She wrote “culture” in yellow and “noise, traffic” in red.
A delivery driver on Minsheng East Road, originally from Yilan, said he disliked Taipei. He wrote “fake” in red. Outside a convenience store on Xing’an Street, a woman in pink said I was cute and asked for directions to the Chang Gung Dental Building. I looked it up for her. At the corner of Longjiang and Changchun Road, an Indian woman smiled in surprise at me. Several other Indian women wearing World Masters Games uniforms ran over from a nearby taxi. They said they liked Taipei very much. Before I finished explaining, one of them wrote “I love you” in red and gave me a group hug.
As I walked, the bells rang in rhythm with my steps. People in front often turned to look when they heard the sound. In a park, a mother with a two- or three-year-old boy said she disliked Taipei because of its lack of human warmth. She asked if this was my homework and wrote “human warmth” in red. The boy stared at my helmet, so I handed him the yellow marker. He scribbled a bit and then ran off without looking back.
At a new café nearby, I ran into a former barista from Coffee Dumbo. He said he disliked Taipei because it felt restless. He took the red marker, ran back inside to check whether the character “躁” should have the foot or fire radical, and finally wrote the foot-radical version.
Unexpectedly, many people smiled brightly after making eye contact with me. Children excitedly pointed at my helmet, calling it “bubbles” or asking what it was. At a crosswalk, two women with a stroller stopped. The boy inside smiled happily. One woman thought I was collecting signatures. She liked Taipei for its convenience and abundance of convenience stores. The boy drew a smiley face in yellow.
A building security guard chatted with me while smoking. He was from Pingtung and returned home once a month. He felt indifferent about Taipei, saying he was only here to make money. On Nanjing East Road, I smiled at a woman collecting recycling. When I tried to talk to her, she gestured that she could not hear, so I signed “I love you,” the only sign language I remembered.
A young woman with two elementary-school-aged girls let them draw hearts in yellow. She also liked Taipei for its convenience. Nearby, two kids kept watching me, but their mother was uninterested and pulled them away.
An elderly couple cycling near a police station thought I was giving out pens. The man disliked Taipei. He had lived here for seventy-two years and felt it was getting worse, saying his kids couldn’t afford to buy a house. He wrote “noisy” and “chaotic” in red.
At the MRT station entrance, a mother and daughter spoke with me. The daughter lived in California and visited Taiwan occasionally. She liked Taipei because it felt lively. She explained that after living somewhere where you could go ten kilometers without seeing anyone, Taipei’s street life felt wonderful. She wrote “liveliness” in yellow and helped move a bell from my back to my chest. If reality did not matter, she would still choose California.
On Chifeng Street, I met a group of Hong Kong students who were on vacation. Some disliked Taipei for being hot and humid; others liked it for being more diverse and open than Hong Kong. They wrote “humid” in red, and “LGBT friendly” and “too much good food” in yellow. They said that in Hong Kong, solo street performances rarely attract attention unless done in a group.
A woman in her twenties and a man in his thirties stopped. The woman, a Taipei native, liked the city for its sense of distance between people. She wrote “boundaries” in yellow and “no heart” in red. They thought it was cool that my voice inside the helmet sounded like a broadcast. The man, from southern Taiwan, felt Taipei lacked empathy. He first wrote in red, then added “diverse” and “interesting” in yellow.
Outside a café, an Australian man wrote in English that he liked Taiwanese food and friendly people. He said I looked like an astronaut who did not belong. I recommended the song Englishman in New York. A Hong Kong woman wrote that Taiwanese people are friendly. I then began walking back toward Songshan Airport.
Near the Xinzhongshan park, a woman said she had moved from China decades ago and liked Taipei, though she felt China now had better public safety. Two young women sitting by the road wrote that Taipei was “cute” in yellow, and “Is money really that important?” in red. A man on a scooter wrote “traffic jams” in red and told me to keep going. Near Mackay Memorial Hospital, an older man said he liked Taipei for medical convenience but disliked rush-hour crowds.
Two women on their way to an opera class said Taipei was great, with good food and happy people, like me. A foreign man and an Asian woman living in the U.S. stopped; the woman wrote “mosquitoes” in red. A mother and teenage daughter passed by; the mother disliked Taipei and wrote “rain.”
By the time I returned to Songshan Airport, it was dark. The temperature difference caused the helmet to fog up inside. My vision grew increasingly blurred—so did Taipei.
Special thanks: Documentation and photography support by Chen
