Not far from Taipei 101 and the heart of Taipei’s central business district one will find an ulcerous anomaly on the supine body of the sprawling city. It would be impossible to miss this ruin, for a wild riot of plant life traces its angular outlines, and an unusual assortment of graffiti gilds the arcade along Keelung Road. I regularly ride by here on my way to various working cafes further afield and naturally couldn’t resist taking a look inside one day. I have not puzzled out the formal name of this abandonment but strongly suspect it was an official guest house related to the armed forces, particularly as it was located adjacent to the former #44 West Village (四四西村), a military dependents’ settlement.

I resided in Zhongli, Taoyuan, for two months at the very end of 2015 for reasons outlined in my first dispatch. In short: I wanted to try out living in another city in Taiwan and had a few good friends in the area, one of whom is fellow Canadian blogger Josh Ellis. In my time in Zhongli I captured numerous scenes from everyday life in this burgeoning conurbation of half a million. This post is meant to convey a sense of what it was like to live there for a while—just as I previously did for my time in Wenshan District, Taipei. It is not meant to be a comprehensive guide or a review; think of this as a loose collection of snapshots and impressions of a mid-sized Taiwanese city not commonly documented in English.

Gathered here are several photographs from a brief walk around 1933 Shanghai (上海1933老场坊), an unusual slaughterhouse in Hongkou, part of the former Shanghai International Settlement. Designed by a British architect in an arguably Art Deco style and built with imported cement in 1933, it was recently renovated and transformed into a hub for the creative industries. Seeing as how this is Shanghai, several high-quality English language articles have already been published about it, so I will hereby refer you to Atlas Obscura, Shanghai Art Deco, Mas Context, Randomwire, and La Casa Park for more information and informed analysis.

Yesterday I was on my way to check out 1933 Shanghai 上海1933老场坊, a restored Art Deco slaughterhouse in Hongkou, when I stumbled upon a compact neighbourhood in the process of being torn down, part of an ongoing process of urban renewal in Shanghai. Every year more of these old areas are torn down, their residents forcibly evicted, new high-rises and shopping malls going up in their place. My time in Shanghai is too short to allow for any measure of expertise to grow—so all I have to share here are a few photos and some comments from a quick walk around (and through) the block.

During my weeklong trip to Manila late last year I ventured into Binondo and Quiapo to check out some of the famous old Art Deco buildings in the area. Along the way I also visited Paco Railway Station (entirely by accident) and the Manila Metropolitan Theater. Presented here are an assortment of other pre-war buildings from the early 20th century, annotated with links to more information.

These photographs were taken in early October 2013 while hiking around Yángmíngshān National Park (陽明山國家公園). After meeting up with a friend we took a bus from Jiantan Station in Shilin to Lengshuikeng with the intention of checking out Milk Lake (Niúnǎichí 牛奶湖). Racing up the meandering mountainside roads we soon found ourselves immersed in an interminable fog. Debarking at the bus stop, with hardly another soul around, we decided to wander around and see what we could make of our time in Yangmingshan.

I came of age on the edge of suburbia, where cookie-cutter housing projects end and the surrounding countryside begins. Decades later, again I find myself perched on the edge, further west than when I was young but still at the very end of one little patch of suburban sprawl.

A bizarre work of public art in the bowels of Taipei Station.

This striking installation is one of the more iconic and well-known works of public art in Taipei. Created by artists Hé Cǎiróu 何采柔 and Guō Wéntài (郭文泰) in 2009, it is entitled The World in Aves’ Eyes (愛維思看世界), Birdperson (鳥人), or Daydreams (夢遊) and can be found somewhere in the labyrinthine passageways beneath Taipei Railway Station (臺北火車站). Apart from the obvious, the immature, androgynous figure holds a pencil in its right hand (never to write a word), water continuously seeps from its neck, and its feet show the signs of a mild case of pigeon toe, a condition that should be familiar to anyone who has seen young Taiwanese posing for photographs. Here is the original creative statement that accompanies the piece:

「愛維思看世界」以稚嫩的身體、怪誕逗趣的鳥頭以及輕輕淺淺的流水，表現出E世代對世界的困惑，身體的稚嫩感彷彿要告訴世界，還不急著要長大，而側著的鳥頭以不成比例的尺寸，誇張的標明著自我的異化感，猶如一位誤闖地球的外星人，在幽浮般的蛋殼中孵化而出。愛維思（Aves）搖搖晃晃的嘗試著適應這難以理解的世界，那漾漾清水則是一般腦傾洩而出的困惑，沒有黑暗、邪惡、憂傷或者種種成人世界裡的光怪色彩，愛維思（Aves）的苦惱是屬於孩童一般的天真困惑，在陽光的照耀下甚至會散射出七彩的光暈、迷霧而迷人。

My ability to translate Chinese remains limited, particularly when it comes to the sort of conceptual language employed above, but I’ll do my best to provide the gist. From what I can tell…

Huáguó Theater (華國戲院) is one of hundreds of abandoned theaters scattered around Taiwan. Located in Puli, a town of approximately 80,000 in the heart of Nantou, this particular theater was likely built in the late 1950s. From what I’ve read in an article by Wáng Hénglù (王亨祿), this theater was operated by a couple with the family name Zhōu (周) and specialized in showing Western films on a single screen before its inevitable demise.

Yìfāng Old House (義芳居古厝) is a traditional courtyard home, or sānhéyuàn (三合院), in the scenic foothills of southeastern Da’an, Taipei. It was built in 1876 during the Qing dynasty era by a wealthy branch of the Chen family. At that time it was far from the commercial centers of Wanhua and Dadaocheng, both near the other side of Taipei Basin, on an almost lawless frontier. Nowadays this old house is a stone’s throw away from some of the busiest streets in the city as it is located immediately behind the National Taiwan University (國立臺灣大學) campus, better known as Táidà (台大).