nanamoose

Having a Good Day at Have a Booday

I believe Hong Kong’s coldness comes from its commercialism, addiction to materialism and lack of art and culture, while Taiwan breathes the latter. Anyone who’s visited Taipei knows that Taipei is best known for its street food, hidden cafes and bookstores. Its been talked about so often it has almost become cliché. But it is amazingly true. No visit to Taipei would be complete without a visit to an Eslite bookstore and coffee or tea at a back alley café.

Have a Booday is my newly discovered gem tucked away in a back alley a short 5 minute stroll from Zhongshan MRT station. The article about Have a Booday published in Ming Pao late last year aptly explained what these back alley discoveries are all about, “There may be nothing people in Taipei can do about their objective environment [meaning its less than attractive skyline and horrible traffic], but they put in 100% effort into their surroundings. They create one small cozy paradise after another in narrow side streets and back alleys while their dreams shone like a glowing halo on the top of their heads. The recent opening of a new shop by Mogu is a therefore news everyone is fighting to report to their peers because we have just found another hub in Taipei that allows us to rest and think.”

Have a Booday is the baby of the Booday design team, which most people in Hong Kong know through their publication “Mogu” magazine. Have a Booday is split over four floors in an old Taiwanese house - the ground floor is a small shop selling Mogu designed items like T-shirts, bags, postcards and cute boxes of matches with different poems written on each matchbox, the second floor is a café with an open kitchen selling coffee and tea, homemade cakes and Mogu recommended books and music, while the third and fourth floors are the Mogu design studio. This is the kind of place where you can spend the entire afternoon reading a book and sipping coffee, or even bringing your knitting to do and striking a conversation with artists and designers who treat the place like home.

On the Friday we visited Typhoon Sepat was wreaking havoc on the streets of Taipei with its strong winds and torrential rain, while inside Have a Booday soft Bossa Nova music was playing, the aroma of coffee and the sweet smell of innocence and creativity was lingering in the air. This is my kind of place. This is the kind of place where people build dreams. This is the kind of place that can change Hong Kong.

Culture Shock in Hong Kong

Believe it or not, I came back from Taiwan yesterday experiencing culture shock here in Hong Kong. Its quite unbelievable given I have lived here a good eighteen years of my life and have been spending my summers in Taiwan for the past few years. Both places are equally as familiar to me. But the strange thing happened. I was shocked, as if seeing Hong Kong for the first time. I came home yesterday to be greeted first thing by an emotionless and speechless cabby then a group of inefficient, rude and incomprehensible waitresses in Soho. No big deal. This is Hong Kong. However, it becomes unbearable when you’ve experienced hospitality in Taiwan. You start to remember what life before we all became pokerfaced workaholics was supposed to be like, what relationships between people were meant to be.

In Taiwan, I can walk around looking helpless in a bookshop trying to find the number of a café I just read about and the young gentleman at the counter would offer to look it up for me on the internet; I can walk down a street in a night market talking to my aunt about trying to find 大饼包小饼 (big pancake wrapping small pancake) and a passerby would appear from nowhere offering us directions; I can ask a waitress at a restaurant whether their wontons are Wenzhou or otherwise and she would gladly bring out the actual wonton for me to inspect, then engage me in a conversation about what kind of wonton I am looking for; I can walk up to a vendor to ask for directions of a competing vendor and he would gladly give it to me. In Hong Kong being distant seems to be the norm. I cannot even guarantee that I would do the same as the gentleman in the bookstore, the woman in the night market, the waitress at the xiaolongbao restaurant or the helpful vendor. Not because I don’t want to help these people, but because I am so used to focusing only upon my own affairs that I would probably surprise even myself if I had been over friendly.

I have a theory on how to cure this coldness disease in Hong Kong and I'll share it with you in my next post.

No Politics on Taiwanese Cabs

Shanghai cabbies might come before Hong Kong cabbies according to my latest post on taxis in China, yet cabbies in Taiwan are better still. London cabbies are by far the best in the world, but they win by virtue of their cute black cabs, intelligent cabbies with proven larger brains than the average person thus giving them better navigation skills (or perhaps the other way round, bigger brains due to their trained navigation skills), and their ability to U-turn on virtually every road in London. However, taxis in Taiwan excel in their own unique ways. The most obvious virtues are how new, clean, well equipped (with GPS navigation systems and TVs) they are, and how friendly and well mannered the cabbies are (not to mention their driving skills which are if not better, at least equally as good as the cabbies in China due to their amazing ability to steer clear from the hordes of motorbikes). One reason for this is the good nature of the people in Taiwan in general, but another might come from effective management. See a taxi’s mission statement posted at the back of the front seat passenger’s headrest for example:

10 promises to our customers:

1. No smoking in the vehicle;
2. No chewing beetle nut in the vehicle;
3. No detouring and no speeding;
4. No refusal to take short trips;
5. No drink driving;
6. No talking about politics;
7. No talking about religion;
8. Will always wear uniform and wear a tie;
9. Will accept routes suggested by customers; and
10. Will listen to radio station designated by customers.

I think it is only in Taiwan that you have to tell your cabbies not to talk about politics to passengers. However, it is after all only nature. Despite the cab company’s promise, my aunt and I had this conversation with a cabby who had his TV on watching the New York Yankees play against Detroit last night:

Aunt: Who is playing?
Cabby: The New York Yankees vs Detroit.
Aunt: Which team are we?
Cabby: I think we are the New York Yankees.
Me: What do you mean we are the New York Yankees?
Aunt: (Laughing) Because Wang Chien-Ming (who is from Taiwan) is in that team! When there is a Chinese person… a person from Taiwan playing, we naturally think of ourselves as belonging to that team! Haha….
Cabby: Not Chinese, but Taiwanese! Its funny, you know the Mainland Chinese people say that Wang Chieng-Ming is theirs!
Aunt: Oh really? (laughing stiffly) Haha….