November 6, 2025

The Seeker hotel in Sanchong allows late checkout, and so I naturally take advantage of that — and yet still find myself leaving last minute. One thing will never change in my life — I hate rushing and am invariably late. Photography feeds into that predilection, as my immersion into the multi-dimensional sensory experience of the moment gives rise to a constant stream of photos and with it, time seems to vanish.

A farewell breakfast at the Protein Box and espresso at the Peter Better coffee shop, and I am on my way …

Taipei’s main train station may be grandiose, but it isn’t clear what the purpose of the size may be, given that the regional trains, such as those running to Keelung, disembark from platforms accessible from a cramped, run-down corner of the complex. Then the fare to Keelung is only NT$62 (less than CAD $3)?

The trip to Keelung is easy enough, the rail line serviced by a long commuter train that circulates to the northeastern coastal town every half hour. The landscape around the rail line is relatively uninteresting, smaller communities consisting of dense housing developments with a hilly, green backdrop, although characteristic of Taiwan — contrasting with the likes of South Korea and Japan — the quality of maintenance of the urban environment is uniformly poor, run down, and mouldering, similar to much of the residential parts of Taipei I have seen, if not worse. Why? Perhaps these areas have become undesirable and abandoned. But perhaps there are other reasons …

Keelung’s main train station occupies an expansive concourse on the immediate west side of the core of Keelung, in addition to the bus exchange on its side, although perhaps there is more to the small town than its size on the map indicates. The entire stretch running between Taipei and Keelung is urbanized, so there are definitely outlying areas to service.

A challenge arises in trying to figure out where to take the bus to my hotel, which I could in theory walk to, but with my heavy bags and shaky legs, it really would make sense to consider a transport option, especially given that a number of buses seem to go from the station to the area of the hotel. Determining which buses pass by is not difficult, but trying to figure out where these buses stop at the station is a mystery. For one, the overhead placards show numbers that don’t correspond to the buses that supposedly stop here — then it turns out that the numbers correspond to the initial digits of the bus numbers.

It turns out that the departure times of the individual bus routes are shown on the small LED displays at each stop. This and more is explained to me be an affable young woman who takes it on her to direct me to the correct bus, the driver of the bus I board then wanting to know the stop I am going to. The friendliness of locals and the extent they go to help is consistent with my experience of Taiwanese in my home country, a very friendly and welcoming people. But the state of the bus is appalling, commensurate with the state of disrepair of the housing I have observed.

As the bus pulls into town, we pass the small harbour plaza into the narrow streets lined with tall residential buildings, the street level cramped and lively, my stop next to a highway onramp crammed between apartment buildings — and the entrance to my hotel accessed by stooping under the overpass to reach the smart but tiny lobby. My room is on the seventh floor, high enough to offer a view over the sea of low towers that comprise the town and the hills in the distance. The light is not particularly forgiving, given the overcast skies, and when I emerge some time later from my cocoon, the light is even less favorable.

However, my room is adequate, with a queen-sized bed taking up most of the space, a large window thankfully bathing the room in natural light, a good ventilation system, a large TV screen I will make no use of, a tall, rectangular gold-framed mirror adding a touch of class, a simple wooden desk, two small nightstands, and a cabinet with a fridge — but with no closets to pack away my things. The room and bathroom are clean and functional, quite modern in appearance, a considerable difference from the dated, run-down place I stayed in Taipei.

The road leading to the harbour spans some three or four short blocks, but there is a lot crammed into that space, retail outlets, workshops, roadside eateries, smart cafes, boutiques, and in the back alleys, market stalls that disappear into the distance. Commerce is the key takeaway here, as much of it and with as many people involved as possible can be herded into such small spaces, although the lack of space is clearly a function of privilege and wealth; the fancier establishments on the road are spacious and elegant, whereas the market stalls in the passages are anything but. And yet life seems to unfold universally with an energetic but relaxed dignity, the Taiwanese always quick to smile and issue greetings.

The town of Keelung is considered to be part of the metropolitan area of Taipei, and is Taiwan’s second largest port after Kaohsiung in the south. The rainswept town was originally inhabited by the Ketagalan aboriginal people; Spanish colonists arrived and built the fort of San Salvador de Quelung in 1624 to serve as an outpost of the Spanish East Indies. The Spanish imported Fujianese traders, Christian Japanese, Filipinos, Mexican mestizos, as well as a variety of other peoples from its other colonies. The Dutch replaced the Spanish later on in the 17th century, and were eventually themselves pushed out by representatives of China’s Ming dynasty. By the mid 19th century, China developed Keelung as trading port, and the town grew rapidly. In the late 19th century, the French in turn made unsuccessful attempts to assert control over the area of northern Taiwan. All of Taiwan passed into the hands of Japan in 1895 with the Treaty of Shimonoseki, the Japanese in turn accelerating the development of the port, although Keelung was ultimately leveled in the Pacific War between Japan and the United States in 1941. Following the subsequent consolidation of Keelung into the Republic of China, Keelung again grew in importance as port and by 1984 became the seventh most important container port in the world. (excerpted from Wikipedia).

As I probe for interesting subject matter in the cramped urban environment, a couple take me under their wing and leads me to the Qingan temple, where locals have been worshipping the goddess of the sea Mazu for centuries. The temple is largely identical to other temples I have seen, with the same components and organization, but with minor differences. They explain that the temple is not Buddhist, but Taoist — and the gods in a Taoist temple vary. The tall, unadorned statue off to the side is Mazu, the primary deity, although there are a number of other gods that are worshipped here whose shrines are set up around the perimeter of the interior.

Regarding Keelung’s position on the sea, yes, it is also a source of good seafood, although, seafood here is expensive, quite simply a reflection of the cost of fishing. Sure, you can find fish that is inexpensive, such as mackerel, but a lot of other seafoods are quite pricey. I will have to judge on my own, but the price differential between different seafoods is based on availability and cost of exploitation, which is universal. They confirm that Taipei has lots of good seafood restaurants — perhaps I wasn’t in areas where they are found, which I can easily attest to, considering the size of the city. To experience good seafood, they recommend that I try seafood at the night market only a few blocks away — that’s where I should be able to get the best selection of local seafood — and at the most affordable prices.

I walk around the temple, taking pictures, quite conscious of the fact that I must be incredibly annoying if not worse to the worshippers. Then it’s not as if the last three months of photos don’t largely consist of images of the same objects in almost identical temples. On the sides of the entrance stand triple-eaved gazebos with roof ridges weighed down by brilliantly-coloured dragons. On either side of the principle shrine, intricately-carved wood panels and dragon pillars, and in front, a bulbous xianglu bronze incense burner. In the antechamber, tables for offerings, with curtains of red lanterns hanging from the rafters.

Onto the waterfront plaza, the storefronts are of a somewhat higher calibre, some offering fashionable clothing, the coffeeshops with their eclectic decor, specialty liquor stores, and a bakery selling fresh, open-faced garlic bread baguettes— definitely not something I would have expected here. But no, don’t stop and indulge, you need to put a brake on the starch and sugar intake!

The waterfront plaza in theory could offer a more memorable sight, but not in the declining light of today’s already dreary afternoon. On one side, ships berthed along the docks, a museum, and on the east side, docks facilities and a solid line of tall urban commercial and residential buildings, although from the map, the city apparently doesn’t extend far beyond what is visible to the eye from this plaza.

This may seem petty, but my impression of Taiwan is fantastic from one key perspective that means a lot to me — good coffee is definitely available in this country, and you don’t have to look too far.

What I hadn’t expected is for the building immediately to my right to offer a major exhibition of modern art, its contents attesting to the country’s openness to modernity, given the fairly divergent nature of the exhibits. In a major European city, sure, but here?

The cultural centre features diverse video installations with idiosyncratic but provocative messages; broad areas of floor space covered with brightly-coloured plastic pieces ostensibly intended to create impressions of urban conflagration, arranged in seemingly random, non-geometric forms or in strict columns over geometrically-contoured spaces. The exhibition also includes incongruous eyeball-shaped disks patterned with coloured concentric circles attached to the walls at odd angles.

With respect to the minute colourfield pieces laid out on the floor: “British conceptual artist Ryan Gander works across a wide range of forms with a distinctly conceptual vision. His practice often plays with fictional presences and absent objects to trigger a play of imagination, extending into the curiosity and creativity of children while breaking free from the constraints of ‘reality’ and appearances that frame adult behavior. Much of his work centers on his role as a father. Instinctive, unproductive and free (Departure) (2024) consists of 1,500 postcards assembled into an unfinished marble sculpture derived from a twenty-second motion scan of his autistic son, Baxter, capturing his existence through a constant state of movement.

Closed Systems (2024) emerges from Baxter’s everyday activity of arranging toys, reflecting his unique modes of perception. Idea Machine (2024) challenges the myth of originality and authorship by transforming 2,000 unrealized artistic ideas into a series of witty, satirical devices. Irresistible Force Paradox (Mint Green L22R) (2024) converts ‘action marks’ of comic books into abstract imagery, inviting viewers to create their own interpretations. Meanwhile, Is empathy a superpower? (2025) presents a giant balloon emblazoned with a question posed by his son, announcing at the entrance that visitors are stepping into a world shaped by the artist. In encountering these works, viewers also enter a reciprocal space where empathy is practiced-one that speaks to how the artist creates, how the audience perceives, and how, through this ongoing exchange, a shared sense of togetherness takes shape.”

With respect to the eyeball-shaped sculptures: “Taiwanese artist Agi Chen develops a body of contemporary artworks imbued with the spirit of the times by transposing the chromatic vocabulary of anime. Her practice both reflects mass media culture and evokes collective visual memory. Continuing to draw from the world of cartoons and anime, she re-virtualizes characters and devises a new conceptual interface of measurement, destabilizing and reconfiguring their structures of meaning. In The High-Speed Flight of Cheshire Cat (2022) and The High-Speed Flight of Candy (2022), Chen extracts the color ratios of characters and reduces them into concentric circles. Detached from their original forms, the colors are repositioned into geometric structures, transforming into sculptural installations that collide and interact with architectural spaces and everyday pathways, as if virtual figures had burst into the public realm.

Roaming in United-Islands (2025) originated as a participatory database project that invites viewers to contribute anime characters with which they feel the strongest emotional connection. The extracted colors are then converted into multiple abstract concentric circles situated within the landscape of a harbor city, reactivating both individual and collective memory. The resulting color discs not only symbolize ‘information interfaces’ within a globalized context but also, through processes of social exchange and collective collaboration, trace the psychological trajectories and shared experiences generated in the age of digital media. In doing so, the project opens up multiple possibilities for rethinking memory, information, and cultural co-creation.”

And now that the museum is closing, I want to move further onward to the northeastern end of the town, not that there is necessarily much to see, not that the weather will be cooperative, and not that I am not suddenly incredibly exhausted and can barely walk. I am not feeling well at all, extremely tired, my kidneys hurting, although I am not sure why. My endless excursions into the far yonder are not just about continued denial of the exigencies of the real world but also a protracted effort to delay the inevitable, to see life out while I still can.

Along the arcaded passages in the mildly interesting retail environment, yet another elegant bakery beckons, where against any logic, I decide to sit down and enjoy a piece of fruit cake stacked with whipped cream and fresh grapes. But somehow, the mood of the evening changes dramatically as I trudge through the rain-swept streets toward the waterfront, not expecting much, and yet finding a mall-like structure spanning several city blocks, the ground level largely dedicated to parking and office facilities, the upper floor occupied by a glass-encased linear structure as well as some detached, roughly trapezoidal buildings housing a series of restaurants, one side dedicated to a landscaped promenade and planters hosting a diversity of plants, grasses, and shrubs.

The brightly-lit restaurants reflect a generosity of space and comfort more familiar in the North American theatre, the type of food prepared in the establishments spanning the major cultures of the region. The menus are compelling, but I am not really hungry at the moment, find extensive menus daunting, and have another destination to get to.

But before I go, I discover yet another sprawling coffeeshop in the building at the south end, next to a large kiosk selling jewelry, which normally wouldn’t hold my attention, but the delicately-formed and arranged coloured glass concoctions are somehow incredibly appealing. The pieces include shapes of flowers, butterflies, birds as well as simple and attractive geometric patterns, the diverse forms aggregated into larger shapes to create broaches, necklaces, and earrings, drawing on Chinese aesthetic conventions, and yet somewhat dissonant in terms of the aggregations and colour combinations. I ask the price of one of the more elaborate pendants — NT$1,300 (ca. CAD $60) — really?

Carrefour seems to be the go-to for the mid-sized supermarkets littered throughout Taiwanese urban areas, and certainly provide enough selection for my humble grocery shopping needs. I won’t be doing any cooking anyway, given that I don’t even have access to a microwave — although my primary issue with cooking as opposed to eating out is time. That said, eating at street stands or the night market is preferable, considering that the food is already made and ready to serve. And so I continue onward to the night market …

The Keelung night market is incredibly crowded, the surging masses not something I am in the mood to deal with; I am still recovering from the vast crowds you’d find everywhere in the Kyoto-Osaka region. At least the people here are local — well, not quite — as I do see a fair number of tourists, although nowhere nearly the masses I saw in Japan. The alley is lined with a continuous procession of stands serving every manner of traditional Taiwanese food that can be easily prepared and served in a small space. While the food on offer is simple and convenient, the overall presentation is not haphazard or dilapidated, the food preparation facilities orderly and clean, the kiosks organized, brightly-lit, with proper signage, and the overall atmosphere friendly and welcoming, and no one aggressively promotes their wares — not that they have to, with the size of the crowd here.

I see deep-fried pastries, vegetable pancakes, tempura, noodle soup, bubble tea, pork stew, skewers, and so on — but after slowly wending through the crowd, I notice that there is no seafood on offer — until I turn a corner in the cross-shaped market and find a number of stands offering squid and shellfish in various preparations, culminating in a stand heaving with every manner of seafood, and with all manner of preparations for each. While many of the items on the menu are more expensive — commensurate with the nature of the fish or shellfish in question — there isn’t a lot of choice in the market, which is obviously not that oriented toward seafood.

The conch in black pepper sauce and sweet potato greens I order are quite fantastic, the flavour of the first interesting in that there is an aromatic aftertaste to the paste in which the dog conch has been cooked that doesn’t correspond to black pepper — but I can’t place it, nor will the staff tell me what it is. The conch itself is leathery and obviously overcooked, the preparation nice in theory but not particularly refined. The greens on the other hand are surprisingly delicate, prepared only in a beef stock with soy and garlic, but the end product surprisingly refined. When I compliment the staff as to how interesting and tasty the food is, the owner leads me to the front of the kiosk, pointing my attention to their sign, which features a picture of the owner with Anthony Bourdain, who had eaten there at some point. Well then!

Further toward the waterfront, there are more food kiosks with appealing dishes and colourful presentations, including shredded pork and vegetable buns, stewed squid strips, deep-fried shrimp and what look like insects, buckets of batter-encased deep-fried crab, grilled corn on the cob, pork balls, and juice. I am normally an eager consumer of fresh juices, but only in the tropics, where the temperatures are high and the cost of such indulgences relatively low. But NT$50 for a large passion fruit ice? Even buying a sugared tropical fruit drink of that size would be more expensive in the store, and this tastes like fresh juice — incredible!

Most of the stands on this side of the market cater to games for young children, which is a definite money-maker, given that parents will always want to entertain and make their young children happy. But how the children engage is quite hilarious, given that they are often only in the early stages of hand-eye coordination, although for whatever they don’t manage to achieve, the cute factor is huge.