With my 4-10 April 2018 sojourn in Taipei (city #1 of 18 on my itinerary) over, the scores are in! Here’s my totally biased and subjective take. Scores range from 0 (worst) to 10 (best).

• Rent: 5.0. At $550, Taipei is in the middle of the pack of 18 as far as average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in the city center. Which is to say, it’s still WAY cheaper than D.C. ($2,120).
• Walkability: 5. Pros: Plenty of pedestrian crossings, with helpful countdown timers for both green and red signals. The walk signal shows an animated stick figure that walks faster as the timer counts down closer to zero seconds, which is pretty cute. Cons: Cars — and much more so the ubiquitous motor scooters — turning left or right on green give way to pedestrians in crosswalks only reluctantly. Also, downtown is too huge and spread-out to walk across.

• Dating: 3. This category is going to get me into trouble. I’ll just say that, in my totally subjective opinion, I was not impressed with the women of Taipei. Yes, of course there are many exceptions, many attractive women, in a city this large. But I’m coming from Washington, D.C., which sets a high bar (8) in this category.
• Food: 9. The only reason Taipei didn’t get a 10 is that I want to hold that score in reserve, in the unlikely event one of the other 18 (conceivably one of the other two cities in Taiwan I’m visiting) tops it for delicious and cheap food.

• Ambience: 3. Taipei has its charms, but it’s not a pretty city. I suspect high scores in this category will have to wait until the long European leg of my trip (cities 5-18).
  

  Seriously, this place could use some sunny sidewalk cafes or something (5 April 2018).

• Transit: 9. You can get all the way across the city for less than $1, and even on Sunday night there’s only a 3-minute wait between subway trains.
  

  Hurry up! If we miss this train we’ll have to wait three whole minutes for the next one! (9 April 2018).

• Health care: 8.5
• Nature: 8. See my previous post.
• Internet: 9
• Crime: 8.8. In Taipei, as in many other cities in East Asia, I feel totally safe wandering around any part of the city at any time of day or night.
• Language: 8.5. To communicate most effectively, and to learn all the fun slang and swear words, I’d need to learn Taiwanese. But for basic conversation, my Mandarin Chinese serves me very well here.
• Bikeability: 7. More on this later. While bicycling through some parts of motor scooter-dominated Taipei can be hair-raising, I did come across some designated bike lanes along city streets. And the bike trails along Taipei’s rivers are extensive enough that they’re feasible for commuting and running errands, not just for joyrides.
• Friendliness: 5. People in Taipei are typically reserved around strangers, as is the norm with the Chinese. But they are polite, and if you speak Chinese they tend to open up pretty quickly. Also, people here don’t gawk at white people the way folks in more provincial parts of China do. I definitely attract more attention here than in the States, but not to an irksome degree.
• Pollution: 5.6