Traffic and cockroaches — no, my first impression of Tainan, Taiwan was not positive. But, the city did grow on me a little while I was there, from 10-17 April 2018. Here’s what I liked:

Practically right across the street from my hotel, there’s this cool little movie theater. It shows mostly Hollywood blockbusters, but instead of displaying printed movie posters outside, it has an artist who paints gorgeous paintings based on the movie posters. I actually saw him outside one day working on his latest creation.

By now, my readers will know I’m a fan of bike paths. Tainan has a decently long network of them, although they’re unfortunately too far away from downtown to be practical for commuting or running errands. They are quite scenic, though.

Shueipingwun Park (水萍塭公園) is my favorite urban park in Taiwan so far. Unlike city parks in mainland China, which are often too perfectly manicured, with roped-off lawns that no one is allowed to tread on, in Taiwan people (specifically, elderly people) really do use and enjoy their public parks. Yes, there are plenty of bald spots in the grass at Shueipingwun, but that’s because old men and women are doing tai chi or qigong, playing Chinese chess or card games, lightly using the exercise equipment, walking their dogs, or just sitting on benches and chatting with their neighbors when they walk by.

Walking past Chihkan Towers (aka Fort Provintia; 赤崁樓) the evening of Friday the 13th of April, 2018, on my way back to my hotel from a side trip to a different city, Taichung, I heard someone singing “Hotel California” with pretty good pitch and tone but pretty awful pronunciation. Chihkan Towers, the site of the 17th-century Dutch colonial administration in Taiwan and of many subsequent shrines, temples, and museums, charges admission (NT$50 [US$1.70]). As a general rule (but one that I’ve already flaunted multiple times), I don’t visit museums or other touristy sites on this trip that I have to pay for. I’m scoping out potential new homes, not sightseeing, after all. And I was tired from my train trip and planned to make it an early night. But it was such a pleasant, cool night, and it was so nice to hear live music — the singer was part of a four-person band playing there on the grounds — that I dropped off my things at my hotel, went right back out, paid the admission fee, and just enjoyed listening to the music (which by now was a Chinese rock song) for a bit.

And, since I’d shelled out my hard-earned $1.70 for the privilege of entering the compound, I figured I’d explore the Chihkan Towers. Unfortunately, like all of the Dutch sites in Taiwan, centuries of earthquakes, typhoons, erosion, humidity, warfare, construction, and urbanization have left nothing behind of the original 17th-century Dutch structures except the foundations.

There’s a famous statue on the grounds depicting the Dutch surrendering the colony to the Chinese pirate Coxinga in 1662. The night before, I ate (part of my) dinner at this little hole-in-the-wall noodle place run by the cutest little old lady who, on discovering I spoke passable Chinese, sat down and told me pretty much the entire history of Tainan in a kind of scattered, stream-of-consciousness manner. She said that she’d spoken with the security guard at the Coxinga Shrine in Tainan and he told her that the statue, which depicts a Western-looking person bowing submissively to Coxinga, is historically inaccurate. Apparently the Dutch themselves were already long gone when Coxinga’s men overran the Dutch fortification here, and the people who negotiated the Dutch withdrawal were actually Malays from the larger Dutch East India Company colony at Batavia (modern-day Jakarta) on the island of Java.

The noodle restaurant lady also admonished me to “drink lots of water.” That’s always good advice when you’re eating greasy, salty, delicious Chinese food all day.