Confession of a Taipei Dweller
This semester I take Professor Kate’s course called “Postmodern City Texts: Toronto, Montreal and Taipei”. The naming of the course simply suggests that Professor Kate is familiar with the three places where she had been living for a long time respectively. Literally speaking, this course deals with the comparison and contrast among the three cities: two in Canada and our hometown Taipei. However, the definition of postmodernism can be abstruse and ambiguous when it comes to the concept of Deconstruction. Therefore, in the beginning I was diffident about my understanding of the course and hesitant of whether to take it. It was not until I started immersing in the text and the film assigned per week that I came to realize postmodernism is not an intangible idea nor a specific time and space, but the embodiment of how we live in our modern life.
Living in Taipei city for twenty years, I found that I used to take every urban feature for granted, from the fast-paced lifestyle in general, advanced facilities like skyscrapers and mass transportation to the sense of indifference, loneliness and agitation. Moreover, I assumed that it was the milieu that assimilated me into a typical Taipei dweller that follows the fixed timetable every day throughout the year. For example, I got up every day with the disturbance of the deafening alarm clock, grabbed a bite of the breakfast and then rushed to school in a minute. On my way to school, I had to consult my watch, making sure I wouldn’t miss the MRT that comes every ten minutes. If unfortunately I didn’t make it, then I would have a cocked face, knowing that the start of one day was ruined. The same situation happened when I lost my head of my whereabouts in the street that I would immediately pick up the phone and call up my acquaintances for help. Despite the fact that our behavior and reaction are mostly determined by our own personality, sometimes the environment seems to be a magnifier, highlighting our flaws and problems and making them under spotlight in the public.
I had felt suffocated living in this concrete jungle until the course taught me to be a bystander about the surroundings. It began with the introduction to Montreal, a city composed of various expatriates that lead to cultural clashes and contradictory self-identification. I wonder if it is this complicated historical and social backgrounds that often makes us overlook the existence of Canada, because I recall we didn’t study the Canadian history or literature in the past. Nevertheless, after gaining gradual knowledge about Canadian culture, I am amazed to see that the overwhelming anxiety of the Montreal citizens actually strikes a chord with me. Take the recent movie we have seen, which is called NO for an example. The main character Sophie is an actress whose role in the play as a mistress turns out to be a mirror of her chaotic life in the reality when she has to deal with abortion, disconnection to her boyfriend, a relentless courtship by her colleague and a love affair with a married man simultaneously. Her frantic expression and conduct form a sharp contrast with her Japanese friend Hanako who possesses an air of placidity albeit the miserable suffering from blindness due to the atomic bomb. I think from Sophie to Hanako, the director Robert LePage tries to presents the human reaction from resistance to toleration in the face of pressure.
This kind of thinking influences me to view at my hometown from a different angle. By taking slower pace ambling along the street, doing the window shopping and even observing the passersby with curiosity, I found myself bumping into many anecdotes from time to time. Once I went back home and found out I didn’t bring my key, so I walked to the alley, waiting for my dad on tiptoe. In order to distract my nervousness, I started observing the little girl standing next to me with my hands interlaced. Suddenly, I spotted her imitating my gesture and pretending to look at the other side. At the verge of bursting into laughter, I walked away from her with much ease and decided to take an aimless walk before my dad came back. Thinking back then, if I was still in a fury, I would pay attention to nothing but my own feeling and miss the hilarious scene as well as the opportunity to cool myself down. Since our perception is dominated by our emotions, it also struck me that I might have the wrong accusation of Taipei that brings me stress and exhaustion because I simply put too much emphasis on my own business. Therefore, right now I am trying to wipe away my former bias against this city and turn over a new leaf to experience it wholeheartedly thanks to the enlightenment of the course and my own consciousness.

1樓
1樓搶頭香
dear Sophia,
I'm a walkingholic. I love to walk so that I can explode the city more. Most
of my friends do not like Taipei, I, though, am not from Taipei, still find
Taipei adorable. It also took me a while to like XinZhuang, I was troubled
by the surrounding of our campus, the traffic ourside was a mess. However,
I found the gym at the other side of school, is a very comfortable place to
relax. Nothing is absolutly unpleasant, it's how you look at it.
Carrie
2樓
2樓頸推
大家好