Danshuei 淡水

This time I had a friend who was willing to offer me to stay at his apartment in Danshuei and was very looking forward to seeing him there. He has been working for a Japanese company and knows very well about Japan, Japanese history and of course about Taiwan. He used to live in the middle of Teipei city but he moved to Danshuei because he was tired of crowds. For me, I changed big city and small city for several times and now want to live in a big city again.

We met at shopping mall of Taipei main station and had dinner with his friends. It was a quite interesting opportunity to meet somebody who had been working for the world's tallest building in Dubai in the middle of Taipei. The architecture has to move then to Katar after his task for Dubai.

We drove to Danshuei, about an hour drive from the city. He told me that he asked a agent to find a room where he can have a view of the river and the mountain. The apartment he lives now is the tallest in the city. The view from his room is excellent and from the top I was able to see everything in the city.




We talked a lot about history of Taiwan and Japan, it was quite interesting the share the ideas between us. He mentioned that the text book he used at school was almost lies and they started to look at the reality what really happened. In the Taipei city I visited 228 library, citizens were brave enough to demostrate for the truth so that they were able to build the museum and monuments. The statues of Japanese leaders during Japanese time were displayed at the national museum where the whole history of Taiwan can be learnt. I felt so glad that Taiwanese evaluate the Japanese time as it was, and happy to know that we can share the ideas about the same moment in the past. Surely the influence of Lee Teng-hui who was the first democratically elected president in Taiwan was huge. How many Japanese people still seriously wish that he could be the prime minister of Japan now.

He took me to the fisherman's wharf, where there are lots of restaurants and many people would come on weekends. It seemed that the place is really nice for young couples ;) He also took me to a bar with wonderful view from the window where we were able to see the ocean.




The most impressive taste in Danshuei was the Wantan soup at his relative's restaurant. I had wantan soup and zha jiang mian there and I have never had such the nice soup, want to imitate the taste but I know it is quite hard to do in Austria. This is the link of the restaurant.