15 Years in Bitan
Fifteen years ago this month, I purchased and moved into my current residence, aka The Water Curtain Cave. Looking back at pictures I took then, it hasn’t really changed that much. Shortly after I moved in I changed the curtains and painted it, and then bought the low-res Sharp LCD TV I use to this day. My old PC on which I edited the movie has long been dispatched in favor of a couple of iMacs, the place now features natural gas lines instead of relying on canisters, the wifi is probably faster(?), I have a washer/dryer combo so I no longer have to use the laundry room downstairs, and that’s about it. The water still gurgles through the pipes, and the shouting neighbor couple have become quieter after the elderly husband died last year. Oh, and 15 years ago I might have been mildly surprised to know that I’d be able to ask verbal questions and get answers from various devices in there.
But 15 years is significantly over twice as long as I’ve lived anywhere else (the second closest was Florida, where I went to junior high and high school, but that was only around six years), and I remain happy with it and thankful for the opportunity to live where I do. Though occasionally I wonder what it would be like to live downtown again, and am sometimes tempted by fantasies of getting a place on Dihua Street with big windows and high ceilings with wooden beams and tea cabinets that could only manifest by winning a lottery or two, nothing comes close to crossing that bridge and looking out at the mountains at whose feet I sleep every night.
The neighborhood has changed a bit over the time I’ve lived there as well. Most notably, some friends have moved away, and others have moved in. The nice shady area around the stream that feeds into Bitan is being “greenified” which apparently means cutting down all the trees there and pouring concrete all over the area. The convenience store downstairs became a pharmacy, but we now have three other convenience stores. A church moved in under the police station. Favorite cafes such as Pancho and 1974 have come and gone. Livia’s Kitchen still serves a tasty weekend brunch one can enjoy in the company of friendly dogs, and good pizza is now available at the other end of the bridge from The Shack. A new mini mall is opening at the metro station building (“Coming Soon”, it will have a grocery, a Muji, a coffee shop and 17 hot pot places), and of course we have the usual compliment of Starbucks/Louisa/KFC/Formosa Chang over there, but not on my side of the bridge. Until recently, neither Food Panda nor Uber Eats delivered here, but I think at least one of them does now. Likewise, scooter-sharing services such as Wemo and Goshare draw the line at the river, declining to serve us heathens.
But civilization is just a bridge away. I get the feeling that things have been like this for a while. Most people in Taipei see Xindian as this far-flung, hard-to-get-to wilderness, a decimated mess leftover from Taipei County days. Further out than places like Danshui or Beitou, even. And before that, it was literally the wilderness, indigenous territory not to be ventured into. Now it’s a 20-minute trip on the subway to Xindian from Taipei Main Station. But it’s hard to change people’s minds.
Granted, that might not be a bad thing. “It’s very…local down there isn’t it?” one long-term expat asked me with a great show of concern around 2003 when I first moved to Xindian. He lived in Tienmu and only spoke basic Mandarin after living in Taiwan longer than I’d been alive at that point. I didn’t know how to answer him, but I did realize it’s probably far better for everyone concerned if expats of that sort just stay in Tianmu, so I nodded.