It’s not often that we see contrasts in Taipei, but in the walk on Saturday, we came across this sharp contrast: traditional setting in the front, modernity rearing its head behind!

In the foreground, there’s a large pond filled with bullfrogs. In the middleground, a family house that’s been there for years – who knows? There are other even older settlements now abandoned in the area, including redbrick farm houses in the traditional Taiwanese style. In the background, three towers from the Shang-Hai Community that was just completed, which is selling for approx. NT$300K per ping. If I remember rightly, this is probably what the farmhouse would have cost when it was first built in the ’70s.

Tamsui was, in the words of one friend, just rice fields, trees and farmers when Tim first visited our area in the early ’80s. Since then it’s been transformed at least twice, with electronics factories; and now, residential units. I’m in the search for early photographs of HongShulin and Zhuwei from that period. There’s not much online yet.