One day, about a year and half ago when I first arrived in Taiwan with the intention of settling here, I was walking through the Taipei neighborhood I would eventually call home with a person who would eventually become one of my best friends here. He wasn’t impressed.
“Aren’t these buildings hideous?” he remarked. We were traipsing past an especially rundown housing block, its concrete periphery rust-stained, its tile front gleaming, but hued unflatteringly nonetheless.
He explained how the KMT — the Kuomintang, who during the Chinese Civil War opposed the thugs who would eventually become the Communist Party of China — did not flee to Taiwan with the intention of settling here. “They weren’t meant to be permanent, and it’s clear why.”