Jonah Piston
Before arriving in Taipei, I dreaded the filthy, overcrowded streets and omnipresent stench of sewage I vividly remembered from my previous visits. But much to my surprise and delight, Taipei has vastly improved in the four years since I last came. Taipei (at the least in the districts we were shown) was for the most part acceptably clean and pungency-free, while the addition of sidewalks and daily trash collections brought endless joy to my heart. Sound economic and social infrastructures are well and good, but a city's aesthetic value is what really "ties it all in," so to speak, when it comes to being a world-class metropolis. Taipei and, for similar reasons, Kaohsiung presented themselves very well to me, and I applaud their performance.
The Taiwanese culture tour offered by Tsunah has thus brought me great joy: Joy in the knowledge that Taiwan's community at home or abroad, can conform to its logo: "Touch your heart."