New Taipei City so happy

"New Taipei City so happy" is printed on the banner.

It is amusing in what way English is used here in Taiwan in advertisements. Well, they get the message across somehow. Although Taipei, being dominated by the ethnic Chinese here in Northern Taiwan is still a gray, depressing area of concrete almost without green and with hardly any sidewalks, the city has surely improved since 2004, when I arrived here.
In 2004, the space between two buildings was often used as a nice little garbage dump and in the moist environment mosquitoes could breed well and an ugly smell was penetrating the roads and buildings. Also people used their front yard or their balcony occasionally as another private garbage dump, where rotten foodstuff was sending a corpse-like smell into the air. Most of that has vanished since the SARS epidemic a while back as the city started to clean up, probably afraid of new sicknesses developing itself in the midst of the city.

It is getting better, yet there is still a lot to be done. Says the wise-ass foreigner.

The two politicians are from the pro-Chinese Kuomintang party which is said to be heavily engulfed with organized crime in Taipei, but actually the opposition is no better. Still democracy here is better than the dictatorship they have on the other side of the Taiwan strait. So I hope those two take the boxing gloves off. Can't really tidy up stuff wearing such gloves.