6/26/2024: Taiwan is Amazing
I haven’t updated here for a while. I am having such a good time in Taipei that I almost forgot my blog ;-). It was great to be home and I feel so at ease here. Taiwan is a big boomtown right now. Stock markets and real estate prices are at all time high thanks to its semiconductor and hardware industry. Apparently, people in Taiwan are able to buy American stocks directly through some local brokerage integration. The big tech stocks are so popular here that even my parents own Apple and Google stocks. I found that very interesting and another good anecdote of why big tech stocks dominate.
Everywhere there are people mountain people sea. There are many families like ours visiting Taiwan during the summer. We went to Din Tai Fung in a less crowded location and two of our neighboring tables spoke American English!! One thing I do notice is there are less mainland Chinese business people in the hotel we stay this time. When we visited in 2018, there were a good number of mainland Chinese business people that I was made aware of their presence. They were everywhere in the hotel lobby, lounge and elevators. Last year, I still saw a few. But this time, I saw more Americans and Japanese than mainland Chinese. I wonder why.
The food is still amazing here but quality has declined from last year and doesn’t compare to the good old times of 2018 due to inflation, shrinkflation and labor shortage. But it was such a bargain coming from Silicon Valley. My family of four enjoyed a feast at Din Tai Fung for a whopping ~$99 USD. $99USD is barely enough for 4 doordash delivered sweetgreen salads back in Silicon Valley. We had an amazing culinary experience with impeccable service from the former while basically eating grass from a paper container from the latter.
I am back in China this summer. China- Taiwan tensions are getting worse. Many people are talking about possible war in near future, though I don’t think it is likely a real war. It is sad to see how economy revert back to a more closed system.