Look at the compact car there compared to the huge monster cars pretty much everywhere on this island in the 2020s!
Guy
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True, but it’s a trend across much of the world also.
Yeah that red Daihatsu? would be a black Porsche Cayenne now. Street would be exactly the same, give or take a few business signs. Fuck Poke now maybe?
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I wonder if Tommy remembers the days in the 1990s when environmental activists labelled this island DIE-WAN due to Taiwan being a central hub in the trade and consumption of rhino horns?
This moment in the 1990s—specifically 1992-1993—is well before my days here, but Han Cheung in today’s Taipei Times describes it in incredible detail. It’s a great read!
Do any forumosans remember this?
Guy
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HK too
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There was also an issue over use of tiger bones in Chinese medicine.
At one point animals certainly had no rights in Taiwan nor HK nor China
Taiwan has come some distance in rectifying a lot of no no in this field
I didn’t see it personally, but when I was a child in Taipei, I remember some people would gather around the park. I don’t know exactly what was going on, but I was told that they were doing the monkey brain thing which is they actually put a live monkey into a head grip and slowly cut his skull open so they could eat the brain. I can’t believe such cruelty actually exist, but it did apparently In Taiwan
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@tommy525, your memories
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Supposedly they ate people’s brains at one time too. Can’t imagine it was too common though ! Back in the 18th or 19th century.
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The brain feels no pain.
Apparently the cruelty was the slowly cutting open of the skull causing excruciating pain and when the top of the skull was taken off only at that point was the monkey killed with a quick stab of a chopstick into the brain
I can’t imaging the level of depravity this involves
It’s demonic
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As for the feel of the seventies for Tommy it was just pure discovery followed by all that brilliance and excitement that was the 80s running full speed into the 90s which was itself an 80s redo, capping it all off by the hushed breath arrival of the year 2000 ….the turn of the century ….no the turn into the 3rd millennium! Tommy started 2000 in the USA.
Eating monkey this cruel way was, according to a former friend, still present in Southern China 15 years ago. He claimed he had seen it eaten in Guangzhou in the late 90’s
Edit: Yes, I am getting old… late 90’s is of course 25+ years ago, even I feel it was yesterday 
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I like this sort of thing. Very nostalgic. I’ve got some similar photos saved on another computer might share them later.
Watching older movies is a great source of nostalgia, too. Eat Drink Man Woman and Rebels of the Neon God I’ve watched recently. Gives me a good yearning to go back. Even though the latter is a bit of a bleak portrayal of Taipei it still gives me a good dose of nostalgia because it carries that aesthetic I associate with it.
And now I’ve got the theme in my head.
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Hahaha it’s an early Tsai film. Of course it’s bleak! As an antidote, I recommend throwing in some later—and also brilliant—Tsai films including perhaps his ode to an old-school movie theatre in Yonghe on the last (of course rainy) evening of its operation: Goodbye, Dragon Inn. What a film! 
Guy
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Peak Afterspivak
Your ‘Auteur’ film critics newsletter must be bursting with subscribers. Don’t worry we’ll make an AI version of you that can keep it up for the next 300 years no matter what happens.
P.S. I think I caught a part of that film on TV once. Since Taiwanese tv doesn’t tend to show decent old films that was an achievement.
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I arrived in the new millenium, just, so I pretty much missed the brief window when Taiwan was bursting out on the music and film scene. Literally if I’d arrived a few years before it would have been a much different experience. Everything seemed to get sucked into orbit around China from about 2000-2010 as the giant woke up and Taiwanese and foreigners flocked to it to invest and to make easy money, including directors and musicians in Taiwan. That decade was fruitful for some but actually really difficult for many people in Taiwan to navigate.
I miss loud boisterous Taiwanese, as rough and ready and annoying as it often was. The smartphone was the final nail in the coffin of human communication skills.
There are things I don’t miss at all, like the time I took 18 hours or more on a bus from Kenting to Taipei. Or the taxi drivers who would try to pressgang you into their car if they saw you standing at a bus stop. Ah I do miss fighting with the Taoyuan station taxi drivers though. 
The head in the smartphone, earbuds in ear, mask on face, enables a curated experience of the public space now. You get convenience and comfort but you miss…something.
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I remember watching this on a videotape that got passed around back in the day called “Faces of Death”.