recently, in some of my classes we have been discussing tourism. more specifically tourism to taiwan. in taipei the tourism offices are not very visible if they exist at all. not like in tokyo or seoul where they are very visible. i think tourists from the west to taiwan are a very small number. mainly because if someone is going to travel half around the world i think they are more likely to go to china, japan or korea. as these places have palaces and histoical sites that taiwan lacks.

i think taiwan may have more of an appeal within asia. i know japanese tourists come here as the goods are cheaper and it is close and they can get good chinese food. one of my students told me people from hk often come here for books. this surprsied me. are there no book stores in hk? apparently there are more book publishers in taiwan than in hk, and the book stores here are more comfortable and larger.

one of my students told me that about 6 years ago, one of his roomates had some friends visit from hk. he asked them what do you want to do? and the first thing they said was that they wanted to go to eslite bookstore. i was surprised, as was my student. how did they know about that place? back then the main bookstore wasn't even open 24 hours like it is now. apparently you can hear people speaking cantonese in that book store quite frequently. it also is a gay crusing spot, though i've never seen any of that. peter has told me about conversations he has heard there that were rather explicit. of course when i go into a bookstore or cd shop i tend to become oblivious to other people.