Given that the whole world seems to be going south at the moment, we thought we might as well join them. So tomorrow, we are moving from our home in Tainan—in Taiwan’s south—to the even more southern city of Pingtung. The last few days have been a frenzy of packing boxes, booking removal companies, and tying up loose ends, while also recovering from jet-lag—having just arrived back from the UK. I’ll be sad to leave, but also I’m looking forward to the next chapter.
Why the move? We have quite a few friends and connections in Pingtung, and we’ve spent quite a bit of time in the city over the previous few years. We like the feel of the place—we love the small bookshops (we’re particular fans of Yong Sheng No. 5 永勝5號 in the Shengli New Village Victory Star V.I.P. Zone) and the coffee shops (there’s a great place where you can drink Turkish Coffee just down the road from Yong Sheng No. 5). And the relaxed pace of life in Pingtung makes it the ideal place for writing and doing philosophy.
Towards the end of last year, I was down in Pingtung county just outside the town of Chaozhou, attending Kacalisiyan / the Arts Festival on the Slope / 斜坡上的藝術節. It was a glorious couple of days. On the first evening, I was sitting in a field, as the brilliant Taiwanese indigenous singer Sauljaljui (who combines Hengchun-style traditional Taiwanese music with Paiwan indigenous traditions and contemporary pop) was cooking up a storm on stage. “I am proud to be indigenous!” she told the crowd. “I am proud to be from Pingtung!” And the crowd went wild. It was at that moment, in this burst of warmth and enthusiasm, I thought that our nascent plan to move south was the right one.
After two and a half years here in Tainan, we’re ready for a change. So tonight we’re heading to our favourite local restaurant Ci Li Siang (七里香 — the quirky transliteration is their own) with a bunch of friends, to raise a toast to the city that has treated us so well. Then tomorrow, we’ll heading off. We have found a new home in the centre of Pingtung. And by this time tomorrow, we’ll be celebrating moving in, wondering in which of our many boxes we have put our pyjamas or our coffee grinder, and recovering from moving our stuff up five floors. It will take a few days for the chaos to subside, but when it does, we look forward to getting to know our local area. Over the coming months, I’ll be posting more often about life in Pingtung, because it’s hard to find things written in English about Taiwan’s south. If you want to see how things go for us, I’ll be tagging my Pingtung posts with the tags #Pingtung and #GoingSouth.
We’re going to keep up with our connections in Tainan, and further afield. We have some workshops coming up here in Tainan in February, as well as some events up in Taipei. And we’re cooking up some exciting projects in Pingtung city and county already. I’ll keep you all posted.
