Notes on the corners
of the world
At a Taipei station, the yellow-and-white bicycles are lined up beside a park, a station entrance, or an otherwise forgettable strip of sidewalk. More surprising than seeing bikes there is how rarely the next station is full when you need to return one.
In George Town, the smell of spices can arrive before the buildings or the sea, lingering in the humid air around shops that serve food through the night. Behind the stainless trays and fluorescent lights, rice, curry, tea, and flatbread are arranged less like a formal cuisine than like equipment for a working port.
The bamboo steamer opens, steam rises, and a smartphone appears before the chopsticks do. On the screen, the dumpling’s trembling skin and sudden spill of soup matter before anyone has tasted it.
After the malls close and the bars serve their last orders, fluorescent tubes still mark small pools of light along Malaysia’s roads. Under them, a Ferrari driver and a courier may end up at the same stainless-steel table, on the same hard plastic chair.
A Tainan oyster omelet looks like a fragile night-market snack: oysters, egg, starch, and sauce set over a hot griddle. Put that plate beside the 1661 siege of Fort Zeelandia, and its ingredients begin to look less like a recipe than a list of things available outside the walls.
Outside SOGO on Jalan TAR, a curry-scented queue gathers beneath a sign bearing the name Nasi Kandar Saddam. From the pavement, the counter, steaming pots, fried chicken, and the movement of each plate are all on display.
On a walk through Taipei, the next drink shop often appears before the last one has left the frame—along office roads, beside MRT exits, and on residential corners. Students carry cups past delivery riders collecting more, while each storefront seems to feed the same daily traffic.
At a Taipei street stall, the lid lifts on a row of xiaolongbao whose pleats are close enough to look uniform, but not quite identical. By the time the sauce arrives, the steam has already begun to disappear and the wrappers have changed.
At a Taiwanese breakfast shop, xiaolongbao arrive in the same bamboo baskets as soy milk and steamed buns, their wrappers puffed and bread-soft rather than thin enough to show the soup inside. They look less like delicate dim sum than something meant to be carried out the door before work.
