Seven years ago I would have told you that Taiwan has two major cities, Taipei in the north and Kaohsiung in the south. Since then another city has been coming into it's own, Taichung, which is located in the center of the country. It has always been a large city, but not as modern as those other two cities. This has changed a lot in the past few years. It's become much more modern with some areas rivaling Taipei.
It's definitely a nice place, a big city that still has the feel of a small town. I would actually love to live there but with no subway and poor bus service it's a place you need a vehicle. All this means parking is a pain. And say what you will about Taipei (or perhaps some of my own complaints) the public transportation in Taipei has made me long forget the days of having a car and motorcycle.
A more interesting thing about Taichung is that most of my close friends are from Taichung. I've believe I've said it here before that in Taiwan, family is the first, second, and third most important thing to people. And friends are people that you usually meet once a month to have tea time with and chat. This is mainly because people live at home with their family until, and sometimes even after they are married. However people who are from Taichung, usually come to Taipei for college and for jobs, and don't have the luxury of living with their family to take care of them. This usually makes them much more independent and mature than others their age. They also see the need for strong friendships with people they can rely on. I think for both these reasons I seem to be drawn more to people from Taichung.
It's not all rosy though, Apple seems to be running a smear campaign against Taichung. For some reason the weather for Taichung always has the city as night time, well into the morning. As you can see above the time is 9:18am, but it still has Taichung as being dark outside, while it has every other city in Taiwan as the sun being up. I can tell you form first hand experience that Taichung isn't in some other dimension where it's perpetually night. But for some reason even after 10am sometimes, the weather app still shows Taichung as night time. I wonder what Taichung did to piss of Apple.
