Taiwan gets naturally has typhoons and earthquakes. It also gets two great gifts from China. One is dust storms that blow across China and over the water to Taiwan. But the biggest chinese gift is plagues.
Yep it's the front line for all the newest chinese plagues, SARS, bird flu, etc. While I'm not one to really pay any attention to them, I do think of bird flu whenever i see pet birds. A lot of shops will have birds in cages in the front, some which even talk.
Also as pictured above quite a few stores will have nests that birds made. I guess it's nice as you can be serenaded as you are walking down the street. But also you sometimes have to duck quickly as a bird comes buzzing over your head.
The surprising this is because during bird flu time everybody was terrified of any birds. there were signs everywhere of "no birds allowed" even on the buses. Which was odd because i have never seen anybody get on a bus with a bird. But it was pandemonium, people were calling for the execution of any pet bird some stranger had.
It made me wish for the good old days of SARS. I wasn't here at that time, but from what I hear from people who were, Taipei was like a paradise. Every Taiwanese person was too scared to go outside, and people didn't go to work, so foreigners had free run of the city. It was very quiet and peaceful with no traffic and no lines.
Now I'm not saying that I'd like there to be another plague which causes mass hysteria, thus clearing the city like a ghost town. But I'm also not not saying that.
