Downtown Taichung City. It is early evening and a bellman stands outside my hotel, wearing his uniform like a peacock. It’s the kind of uniform you find only at hotels that haven’t been updated since the 1970s: classic red and blue bordered with gold trim. But it has nothing on the colourful lights that flash along the high apartment buildings that ring the hotel’s forecourt. Psychedelic patterns and fluorescent flowers blossom across façades, the buildings branded with parvenu names like ‘New York New York’ and ‘Rich 19’. They pulse in time with the invisible beat of the city, a heart that pumps one command through the arteries of its citizens: Go ye out and make some money. Continue →