Living in Taipei I find myself unfriendly in public, so I try to stay indoors. I’m just not too keen on doing the tango with scooters and motorcycles every time I get on the sidewalks. This is particularly so on rainy days, when the spurting sidewalk clams come out. Let me explain.
Taipei may have pedestrian rights—the politicians tell us we do, sidewalks indicate this, as do the zebra crossings and red flashing lights. But why do I feel like a traffic cone in danger of being knocked down every time I walk down the sidewalk? By now you must be picturing buses and cars running amok in a city. That’s pretty accurate. Now add to your picture 960,000 registered scooters, then motorcycles, bicycles and my grandmother’s walker. Put them all on the sidewalks. That’s right. Motorists zoom up on the sidewalks (the ramps are meant for the physically handicapped), then slow down to a clumsy dance, each with their own daring and unpredictable steps, as they shake by pedestrians.
And the sidewalk clams I speak of are not something you missed in “Alice in Wonderlandâ€. They are broken pieces of 1-foot-square tiles that add up to most sidewalks here. When scooters and motorcycles drive on the sidewalks, the tiles eventually break into smaller pieces. When it rains, water collects underneath these loose "shells". When you step on one, these shells open up and send fresh brown liquid spurting up your pants, or someone else's.
