# East Asia Trip 2026

- A [[trip]].
- [[San Francisco]] -> [[Taipei]] -> [[Shanghai]] -> [[Zürich]].
- Part of my [[vacation 2026]] following work in [[Sunnyvale]].
- Explores [[flânerie]], [[trains]], [[digital commons]], [[vTaiwan]], [[Buddhism]], and [[protopia]].

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## 🗺️ Routing & Concept: The Round-The-World Loop

* **Leg 1: Transpacific (Date-Line Crossing)**
  * **SFO → TPE (Taipei Taoyuan)**: Late Thursday night flight (EVA Air, Starlux, China Airlines, or United). 
  * Crosses the International Date Line (+1 day), arriving early **Saturday morning**.
* **Leg 2: The City-Center Shuttle**
  * **TSA (Taipei Songshan) → SHA (Shanghai Hongqiao)**: Downtown-to-downtown route on EVA Air or China Eastern. Avoids suburban highway transfers and integrates directly with Taipei MRT and Shanghai Metro Lines 2/10.
* **Leg 3: Trans-Eurasian Return**
  * **PVG (Shanghai Pudong) → ZRH (Zürich)**: Direct non-stop flight on SWISS (LX189), completing the RTW circle back to Switzerland.

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## 🇹🇼 Part 1: Taipei & Northern Taiwan

### 🚶 Neighborhood Flânerie
* **Dadaocheng & Dihua Street (大稻埕)**:
  * Taipei's historic trade heart along the Tamsui River.
  * Preserved 1920s baroque shophouses, traditional herbal apothecaries, Taiwanese oolong and baozhong tea merchants, and independent zines/bookshops.
* **Zhongshan & Chifeng Street (赤峰街)**:
  * Former neighborhood of blacksmiths and auto mechanics, now a low-rise, car-free maze of indie cafes, risograph printing studios, and design collectives.
* **Daan & Yongkang Street**:
  * Quiet leafy alleys adjacent to Daan Forest Park; excellent vegetarian tea houses, antique alleys, and relaxed street walking.
* **Huashan 1914 & Songshan Cultural Creative Parks**:
  * Japanese-era industrial sake and tobacco factories successfully reclaimed as open civic parks, creative commons, outdoor exhibitions, and indie cinema.

### 🧘 Contemplation, Modern Buddhism & Tea
* **Water-Moon Monastery / Dharma Drum Mountain Nongchan Temple (法鼓山農禪寺)**:
  * Located in Beitou (MRT Red Line to Qiyan Station).
  * Designed by architect Kris Yao following the late Chan Master Sheng Yen's vision of "flowers in the air, moon in the water." Minimalist off-form architectural concrete reflected on a lotus pond, with the Heart Sutra etched into screen walls creating shifting light projections. A profound space for silent sitting and walking meditation.
* **Wistaria Tea House (紫藤廬)**:
  * Located in Daan near National Taiwan University.
  * A 1920s Japanese wooden residence that served as an underground salon for political dissidents and liberal intellectuals during Taiwan's martial law era. Outstanding gongfu tea in quiet tatami courtyards filled with wisteria vines.
* **Longshan Temple (龍山寺)**:
  * Located in Manka (Wanhua), Taipei's oldest district.
  * Multi-faith sanctuary blending Buddhist, Taoist, and Mazu worship; atmospheric incense coils and living folk devotion.

### 🌐 Civic Tech & Digital Commons
* **The [[vTaiwan]] & [[g0v]] Ecosystem**:
  * Taiwan is the world's leading laboratory for digital democracy, liquid consensus, and open civic hacking.
  * Keep an eye out for open hack nights or civic meetups hosted by g0v (gov-zero) contributors or Open Culture Foundation spaces in Taipei.

### 🚆 Transit & Exploring Outside Taipei
* **Taipei Metro (MRT) & YouBike 2.0**:
  * Pick up an EasyCard (悠遊卡) or iPASS at any metro station or convenience store. Tap-to-ride buses, trains, and dockless public bikes across the city.
* **Visiting Outside Taipei**:
  * **Western Corridor (High-Speed Rail / THSR)**: Zooms at 300 km/h from Taipei/Banqiao down through Hsinchu, Taichung, Chiayi, Tainan, and Kaohsiung.
  * **Northern & Eastern Regional Rail (TRA)**: Scenic local and express trains connecting Taipei to Tamsui, Keelung, Ruifang/Jiufen, Pingxi valley, and Yilan/Hualien along the Pacific coast.

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## 🇨🇳 Part 2: Shanghai (The Mega-Scale Flâneur)

### 🚶 Urban Walks & Public Commons
* **Former French Concession (FFC)**:
  * Dense, pedestrian canopy created by mature London plane trees.
  * Ideal walking axis: Wukang Road (historic villas, Ferguson Lane) → Hunan Road → Fuxing Middle Road → Sinan Mansions. Quiet residential scale tucked right behind the city center.
* **Suzhou Creek Promenade (苏州河)**:
  * Miles of continuous, car-free greenway along the revitalized industrial riverbanks, featuring adaptive reuse of 1930s textile warehouses, pedestrian bridges, and M50 contemporary art park.
* **West Bund Cultural Corridor (西岸)**:
  * Repurposed industrial aviation and oil tank wharves along the Huangpu River, now home to Long Museum, West Bund Museum (Centre Pompidou partner), and open waterfront plazas.

### 🧘 Contemplation & Vegetarian Cuisine
* **Longhua Temple (龙华寺)**:
  * Shanghai's oldest Buddhist monastery (founded ~242 AD). Famous for its pagoda, active monastic chanting, and its renowned public vegetarian canteen serving fresh seasonal wild mushroom and bamboo noodle bowls.
* **Jing'an Temple (静安寺)**:
  * A soaring golden Buddhist temple positioned in surreal contrast right amidst modern glass skyscrapers and busy Metro lines 2/7/14.
* **Gongdelin (功德林)**:
  * Century-old vegetarian dining institution (founded 1922 near West Nanjing Road) pioneering traditional Buddhist mock meats and mushroom delicacies.

### 🚄 Transit & Return Leg
* **Shanghai Metro**: The world's largest rapid transit network (over 800 km and 500 stations). Lines 2 and 10 link Hongqiao directly across the city center to Pudong.
* **Shanghai Maglev Train (SMT)**: Connects Longyang Road Station to Pudong International Airport (PVG). Runs up to 300–430 km/h, covering 30 km in 7–8 minutes—the ideal farewell transit experience before boarding the SWISS direct flight to Zürich.

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## 📋 Practical Preparation Checklist

1. **Visas & Entry**:
   * **Taiwan**: 90 days visa-free for both Swiss and Argentine passports. Complete the quick online Taiwan Arrival Card 1–3 days prior to departure.
   * **Mainland China**: 30 days visa-free for Swiss and Argentine ordinary passports (extended through late 2026).
2. **Corporate Hardware & Network Policy (Important)**:
   * Google maintains strict corporate security protocols for hardware entering Mainland China. Standard corporate laptops and corp-managed devices typically cannot enter without special travel loaner procedures.
   * Since Sunnyvale occurs immediately before Taiwan/Shanghai, arrange in advance to leave your corporate machine in Sunnyvale (e.g., in a secure office locker or with a teammate) before flying to East Asia.
3. **Firewall & Connectivity**:
   * Local Chinese Wi-Fi networks block Google services, Matrix, Mastodon, Signal, WhatsApp, GitHub, and Wikipedia.
   * **Best Solution**: Use an international roaming eSIM (or Swiss carrier roaming data). Roaming traffic routes through international gateway hubs outside Mainland China, bypassing the Great Firewall automatically without local VPN configurations.
4. **Digital Payments in Shanghai**:
   * Download and set up **Alipay** and **WeChat** before departure. Link an international Visa/Mastercard (e.g. Revolut or Swiss card) and complete identity verification. Alipay includes built-in mini-apps for the Shanghai Metro QR code and Didi ride-hailing.