A new tool to explore the city’s past
For Archer, riding the metro is like entering a time machine. He rides this newfangled means of transportation to explore the city’s history. When he takes his favorite Red Line (the Tamsui‡Xinyi Line) memories of the old Tamsui train line float into his mind.
Archer’s favorite walking destination on this MRT-enabled trip is to Alley 41 of Fushun Street. Seen from this vantage point, the moment when a metro train bursts out from the underground tunnel is like a scene from the Japanese cartoon Science Ninja Team Gatchaman.
Aside from the Red Line, Archer also enjoys riding the Brown Line (the Wenhu Line). From one end to the other, the line holds many attractions. At its southern terminus, travelers can visit the zoo or ride the Maokong cable car. Around the middle of the line’s route, they can see airplanes landing or taking off at Songshan Airport. And when the train passes Dahu Park, they can catch views of Moon Bridge, which is famous both in Taiwan and abroad.
Pierre Yang, too, often advises foreign visitors to take in the scenery along the Red Line toward Tamsui.
Once the Red Line passes the Minquan West Road station, it emerges from underground to a viaduct over the floodplain, offering beautiful views of the Keelung and Danshui rivers. Distant views of Mt. Guanyin and the ocean also come into sight. It’s very pleasant. If visitors have more time, Yang suggests they also ride the Brown Line, which evokes an altogether different feeling as it moves along a track among high-rise buildings.
Subway systems’ origins date back to an old British periodical. Humorously commenting on the congestion that plagued British cities, one cartoonist envisioned a tube into which people would be stuffed before a button would be pressed and they would “jump” through the street grid to their destination.
That bit of whimsy inspired people’s imaginations, and engineers turned fancy into reality, putting tracks into the air or underground. Today that image of a tube-enabled “jump” is fixed in Yang’s mind. The word is a key to his approach to the subway.
“If you say that the high-speed rail fills people with dreams, MRT spaces bring people back to reality.” There are mere minutes or tens of seconds between stations, leaving busy urban people with no time to dream. Just when you are about to go off into a daydream, the tight schedule brings you back to the present.
After waiting, passengers set off on a metro train, headed toward their destination.