Off The Rails: Ho Shan Pi Vestments for all tastes or none at the Wu Fen-pu fashion area.

You never know when you're going to get the urge to buy a couple of knock-off brand name polo shirts, a couple of Hello Kitty skirts, or a few t-shirts with phrases so bizarre that even James Joyce wouldn't know what to make of them. And that's why it's important to know about places like the Wu Fen pu fashion area in Taipei's eastern end. What would the late Joey Ramone have said if he knew that somewhere in Taipei city, a shirt hung emblazoned with the band's logo surrounded by the words "Rommon: Racket to Rush?" And what is a sane man supposed to make of the ladies' blue tube top with the words "Evil lacking in shiv?" These are, of course, rhetorical questions. The point is that these items not only exist, but that you, dear reader, can own them for a pittance - but only if your bargaining skills are good. While Wu fen-pu has the distinctive odors of any Southeast Asian bazaar - incense, cigarettes, and miscellaneous meats on sticks - the bargains available are of not of the capital "B" variety - after all, this is still Taiwan, subject to the laws of economics appropriate to a country where people won't starve to death if they can't make the sale.

Fashion is king at Wu Fen pu, and inside the tightly packed market are garments for all tastes, or no taste at all, in many cases. Not many people still wear garishly colored long sleeved polyester shirts with ultra-wide lapels, but somebody is still making them - this is good news if your school is planning a spring stage adaptation of Charlie's Angels. Alongside the out-of-fashions are stores selling the latest fashions, including the pricey items from Japan and Korea that are likely to become all the rage over here for a few months before fading away. If the number of stores selling American bowling shirts, mechanic outfits, and other items of clothing that look like they were copied from originals stolen from the set of Laverne & Shirley are anything to go by, the fabulous fifties are making a comeback. Also available at Wu Fen-pu are traditional Asian costumes, custom made Chinese dresses, and other treasures of the Orient that, while exquisite, will set you back 3-5 times what they would in the markets of Bangkok or Vientiane. But then again, neither of those places are a subway ride away.

While I'd imagined that Wu Fen-pu would be a great place to stock up on that holy grail of Asian gift items, the humorously worded t-shirt, I didn't see as many there as I would have liked. Once my take-home gift of choice, these seem to be getting more difficult to find, and I fear that English teachers throughout the island may be doing their jobs a little too well. Perhaps that gift was becoming passé; nonetheless, I didn't come away empty handed. Next time I head back to the states, one of my friends will be the lucky recipient of a yellow t-shirt with a string of Chinese characters that advertises the services of a Taiwanese fantasy-phone chat line. To the Sino-linguistically challenged, they might as well spell out a well-known Confucian saying. At least, that's what I'll tell them it says.

Wu Fen-pu is just a few blocks North West of the Ho Shan-pi station, and is marked in English on the in-station map as "Wu Fen-pu fashion area

Written by Joshua Samuel Brown, Off The Rails is run weekly in the China Post, Copyright 2002