USTDC

Photo of USTDC courtesy of Les Duffin

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Recent View of the USTDC Neighborhood

One of the photos that Kent sent to me after his last Taipei trip was this one. You're looking toward the west on Min Zu East Road, and at the end of the block is Zhong Shan North Road where you would turn right to the HSA East and West Compounds.

You can see the yellow sign on the corner of the intersection that was the Caves Bookstore where you could buy very inexpensive copies of books, tapes and records. They were, of course, pirated copies in those days, not the originals. It seems to me the rule was that you could take one copy of each title with you when you returned to the States without a problem but you couldn't take, say, several copies of the same novel.

Just back this direction on the left side of the street is where the Linkou Club Annex was located when I was there, and just a little further back this way was the Linkou Hotel, a small hotel where I stayed for a few days when I first arrived at USTDC.

It's hard to tell if either of the original structures that housed the Linkou Club and Hotel are still there because of the facades, but the old Caves bookstore building is the same. There are several photos elsewhere in this blog of that building, some from back in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as more recent ones.

Just click on the photo to see it in much higher resolution.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great picture. The Linkou Hotel MAY be gone but I'll bet the rats
that were in the a/c ducting when
we arrived and stayed there in 1969
are still there.

OK, just kidding! Did anyone get to Tien Mu? Is the Tien Mu BBQ
still in operation?

Sure wouldn't know Taipei as it is
today.

Jim Sartor

Bill said...

Very good picture. One thing of interest to me is how the spelling has changed.
Can anyone explain when and why that happend. An example would be Chung Shan now spelled with a a "Z".
Anyway, this is a great blog which I enjoy weekly.
Thanks for everyone who has a hand in keeping it going.

Regards,
Bill

Don said...

Bill, I often find different spellings for street names and I confess that I have no idea why they're sometimes spelled one way and other times another way. I often call up a map of whatever neighborhood I'm writing about and use the street name as it appears on the map. In this particular case, I found that spelling on maps.google.com. Interestingly enough, I used "Jhongshan North Road" to find it, but the map showed it with a "Z" in the name. I know I've spelled it at least a couple of other ways in this blog over the years.