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.