It was raining when I arrived in Taipei last Monday. It rained all the next day and the next. It never stopped all week. Sometimes it came down in a steady drizzle, sometimes in big droplets, but mostly in sheets. It continued raining until I left on Friday. For all I know it still is.
People seemed not to be too concerned. Everyone has umbrellas, the new rapid transit lines are working well and taxis are cheap and plentiful. The rain scours away the crimson stains of the mildly narcotic betel nut which workers chew mixed with ash, herbs and sorghum liquor, and spit out on the roadway.
The taxi-drivers say the betel nut helps keep them awake. They also love the rain as it is good for business, and they keep out-of-town passengers happy by assuring them every day that it will stop raining mingtian. That's Chinese for manana.
Everywhere in this sprawling city of nearly three million is at least a 20-minute taxi ride from everywhere else, and finding an address in the Taiwan capital can be a nightmare for the uninitiated.
Roads are divided into north, south, east and west, and subdivided into sections, and intersected with lanes which in turn are crossed by alleyways. You might find yourself looking for an address like No 9, Alley 5, Lane 16, Nanking E Road, Section 3, Sungshan District.
A low-rise glass and concrete city surrounded by spectacular hill scenery (when you can see it through the low clouds), Taipei is not known for its architectural grandeur. They say that when the defeated Nationalists (Kuomintang) came from the mainland in 1949, they were so confident of returning that they built no permanent structures.
But there are some real treasures in Taipei. The National Palace Museum is a must. It ranks as one of the best four museums in the world, after the Louvre, the British Museum and the New York Metropolitan Museum of the Arts. It contains the world's finest collection of Chinese artefacts, brought to Taiwan in 17,000 crates by the Nationalists in 1949.
For a more colourful aspect of Taiwanese life, no one should miss Snake Alley. In the rain, it is like a scene from Blade Runner. It is a lively late-night market where snake-handlers display writhing cobras for the tourists and skin live snakes for the locals, and where stallholders sell snake-penis pills and gall-bladder powder for those into that sort of thing.
In the lanes nearby, Taipei's karaoke bars and massage parlours cater for those into the other sort of thing, along with the city's 168 registered brothels.
Taipei's mayor in the mid 1990s, Mr Chen Shui-bian, who is running for president as the candidate for the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party, tried to stamp out prostitution, but the resulting outcry from call girls, taxi-drivers, gangsters and customers was so great he had to back down.
Mr Chen, the first nonKuomintang city boss in 50 years and a native Taiwanese, began changing Taipei street names to get rid of the authoritarian past, symbolised by words recalling places in mainland China or Nationalist heroes.
He started with Chieh-shou Road, which alluded to the former Nationalist dictator, Chiang Kaishek, replacing it with the name "Kaitegalan", after the earliest inhabitants of Taipei. The Taiwanisation of the streets makes it very difficult to get around with a guidebook more than four years old. (Any offers for my 1994 Lonely Planet?) Coming to terms with the past has also produced a new national day which is not in the guidebook either. Today is a public holiday in Taipei to honour the victims of the 2-28 incident of 1947, so-called because on February 28th that year Nationalist troops killed between 10,000 and 30,000 Taiwanese protesting against their brutal occupation.
The massacre was a forbidden topic until the lifting of martial law in 1987. Chiang Kaishek is still honoured in city monuments, but more as the founder of modern Taiwan than as a beacon for the vibrant democracy which the island of 22 million people has become.
Campaigning for Taiwan's second democratic presidential election on March 18th is in full swing, and the three candidates, Chen Shui-bian, Lien Chan of the Kuomintang, and independent James Soong, hold raucous rallies (though the disbanding last month of the Weichuan Dragons, the country's top baseball team, over allegations of game-fixing, has generated more passion on the streets). The city is today festooned with political colours and thousands of (sodden) pennants. Mr Chen's party even has a catalogue promoting woollen hats, ties, jackets, vests, T-shirts, oven gloves, key rings, mugs, stationery, shopping bags and refrigerator magnets.
Best buys in my opinion are the umbrella, the mobile-phone water guard and the plastic zip-up raincoat with hood, the perfect ensemble for canvassing votes in Taipei's perpetual downpour.