You do not have to be a clairvoyant to have foreseen, five years ago, that the completion of the first phase of Taipei's rapid transport system would lead to the growth of the small towns at its stations. Nowhere has it been as fast as at a former fishing village on the estuary of the Danshui (sweet water) River, on which Taipei stands. Taipei's citizens have always gone to Danshui, but whereas before it took an hour or more by road, today it is just 35 minutes by train from Taipei's main station. At weekends you are lucky to get a seat. Once there, people saunter about in holiday mode, shopkeepers seek to lure them with a festiveness effortlessly veering into commercialism and everyone keeps an eye on the weather, liable to produce a downpour at a moment's notice. Horses paw the ground in the damp heat, queues line up for ferries crossing the river or down to the newly developed Fisherman's Wharf, and long-legged wading birds survey the mud-flats for scurrying crabs at low tide. But things are changing. Walk along the riverbank away from the station in the direction of the sea and, the further you go, the more up-market things become. In place of the rough-and-ready seafood stalls, and teenagers selling inflatable hammers, you now find elegant air-conditioned restaurants with waiters in French aprons. And at Fisherman's Wharf it is all replicated - more restaurants with teeming fish tanks, more coffee shops serving low-fat cheesecake and more shops selling sun hats. The core attractions of Danshui, however, remain what they always were - the view of the graceful slopes of Kuanyinshan on the opposite bank, the slow certainty of the tidal river's rise and fall, the sunsets and the simple pleasure of going to a place where life is still lived as it used to be. In Danshui, Taipei's denizens are noticeably open to being awed. They saunter about with big smiles, the young giggling together, their elders arm-in-arm and with an eye for a bargain. On nearby Sharlun beach, they watch the mussel-gatherers, fly a kite, take the ferry to Pali, or hire a bicycle and pedal away into a sub-industrial zone at the land's end, determined to enjoy themselves come what may. After dark, though, any doubts are quickly resolved. The river's surface shines a glistening ebony, reflecting the lights on the opposite bank, and - if you are lucky - the moon. Seawards, the sunset lingers, purple and crimson. Something magical descends, and the week's work is, in small measure, rewarded. Danshui is innocent, more than a little kitsch and charming, almost in spite of itself. For all the recent changes, it remains eminently Taiwanese.
