By Alex Villafania
INQUIRER.net
TAIPEI, Taiwan–It is extremely crowded everyday and smells of that distinctively strong Taipei street food that is sold in some obscure corners but Guanghua in the heart of Taipei may perhaps be the best place for technology buffs and bibliophiles.
Guanghua is just one of the many shopping areas strewn all over Taipei and it is also the oldest, having been around for over 20 years. Guanghua is located in a stringy area of Taipei and is usually overcrowded due to the small streets that were just enough to fit two lanes of people. It has recently been “relocated” with the demolition of the old Guanghua bridge last year and some of the smaller shops were moved a few meters away from the old area.
In fact, the city government plans to permanently move all of the shops to a new seven-story supermall nearby. The move was said to be necessary for better crowd control and to attract more foreign tourists and buyers.
Regardless of what happens to Guanghua, its appeal is its sidewalks that are also used to display thousands of books and electronic parts. Even the pillars holding up some of the older buildings are carved out to become display boxes.
Most of the books are in Chinese but there are a few in English. The bookshops cater to mostly Chinese-speaking foreigners and according to one shopkeep their novellas are the most popular items. The other foreign books only comprise of about 10 percent of what they have but then these are also second-hand items resold to them or exchanged for another title.
On the other hand, Guanghua’s most ubiquitous items are computer parts and they are among the cheapest. There are dozens of retail outlets selling nearly every computer brand imaginable, not to mention every single component that makes up a computer. There are shelves upon shelves of the latest computer processors, motherboards, graphics cards, memory modules and computer casings. There are parts being sold for DIY experts who regularly solder non-standard components into electronic boards.
And the prices are extremely low; a regular 1 gigabyte memory module that would normally cost P4,000 in Manila’s famed electronics area of Gilmore but in Guanghua, the same item would sell no more than P3,000. Computer processors that cost P15,000 in Manila will be sold here at just a little over P10,000.
In another section of Guanghua are the laptop resellers. Prices of these products, depending on the brand and specifications, can be cheaper by as much as 20 percent. The prices here are so low that a computer builder can set up an entire computer for less than P10,000. Top that with a widescreen LCD monitor that can go for as low as P9,000.
Other electronic gadgets such as cellular phones, digital cameras and MP3 players (mostly Taiwanese-made) are also cheap. LCD TVs, even those that are in the 37″ and up range, cost around P50,000, which is almost one-third cheaper than what can be bought in Manila. All of the big-name brands are available in Guanghua.
While it is difficult to communicate with the local resellers, just point to a product and they would type the price in their calculators. Sometimes, a few will have some basic English proficiency but even they would rarely give discounts. Besides, asking for discounts may not be necessary since the prices here would already save so much.
(Editor’s note: Check out Alex Villafania’s Tales of the Nomad blog entry for a look at some of Taiwan’s tourist attractions.)
