A Day in Taipei with poet James Navé

Welcome to provocative conversations from Twice 5 Miles Radio. I’m your host, James Navé. In this episode, I record on location in Taipei, Taiwan, tracing a single day as it unfolds—from morning rain and quiet memorial grounds to crowded streets, shared meals, and a luminous night market. What emerges is a listening-based travelogue: part reportage, part reflection, part improvisation. The episode moves through the scale and symbolism of the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial, galleries dedicated to art, democracy, and human rights, and parks where qigong, tai chi, birds, and water slow the pace of the day. Along the way, ordinary moments take on meaning: standing in line for noodles, watching a heron fish, noticing alleyways, scooters, fabric, sound, and gesture. As evening arrives, the city gathers in the night market—dense, bright, kinetic—before the day closes in a quiet listening room and a hotel window overlooking the turn from 2025 to 2026. Throughout the episode, questions surface about disruption and order, impermanence and continuity, attention and belonging. This is not a guidebook or a debate. It’s an invitation to listen closely—to place, to movement, and to the way meaning forms when we slow down enough to notice what’s already there.