August 11, 2005 – Observations on the Grand Formosa Regent Hotel

August 11, 2005 – Observations on the Grand Formosa Regent Hotel

I’m sitting in the lobby of the posh Grand Formosa Regent Hotel. It’s Sunday February 8th 2004, about 1000 hours. I had breakfast in my room 1038 and have left to let the maid clean the room. It’s a rest day, before the conference that I’ve been sent here to handle, is due to occur. It’s a 2-day event starting on Monday and I’m to stay till Wednesday February 11th when I wing my way back to San Francisco on the evening Evergreen Airline flight 18, departing Taipei at 1950 hours (7:20 PM).

Outside the hotel, it’s about 55 degrees Fahrenheit and there is a steady rain, which had begun last night as I arrived at Chang Kai Shek airport at around 2300h Saturday aboard EVA Flight 27. The hotel lobby is bustling with travelers and there is an excitement that I’ve experienced in other storied hotels—the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong, the St Regis in New York, the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, etc. It’s generated by the residents and guest all exuding an energy that comes from their own expectations of the wonderful time they are about to have, are having, or have just experienced. Here after all was a place where the great figures of history passed the time, politicians, celebrities, and other notable figures of the arts and letters. I’ve always marveled at the power of myth and its affect on human experience, my own included. I’ve found the effect very exhilarating.

The hotel sits on a slight hill perhaps 20 or 30 feet above street level with the lobby entrance at the top of the rise, sheltered by a Porte-cochere tall enough to amply accommodate the tour buses that regularly pick up and drop off passengers. It must have dynamite feng shui, something the layout of the hotel lobby attests to as well. The hotel entrance is accessed by a brick driveway sufficiently wide to accommodate the buses, limos and cars that constantly stream in front of the hotel and have to turn around to retreat back down the hill.

As I entered the lobby last night, the registration desk is at my right—a welcome sight as I crawled wearily out of the Mercedes 500SL that serves as the hotel limo, dispatched to CKS to pick up arriving guests for a modest $NT1950. The 15-hour flight from SFO to CKS allowed sporadic sleep at best. I had an aisle seat in a slightly upgraded section of the main cabin on the Boeing 747—same size seat with enough leg room to stretch your legs—$145.00 more than the base coach faire of $755.42—but it did not accommodate real rest. I suspect a more costly business class seat would have taken its toll after 15 hours.

Walking across the polished gleaming oyster-shell-colored marble floor I’m greeted by a pleasant male clerk, who examined my passport and swiped my American Express card as he completed my registration that would put me into one of the posh rooms on 10th floor. On the wall directly across from the registration desk was another desk of about the same dimensions. During the day it was peopled by the concierge staff as well as the bellmen who occupied the area nearest the entrance. From the lobby entrance to just beyond the long registration desk, the shiny marble reflects the tall ceiling with its hanging chandelier. Beyond the registration area a large square carpet covers the marble forming a lounge area with a brown leather couch and chairs lining the walls on either side of the carpet. In the center of the carpet sits a large speckled block marble coffee table. Beyond the carpeted lounge a bank of six elevator cars ferry guests down two floors or up fourteen floors to the top of the rectangular-shaped 5-star grand hotel.

I was soon checked in and the bellman took charge of the narrow 3- by 4-foot cardboard box containing the three signs I would use at the conference on Monday and my brown and olive folding soft-sided Monk Original Skyway 2-suit hanging bag. I was happy to be rid of the two albatrosses I had borne to and from two airports. He promised to meet me in my room and pointed me toward the 6-car elevator bank opposite the entrance about a third the length of the hotel from front to back. I shouldered my notebook PC bag—the 21st century equivalent to the briefcase—now almost obsolete, walked across the area carpet in the part of the lobby to the right of the registration desk. One of the six cars was waiting as I approached and I boarded and within a quarter of a minute I was walking toward my room.

This morning, two JAL airline pilots in full flight uniform, pulling their luggage on wheels behind them exited the hotel through automatic sliding glass doors and entered a waiting limo to take them to CKS. In front of me, a European gentleman—Italian comes to mind—attired in beige patterned sport coat, open neck sport shirt, and slacks greets an Asian couple—man and woman—speaking to them in English, suggesting they take a table in the smoking section. The olive-skinned host had a high backward sloping forehead, prominent Roman nose, and piercing eyes set in a wide prominent cheekboned face—a very commanding visage. If I were casting a novel, he would be a European industrialist entertaining the Chinese CEO of a large Taiwan-based company he was about to acquire—the CEO’s wife, being the CFO of the company, founded twenty years ago as a family venture now with a billion dollar valuation.

The lobby is teeming with guest all carrying umbrellas and/or attired in raincoats. As you enter the hotel, the registration desk is on your right. The oyster-shell-colored marble floor extends the length of the level, which traverses the lobby, the lounge where I’m sitting, flowing through and around the two banks of three elevators each and proceeding to another lounge area beyond the elevators where the marble diverges again around a large square opening in the second level ringed in by a waist high metal and glass fence. Low-slung glass-topped cocktail tables and metal and leather lounge seating hugging the waist-high fence and the opposing walls on all four sides of the opening, provide idling guest a view of the expansive restaurant below. The marble continues its journey beyond the opening into the conference room area occupying the remainder of the lobby level: the Grand Ballroom, where the conference I was attending would be held.

I had begun the day having a western-style breakfast in my hotel room, Outside my window as I ate my two-eggs over easy with hash browns, toast, and coffee, mid-morning in Taipei had provided an overcast sky and intermittent showers to color the 10th-floor view of an adjacent building to my right, the top of which was one or two floor below mine. Directly in front was a square city block of park with well-trimmed grass, the occasional cement and wood park benches sat at intervals beside the concrete sidewalks that sliced the park at diagonals forming a huge X that was visible from my vantage but not apparent at ground level. Beyond the park was the major intersection of Chungshan N Road and Nanking E Road, which even on Sunday had its share of traffic maneuvering through the red light controlling the two 3-lane thoroughfares. I had taken photos of the huge sign adorning the top of the adjacent building with my digital still camera. I had gotten shots of the park from a variety of different angles. I lack the eye and the steady hand to be a good photographer. I could probably fix the latter but I would still be short the essential element—an eye.

I had taken the elevator down to lobby level shortly after lunch. I wasn’t hungry but decided to order a glass of champagne, which I sipped for the better part of an hour at one of the cocktail tables that looked down on the restaurant below. After paying my bill I ventured to the front of the hotel where I sat in one of the leather couches in the hotel lobby between the bank of elevators to my right and the registration desk on my left.

One floor down is street level. This level contains shops on either side of a large court that contains seating for the main restaurant. The court below, which forms an expansive square, is open to the lobby level. Beyond the court the lower level ducks under the lobby level and extends about one third of the total depth of the hotel—front to back. This area beneath is an extension of the main restaurant where lunch is served buffet style. Buffets are very popular in Taiwan’s upscale hotels.

Beneath the restaurant level are two more levels containing a shopping arcade replete with all the chic stores you would find in any metropolitan city worldwide: Ralph Lauren, Mont Blanc, Godiva, Hugo Boss (opening February 2004—a sign in their shop window advises, though they had better get a move on if they are to be ready for business by March). Within the mall you are transported out of the local geography and placed in this artificial world that could physically be located anywhere in the world. There are few if any cues that suggest this is Taipei, not LA, Tokyo, London or Paris. And there is little sense of day or night save the fact that the mall is empty suggesting the first day of the week in the Christian world. It’s Sunday and the picture I take of the artificially lit mall—imagine a long brightly lit corridor with upscale storefronts staring at one another across the aisle— and it has only a couple of people wandering the long hall window shopping.

The oyster-colored marble floor, that begins as you enter the hotel, extends the length of the lobby from the entrance and beyond the rectangular carpeted lounge area where I’m now sitting on a leather couch on the side of the hotel where the registration desk is located. I’ve finished my glass of champagne and decided to continue my study of the inside of this marvelous building. The seating area is divided in two parts: the part where I’m sitting and its mirror image on the opposite side of the hotel. Between the two, a sporadic stream of guests walk to and from the two banks of three elevators to my right, each elevator taking guests down three floors or up 14 floors to the top of the hotel. I am sitting on a low-backed brown leather sofa that looks at its twin across a lows-slung, dark-wood, black speckled-marble top, square coffee table not quite as wide as the sofa. To my right are two herringbone beige cloth upholstered chairs sitting side-by-side staring mutely at their twins across the coffee table. At each corners of this square shaped seating area are four square lamp tables with the same dark wood and marble top as the coffee table and all the same height as the coffee table. Atop each lamp table rests a tall four-sided pyramid-shaped lamp body mounted atop a brass base, a white cylinder lampshade corrals the right from a single high-wattage light bulb. The lamp sits right in the middle of the table. The entire seating area rests atop a dark sea green carpet with a design that resembles a flock of birds in flight each bird separated equidistant from its neighbor. Looking at the pattern for a moment gives the viewer the impression of movement.

Starting at the entrance to the hotel and extending to the elevator banks and beyond are cylindrical columns—I count five equally spaced from the entrance to the elevators banks running down each side of the hotel lobby. Beyond the elevators to the rear of the hotel the columns continue beyond my range of view. Each reinforced concrete cylinder is faced with the alabaster-colored marble. A dark wood baseboard six inches or so high binds each column to the floor. When I entered the hotel for the first time and saw the column I was put in mind of the rows of stone columns that populate the ancient Egyptian temples at Karnak. The registration desk and the concierge desk on the opposite wall—both dark wood and chest high—each sits between the second and third column counting from the entrance to the back of the hotel. Behind each desk is a huge wall hanging that rises from just above the floor to just below ceiling and spans the distances between the second and third columns. Behind both the concierge desk and the registration desk is a wall hanging that covers the area from just above the floor to just below the ceiling. It extends from just inside the second column to just inside the third column. A brown frame about six to eight inches thick frames the wall hanging. The wall hanging is alabaster in color. Starting at the top and moving down are rows of equally spaced peaks and troughs. The overall impression is of looking at the surface of water from above and seeing perfectly spaced waves.

The wall behind the seating area directly across from me is a storefront, boarded up with white drywall a sign on the front announcing that Harry Winston, New York Jeweler would be opening in 2004. Arranged below the sign are three large photos; the one to my left is trimmed in a black border around a white background in the center of which is a gold necklace studded with diamonds, though its entire length is not shown. The picture in the middle is of a gold ring with a large rectangular shaped diamond viewed from the top on a black background. The picture on the right resembles the one on the left—both are trimmed in black with white background. This last picture is of a diamond-studded gold bracelet. I got the message, very pretty adult ornaments with very hefty price tags. To the left and toward the concierge desk is a small Marc Jacobs shoe store.

On the wall between Marc Jacobs and the concierge desk is a tall narrow mirror, easily eight feet high, by four or five feet wide. Mounted on the wall on the other side of the concierge desk near the entrance is an identical tall narrow mirror. Both are framed in a six-inch frame the color of alabaster. The surface of the frame has the same wave pattern as found on the wall hanging separating the twin mirrors. Each mirror is mounted so that it stands out from the wall, which is entirely paneled in the same oyster-shell colored marble on the floor. There are five rows of long, narrow marble panels. Each panel runs the length of the wall from the entrance to Marc Jacobs shoe store. Each panel is separated from its neighbor by an inch to two-inch wide space. The panel at the bottom of the wall contrasts with the other four that rise to the ceiling. It is a darker beige color. The wall opposite, behind the registration desk, is a mirror image of the one behind the concierge desk.

It’s early afternoon and the concierge desk has been kept busy by a sporadic steam of guests inquiring about all manner of things both inside the hotel and out: dinner reservations for tonight, shuttle schedules between Taipei and CKS, bus schedules, costs of taxis between Taipei and other cities on the island. The registration desk has had less traffic, the occasional late checkout, guests complaining about something in their room, lost or misplaced keys, “have you any messages for…”: the daily life of any hotel. I wonder how many times a clerk has answered the same question over a year or for the time he or she has been behind either desk, each inquiry is its own small drama played out in the time it takes to ask and receive a response. I’ve observed as much of the life in the lobby of the Formosa Grand Hotel as I can handle for one day and return to my room to check e-mails and do some work.