This is a short story, not a blog post. You can also download the e-reader version here.

Surrounded by an immaculately trimmed lawn, the white building rises up as a cluster of intersecting geometrical shapes, a sharp triangular façade pushing up and away from the center, raking the sky. The entrance is equally magnificent. Rising up on steel beams that float over a Zen-like pond filled with smooth black pebbles, a broad flagstone walkway takes you to glass doors that soundlessly slide open as you approach.

Upon entering, a group of uniformed attendants bow deeply. The air inside the atrium is cool and crisp, smelling vaguely of wood, fresh linen and espresso. This is not a crematorium or a luxury spa - this is a fake home. When you check out the rooms, they are immaculate. Sliding glass wall rolls away to reveal marble bathrooms with chrome trimmings. The paneled walk-in closets have stacks of crisp designer shirts laid out on slated hardwood shelves. The beds have silk sheets and Japanese oil paintings on the wall. This is surely the most beautiful home you have ever seen.

It is also not real. This floating specter of architectural ambition, this designer's febrile dream is a so-called Model Home, a combination of sales office and mockup apartment. Its glamorous appearance is only skin deep. The walls are thin plywood, and if you peek behind them, you will see tape, twisted wire and staples keeping it all together. The faucets, light switches and outlets are all non-working. The ceiling lights are held in place with tie-wraps.

In a few weeks, an army of bulldozers will effortlessly raze this flimsy house of cards to the ground and rip apart the grand walkways. They will crash through the paneled bedroom walls and marble kitchen floors, smashing the ten-feet high windows. An army of shovels will clear the debris and start digging a muddy hole for a parking garage. Three months later, an unimposing, non-descript Taipei residential high-rise building will rise in its place, with no hint of the initial grand design that preceded it.

Welcome to the mad world of the 樣品屋 (Yanping Wu). At any given time, there are hundreds of these million-dollar dreams being built and destroyed in Taiwan, each with an average lifespan of only a few weeks. A designer friend of mine calls it "architecture porn". These temporary non-residential structures do not have to adhere to the strict building codes of earthquake-prone Taiwan. They are insane fantasies where anything goes; sexy as hell but devoid of any sense of reality.

These buildings are for selling a dream. For a fleeting moment, prospective buyers of the mundane future apartments get to feel what it would be like to be a millionaire. They shuffle through the grand entrance to receive a first-class treatment: the finest Italian espresso, served by a demure girl wearing white silk gloves. Uniformed staff that bow as you walk by, eyes to the ground out of sheer deference. The sales contract arrives with a silent whisper in an embossed folder and is fanned out on the massive walnut desk to await your signature with the thoughtfully provided gilded fountain pen that is yours to keep after you sign away your life savings. The real insanity of this performance is not the movie-set architecture built out of chipboard and string – it is the cost. A model home easily adds thousands of dollars to the price of each apartment, yet buyers and developers take this in stride and are happy to pay for this fleeting moment.

Buying a house – a remote dream for many young couples in Taiwan on an average salary nowadays– is not just the fulfillment of a life ambition and a clear sign of upwards mobility; it is actually considered a sound investment. Taiwan is crowded. Space for prime real estate is limited and in high demand. House prices have been rising steadily since forever and show no sign of slowing down. An apartment in downtown Taipei today can cost more than a similar co-op in Manhattan, while average wages in Taiwan are almost half of those in New York. Taiwan's housing market is in a miracle bubble that keeps expanding without any signs of imploding, defying all logic. Entire families continue to pool their hard-earned money into a relative's purchase, because it is an excellent value storage.

But surely, Taiwan must be one of the worst places to own a home. The island sits atop a major geological fault line on the so-called Ring of Fire, which means earthquakes are extremely common. Mainland China has made no secrets of its plans to invade the island with brute military force within our lifetime. Taiwan is also located in what is euphemistically called "Typhoon Alley", the area of the Pacific where these destructive super storms push through to make their landfall in Asia, with Taiwan being the equivalent of a spiderweb in the mouth of a shotgun. The high mountains on the island deliver their share of lethal mudslides into the build-up valleys below, while sulphur vapors from the volcanos, corrosive sea air, heavy air pollution, blistering summer heat and humid winters make short thrift of exposed wood, roofing materials and electric wiring. Termites and other wood-munching pests will take care of the rest.

How can buying anything more expensive than a bicycle shed in such a volatile place be considered a smart investment? The answer lies, as so often, in history.

After World War Two, Taiwan reverted from being a sleepy Japanese colony for fifty years to become the home of the Nationalists, an alternative Chinese government that was expelled from Mainland China by the communists. This de facto territorial independence of Taiwan was hotly disputed by the communist Chinese government. For the next decades, the two Chinas stared each other down across the shallow Strait of Taiwan that separated them, with the occasional military skirmishes and the incessant shelling of Taiwan's outer isles.

Meanwhile, the people of Taiwan had bigger things to worry about. Their leader, general Chiang-Kai Shek, ran the island as a ruthless dictatorship, maintaining his claim that his China was the "real" one and that it was only a matter of time before they could all go back. Different opinions or dissent in general were ruthlessly suppressed. During the "White Terror", tens of thousands were killed or imprisoned. The mortal danger was not just from outside China, it lurked within Taiwan as well.

The way to survive this madness was to develop a unique kind of myopia. Focus on what is directly in front of you and don't look up. Never raise controversial topics such as the looming threat of war, the throttling of free speech, the prickly issue of Taiwan's political and cultural identity. Do your work, follow the rules and don't rock the boat, just for the sake of taking a peek at the horizon.

The 1949 exodus of the Nationalists from China to Taiwan, often called the Great Retreat, added around 2 million people to the population of 6.5 million almost in the blink of an eye. What had been a sleepy, mainly agricultural outpost of the Japanese empire rapidly became an overpopulated cluster coastal cities surrounded by largely inaccessible mountains. More houses were desperately needed.

But what kind of houses? The answer was: the fast and cheap kind. The political doctrine at the time was that residency on the island was temporary. Once the pesky communists had been defeated, many could go back home to China. The resulting urban sprawl was created in a vacuum; a complete absence of any dialogue about culture, future and urban planning.  Buildings then were designed by Master Builders: contractors who had a rudimentary engineering license tacked onto their construction diplomas, almost as an afterthought. They built cities as if it was a  Minecraft competition, hastily stacking bricks and occasionally adding the odd cheap ornamentation for good measure, like fluted columns on the top floor exterior or strange concrete panels sticking out like floppy ears.  Architecture as an independent discipline was not officially recognized in Taiwan until 1971. The result of all this was an urban landscape that looked like Legoland after a mud storm.

Meanwhile, a new generation grew up that had never known any different. This messy, ill-defined mixed salad of clashing styles and undefined cultural identities was their new reality. In the rush towards newfound prosperity, Taiwan became an economic powerhouse and eventually a full democracy, but the continuing threat from China made questions about identity and future more painful than ever. What's the point if an invasion and annexation are only a matter of time? Meanwhile, the people of Taiwan, pragmatic as always, carried on with their lives, became well-off, deftly sidestepped the issues, honored their ancestors and spirits and ignored the uncontrollable chaos that lay at the root of their existence.

Ask any person who is truly lost where they want to go and the answer is invariably "home". You can deny people a common identity, but you can't deny them a place they can call Home. But what if that home was hastily built fifty years ago, and is starting to fall apart? What if serious overcrowding means you have to share that cramped home with your parents and siblings, well into your forties?

This is why the Taiwanese dream of owning a home. It represents everything they ever wanted.

A house in Taiwan is a solid investment – bubble-talk or not. Hiring an interior designer to add value to the property adds even more value. Taiwan has more interior designers than any country in the world, and these designers are eager to prove their value. With little authentic and native Taiwanese urban style to fall back on, they drag a confusing hodgepodge of Scandinavian furniture and faux Asian elements into the tiniest apartments. The result: over-designed Japanese minimalism, a contradiction in terms if there ever was one.

The model home is the first step on this journey to security, status and comfort. Sink into the velvet chair, sip your espresso while you pick out the perfect tiles for your bathroom. Sign with your complimentary gold pen and soon everything will be exactly how it should be. Your perfectly designed home will be your shelter, a Faraday cage that will block out all bad news. The double thick steel doors and one-inch steel bars on the balconies will shut out the confusing world. Double deadbolts on the front door will not only keep out the imaginary bad guys (Taiwan has a ridiculously low crime rate) but also lock the sense of security inside. Earthquakes, pollution, typhoons and Chinese submarines prowling the coastline are all out there, but inside, all is well. Family, harmony, everything in its place, exactly where it should be. Home at last.