Hello everyone! This is Cheng Ting-Fang, sending you greetings from Taipei, where we are experiencing the heat and afternoon thundershowers of the subtropical summer.

I recently received a call from a real estate agent in Nangang, the neighbourhood in eastern Taipei where I live. “Ms Cheng”, she began, “are you interested in buying an apartment? We have some great listings.” But what truly grabbed my attention was what came next: “Did you know Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang is building a new R&D centre nearby? This is bound to make the area even more popular.”

Even though Huang has already returned to the US following his two-week visit to Taiwan for the Computex tech fair, he and his company continue to exert a surprisingly widespread impact on the island. Influencing the housing market in a specific district of Taipei is just one example. Night market stalls and traditional Taiwanese cuisine dining places where the CEO visited have been swamped with visitors, with some restaurant booking systems crashing due to the surge in reservations.