Taipei

Taipei is the capital of Taiwan and truly its center for nearly all areas of life: government, culture, commerce, and education. Some 3 million residents manage to fit along the city’s narrow, congested streets, making Taipei a bustling, busy metropolis at, quite literally, all hours of the day.

One of the most well-known sites in Taipei City is the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, a self-titled memorial for the former Taiwan president and ROC-leader. It shares the grounds with the park of the same name and with the National Concert Hall and National Theater in the Zhongzheng district. During the daytime, the vault is open for visitors and contains a bronze statue of the general along with his writings and a museum detailing his life. The surrounding land is well-groomed, with several monuments, trees, and ponds with colorful fish in them.

When the Chinese Nationalists abandoned Beijing before the onset of the Communists, Chiang Kai-shek made sure much of the rare and ancient artifacts of the Chinese civilization were boxed and shipped to Taiwan; the number totaled nearly ten thousand crates. All but seven hundred of them made it to the island and were subsequently placed in what is now known as the National Palace Museum. The collection of the past Emperors is vast, with valuable treasures dating back hundreds of centuries. You could visit the museum several times throughout the year and still never glimpse at the collection in its entirety.

Taipei’s Xinyi District is also its most cosmopolitan. It’s the seat of the mayor’s office and the city council as well as the Taipei Convention Hall and the Taipei World Trade Center. The recently opened Taipei 101, named for its 101 floors, is now officially the tallest building in the world, with several high end stores and restaurants in its lower floors and several shopping malls and department stores in the surrounding vicinity. While the top floors of the building have yet to be completed, plans for an observational deck and other business establishments are underway. The nearby Warner Village Movie Theater houses the city’s largest cinema and is often the site of many movie premieres.

Longshan Temple at Wanhua, Taipei is one of the city’s most important and ornate landmarks. First built by Han settlers in 1738, the structure has survived several earthquakes and fires to be rebuilt and renovated. It’s truly a reverent site to behold where incense curls in the air and devout Buddhists and Taoists come to pray and seek answers from several minor deities.