Taiwan Visit

Taipei has much going for it. Along with Western-style comforts, it has retained enough exotica to make it a fascinating destination. There's also a noticeable effort being made to green-up the city with more parks, streets with tree-lined medians, and a thrust toward environmental awareness. Witness the green plastic bottle Christmas tree, 40 feet tall, in the Grand Hotel lobby. And, let it be said, Taipei has the best, most varied Chinese food anywhere and some remarkable shopping as well.

Start by visiting Taipei 101- currently the world's second tallest building. Taipei 101 has reshaped the Taiwan capital's skyline, and its property market. The shopping centre in its lower floors houses over 160 shops and restaurants in 77,033 square meters, and the full 101-storey tower has198,346 square meters of office space.

Then for contrast go to the southwest of the city to see Lungshan Temple a 350-year-old Confucius temple that is the most popular temple in town. The atmosphere is vibrant and mystical, filled with chanting, incense-burning, oracle-reading and other rituals. Colorful and exotic, Lungshan offers play along with worship and it echoes with the sounds of life- children playing, people gossiping, and a populace buying and eating food.

A short ride from Lungshan Temple is the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall. The late president's reputation has waned in recent years, but at the Memorial he's still a hero. Photographs and shining summaries of Chiang's exploits, some true and some imaginary, are fascinating period pieces and offer great insight into the turbulent history of 20th-century China.

Visitors enter the Memorial hall through and imposing Ming-style gate. The hall soars 250 feet and houses a 25-ton bronze statue of the last president. Time your tour for for the solemn changing of the guard.

The giant white-and-blue memorial is set in a vast square, surrounded by a park and bordered on one end by the famous arched gates.

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The Confucius temple seems plain after the Lungshan Temple, but is still worth a visit. It lacks the extensive decor that is so synonymous with the other Chinese temples scattered about the island. This makes sense as the temple is dedicated to one of China's most revered educators and scholars; Confucius. Confucius championed education for all, not just for the upper classes. He revered simplicity and it is reflected in this temple. There are no stone lion statues flanking the entrance nor inscriptions on the walls, doors and windows. There are no statues of the man, only written tablets.

For a different view try the Miniatures Museum of Taiwan, founded in 1997 by Mr. Lin Wen-ren and his wife. It is one of the most fascinating small museums in Taiwan.

Although all the works of art are small in size, it is remarkable how wide a spectrum of life and fantasy the collection covers. In addition to intricate dollhouses and room boxes, which provide insight into the imaginations of artists and aristocrats from centuries past, there are also antique cars, boats, and many other pieces of intricate handiwork. The models are all built to scale, with the 12:1 scale dominating, but with some models at 24:1, 48:1, and even 120:1.

The Miniatures Museum exhibits more than 150 dollhouses and room boxes, the majority created by artists from the United States and Canada as well as England, Scotland, and other European countries. There are also works by Taiwanese and Japanese artists.

A trip to Taipei is full of surprizes- Western comfort and Asia ambiance.

Don't miss a visit to the National Palace Museum, Asia's answer to the Louvre. The classical-style buildings house a astounding collection of Chinese art, the largest and most extensive on the planet. Paintings, bronzes, books, calligraphy, furniture, porcelains, and jade make up most of the 600,000-piece collection. So vast is this collection that every three months treasures are pulled from the museum's dark underground vaults and rotated for public viewing. It is said it would take 12 years to see the entire collection.

Kept there is one of the world's smallest yet most exquisite treasures --a cabbage. A small, opaque shaft of green and white jade delicately carved in the shape of a common vegetable, complete with a grasshopper, camouflaged on the top of a green leaf. This jewel from the Ching Dynasty is but one of 4,636 jade pieces here.

Be sure to see the documentary film showing this massive collection being moved around mainland China by train, truck, raft, and ox cart, to save it from the invading Japanese, and later the communist Chinese. After World War II, the 20,000 cases of treasure were transported back to Nanking and finally, when Mao and Communism endangered it, the best of the collection was brought to Taiwan.