TAIPEI 2

3rd - 4th Dec 2023

The Presidential Palace on Chongquing South Road (West Centre).

I have been in this delightful city for 5 days now and well behind with my 'reportage', but will catch up eventually I expect. For the first four days the weather was drizzly wet with low cloud. This was not good because I like to 'go up' things for a good view and most of the tallest things I wanted to go up were in cloud. I managed a couple with limited visibility. Boring! Day 5, which I had to use to do some laundry (I found a very good and cheap laundrette), admin and plan the next stage of this journey, the sun came out and it was warm with solid blue skies. Typical! 

Right: An interesting feature of the wet weather here (and they are obviously used to it at this time of year) is that racks of umbrellas, of various types and sizes, are placed outside most shops and cafés etc. (as per right). It is an example of the public's good honest civic nature that you are expected to take an umbrella and just leave it in the rack of wherever you are going. It works well. Of course this could never be considered practicable in UK. If it was tried there all the umbrellas would be nicked within 5 minutes and probably put up for sale on E-Bay.

I took a walk down the south central part of town towards the 2-28 Peace Memorial Park. This Park was set up to commemorate the rather brutal crackdown on 28th February 1947 (or was it 1949?) by the ruling KMT against protesting locals. I presume there was much bloodshed. It is a very pleasant park featuring a grand 3 storey Natural History Museum, Japanese style pavilions, ponds, various monuments and a museum dedicated to the 'crackdown' (closed for renovations at the moment).

Left: The grand pillared Natural History Museum. It featured all sorts of wildlife and things relating to ethnic tribes and their history. It was well laid out but not, to me anyway, very interesting. Being over a certain age I got in for free!

Right: A display of local 'tribesfolk' wearing their elaborately patterned tribal costumes. In this diorama it is the 'Rukai' tribe. I suppose if you live in a tribe in the hills you have plenty of time on your hands to do all this stitching. Or maybe computer generated 3D printing?

Left: A wildlife film being watched by visitors and a couple of resident wildlife.

Right: A Japanese style pavilion in the centre of the park.

Left: A statue of Confucius. I'm not clear what his connection or relevance was here. Confucious say: " Man that go to bed with itchy butt wake up with sticky fingers". He was a very profound Chinese philosopher.

Right: The 'Peace Memorial Monument' in the centre of the park.

Left: The Jinan Presbyterian Church in a street nearby. Built in 1916 it is a rare and unusual example of Gothic architecture in Taipei. Nearly all religion here centres around Buddhism or Taoism...except when it comes to 'Melly Clissmass' of course, which they seem to start celebrating even earlier that we do in UK! Money, money money!

Right: Seen on the way out of the park to the south, the elegant, indeed ostentatious, Presidential Palace with a large boulevard in front; presumably to accommodate grand parades etc. There were lots of armed day-glow jacket wearing guards around it.

 

Left: The 'East Gate' nearby. There are also North, South and West ones at various locations around the centre. Presumably they mark the entries to the ancient city.

I travelled around the city using the confusing (but I'm beginning to get the hang of it) and very extensive Metro system. It runs like clockwork of course. Apropos nothing much, it was interesting to see that 99% of passengers were always glued to their mobile phones (right). More so even than in London. What are they looking at?!

It was also interesting to note that about 50% of the population here were wearing facemasks in public, and all staff manning desks or behind counters in shops wore them. I have rudely referred to people in UK still wearing these silly useless dehumanising things as 'TIMS' (Tw@ts in Masks), but they have always been 'popular' in the Far Eastern countries. This was more to protect against street pollution than viruses. Whatever turns you on I suppose!

There are, extraordinarily, ten Irish Bars (Oirish Bears) in Taipei. As with most of the bars and clubs they tend to be located in the eastern, Xinyi, or southern, University, areas. I ventured out to find one, the James Joyce Bar, near Daan Metro station. I found it and it was rather a pleasant, quite small, establishment with very friendly staff, all the correct Irish drinks (Irish whiskys, Guinness etc.) and a pleasant and eclectic selection of music (from Edith Piaff to Irish Folk!). I had two pints of Guinness, some 'buffalo wings' as a snack and was given a complimentary glass of Jameson's Irish whisky. Not bad at all!

Right: Posing with my pint of Guinness to round off the day!

That will do for now.......much more to follow.