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Old Taipei

Taipei, the capital city of Taiwan, celebrated its 120th anniversary in 2004, and has a lot to show for its relatively short existance.

There has been a settlement in the Taipei area for over 300 years, which isn't long at all when compared with the ages of many other Taiwanese, Chinese and Asian towns and cities. Old Taipei was founded a mere 120 years ago - two cycles of the 60 years that make up the traditional Chinese calendar - by the Chinese Qing Dynasty.

Taipei was created as a walled city - the last in China to be built using the principles of fengshui. The east and west walls both ran in a line from south to north, in a direct line to Mt Qixing and onwards to the Big Dipper and the Pole Star.

The stone for the city wall was quarried from nearby mountains.

The wall took nearly ten years to build, but was razed to the ground less than 20 years later by the occupying Japanese colonial rulers. Four of the five gates were spared (the West Gate was destroyed), but only the North Gate has managed to retain its original appearance, with the others having been altered over time.

The North Gate may be the the only surviving gate to have been preserved in its original form, but that doesn't mean it's that much better off because of it. The photo below shows the North Gate looking rather sorry for itself - somewhat abandoned in the middle of a traffic island and overshadowed by a raised expressway.

During its oh-so-short existance the wall was fifteen feet high, twelve feet wide, and comprised of over 30,000 stones quarried from nearby mountains. Incidentally, this was the only city wall in Taiwan ever to have been built using square stones. On demolition the stones were used to build various Japanese colonial era buildings such as the Taipei Guest House and Taipei Jail (photo right), and other construction projects such as drainage canals.

There is a very interesting website at Taiwan School Net where I found some of the information and a number of photos. If you want to read more about the old city wall then follow the link above.

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Modern Taipei

Taipei today (2005) is a fair sized modern city of over 2.5 million people. It is home to major industries such as electronics, textiles, ship-building, and motorcycles. The city is situated in Taipei County but is administered separately.

Taipei City has its own mayor, Ma Ying-jeou, who won a second term in office back in 2003 by a landslide. Mayor Ma is good looking, intelligent, popular, humorous, charismatic, and the "Mr Clean" of Taiwanese politics. It's no wonder then that he's widely tipped to become the next president of Taiwan! Asked in August 2003 during a trip to Silicon Valley whether he would run for high office Ma, an avid jogger and marathon runner, joked, "I run every day!"

Mayor Ma Ying-jeou

A profile of Ma Ying-jeou is available at Asiaweek.com and covers his defeat of Chen Shui-bian back in 1999 to become mayor for the first time. There's also a more up-to-date profile from 2003 at SiliconValley.com which covers Mayor Ma's visit, and his vision to develop Taipei as a world-class city.

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Famous Buildings

Much of Taipei's significant architecture was built by the Japanese colonial rulers between 1895 and the end of the Second World War. When Taiwan was ceded to Japan in 1895 after the Sino-Japanese war the Japanese feared that the original Chinese wall and buildings would continue to foster an unhealthy Chinese identity. So they tore down the old buildings and built their own, grander buildings such as the railway station, the headquarters of the Bank of Taiwan, and the (present day) presidential palace.

The Presidential Palace - Taipei

However, if you were to ask a resident of Taipei what the most famous buildings are they would undoubtably mention many of the more recent additions to the cityscape.

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National Palace Museum

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The text below is taken from taiwan.com.au

" Taipei's National Palace Museum, located in the Waishuanghsi neighborhood of the Shihlin District, is the pride of Taiwan. It ranks as one of the four best museums in the world, in a class with the Louvre, the British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art."

"The museum holds the world's largest collection of Chinese artifacts, around 700,000 items in all. Since the museum only has space to display around 15,000 pieces at any given time, the majority of the treasures are kept well protected in air-conditioned vaults buried deep in the mountainside. The displays are rotated once every three months, which means 60,000 pieces can be viewed in a year and it would take nearly 12 years to see them all. Furthermore, the collection continues to grow through donations and purchases."

The article mentions how many of the works of art and pieces of historical and cultural significance were rescued from mainland China where they could well have been destroyed either when the communists first came to power or during the 'cultural revolution' of the 1960s.

The museum building, which was completed in 1965, is currently undergoing a massive renovation and expansion programme which is due to be finished in early 2006. Here is an artist's impression of the 'new' museum.

Artist's impression of the finished project.

You can read more at the National Palace Museum's official website.

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Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall

This imposing structure was built in memory of Chiang Kai-shek who was President of The Republic of China - a.k.a. Taiwan - from 1947 until his death in 1975. The Memorial Hall took 26 months to complete, and was opened to the public in April 1980.

Through the massive doors at the top of the steps is an equally massive
statue of the man himself, as 'larger-than-life' in death as he was in life.

The lower sections of the memorial hall house a collection of items and stories from Chiang Kai-shek's life (including two of his cars) and an art gallery.

From the top of the Memorial Hall steps you can look back to see the National Theatre on the left, the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Gate straight ahead, and the National Concert Hall on the right. Or is it the concert hall on the left and the theatre on the right? I can never remember.

You can read more at the official website, including an in-depth explanation of the design, and interactive photos of the site.

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The Grand Hotel

Perched on a hill overlooking Taipei City is the Grand Hotel. Built in 1952, The Grand, with its traditional palace style architecture, vermilion pillars, stately archways, and brilliant tiled roof, is not only a magnificent landmark of Taiwan, but it is an emblem of ancient China.

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Taipei 101

On Friday 8th October 2004 the building known as Taipei 101 was officially recognised as the tallest building in the world. The title was granted to this spectacular building by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat - CTBUH - in an on-site ceremony attended by dignitaries from around the world. This is the first time the CTBUH has presented this acolade to a building on-site, and it did so in special recognition of the unique design hurdles the architects needed to overcome to cope with the prospect of earthquakes, typhoons, and the once-in-a-century 'super typhoon'.

Taipei 101 has 101 floors (!) above the ground and five storeys below. The design reflects that of the segmented bamboo plant with bamboo flowers. Its eight sections represent the lucky number 8 - signifying prosperity, growth or 'blooming'. The building contains the world's two fastest elevators (lifts) which can can transport passengers to the 89th-floor observatory in a mere 39 seconds. Each one of these 1000-meter-per-minute elevators cost more than NT$68 million (UK£1.1m - US$2m).

But is it really the tallest?

What about the Sears Tower in Chicago, or those twin Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur?

The Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat uses four different criteria for measuring the height of a building, and 101 comes up trumps in three of them.

Ground to pinnacle - still held by the Sears Tower (529 m = 1736ft)

Ground to structural top - Taipei 101. This was formerly held by the Petronas Twin Towers (452 m = 1483ft)

Ground to roof - Taipei 101. This was formerly held by the Sears Tower (431 m = 1430ft)

Ground to highest occupied floor - Taipei 101. This was formerly held by the Sears Tower.

Some people think that the first cateory - ground to pinnacle - is cheating, although there is still much controversy surrounding it, with the issue remaining unresolved as to what constitutes a spire (as in Petronas' pinnacle) and what is merely an antenna (Sears' spire/antenna).

Click here to see a picturial comparison of tall buildings on the Wikipedia website.

Below are some other intereresting sites about Taipei 101.

Wikipedia entry on Taipei 101 - very good!
Taiwanfun.com article describing the many occupiers.
http://www.taipei-101.tk/ has over 500 photos, plus technical data galore!
Taipei Finance Centre (Taipei 101) official site.
Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat website.
Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat press release (April 20th 2004)

Tallest - but for how long?

Whichever criteria is used to measure the tallness of Taipei 101 it is unlikely to keep its tallest status for too long, with the World Finance Centre in Shanghai, Union Square Phase 7 in Hong Kong, and the Freedom Tower in New York all set to overtake 101 by 2009. However, all these usurpurs to the crown will pale into relative insignificance once the Burj Dubai building actually gets off the ground. With an incredible 160 floors this 705 m (2,312ft) monster will dwarf all its competitors. And it doesn't seem to stop there. The most recent announcement from Dubai's Crown Prince General Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum at the September 2004 'first cement pouring' ceremony [I bet that was exciting!] said that the official height above the ground of the Burj Dubai building was now 800 m but could be raised to a staggering 950 m. How long will it be, I wonder, before we see a building one kilometre tall, or even one a mile tall?

Note: The above article on Taipei 101 first appeared on my online web journal on 15/10/04 and can be viewed in its original form at http://itsafrogslife.bravejournal.com/entry/6919 It is accurate as of January 2005, although the specifications of the planned Burj Dubai building may well have changed again since then...

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Page created 4 Nov 04 - updated 28 Oct 06
Copyright Graham Holland © 2004

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