Travel Guides: Taipei

Taipei City is a level of administration directly under the central government of the Republic of China, while Taipei County and Keelung City are part of Taiwan Province. Taipei generally refers to the entire metropolitan area, while the “Taipei City” refers only to the administrative-territorial center of the city. Based on the census of July 2006, the total population of Taipei City (excluding Taipei County) is 2,625,757 inhabitants. The city’s main industries are electrical and electronic equipment, textiles, metallurgy and motorcycles.

In Taipei is located the world’s highest building, Taipei 101. Taipei is divided into 12 districts. The Metro in Taipei known as Metro Taipei or MRT often refers to the urban rail system serving the metropolitan Taipei area. The system, which was opened on 28 March 1996, was built at a cost of over $ 18 million, among the most expensive metro systems in the world. Taipei Metro has seven lines, 67 stations and a total length of 77 km.

If you have money and are quiet in this regard, Hong Kong should be a priority. Wherever you turn your head you find everything: modern and ancient, rich and poor. But “Wall Street of Asia,” as it was called, has some prices that give you the chills. So, is you have less money, go to Taiwan. You will not have a problem with the money if you walk and stop in this country’s capital, Taipei. Taipei has a bit of the old world charm of Hong Kong, but also has modern elements. Taipei is a city that is growing rapidly, even faster than you can imagine. Restaurants, bars and clubs offer everything you want at a price of nothing.

On the place we find today Taiwan’s capital was once a lake, and the entire region was covered with marshes and low vegetation areas, but everything has changed now. In the place where once lived the indigenous tribes came once to expand the Chinese empire. The first Chinese came to agriculture, fishing and later for trade. Chen Lai-Chang, an important name in the history of Taiwan, has built a farm in the region and then rapidly increased the number of immigrants. Most were established near the rivers and Taipei was quickly divided according to place of origin of the new-comers, and conflicts were not missing.

Taipei Railway Station

Taipei city was originally built as a rectangular fortress, four massive walls to the east and west. Japan colonized Taiwan in 1895, continuing the development of the city and in time Taipei has become the administrative, economic and cultural center of the country. Surrounded by mountains and crossed by rivers, Taipei has a subtropical climate, being affected by monsoons from April to September. Winters are short, but quite cold, while summers are hot and humid, average temperature is 30 degrees Celsius and is often raining.

Taipei is the cultural center of the country, but also an important industrial center, especially in the field of electronic and home appliances, steel industry, textile, shipping and automotive. The main problem facing the city and that will certainly bring plenty of trouble if you decide to visit Taipei for the transport, crowded and often chaotic, which makes the pollution level high enough. Even if officials try to expand the infrastructure in Taipei, there are still many problems to solve. You can travel by underground, bus or taxi, but expect the congestion and wasted time.

It’s a pretty expensive city, as you can see, very well developed on the services and trade. You can find just about anything here, from exotic food to quality clothing, but also clubs, restaurants, pubs various schools and universities and it is a destination that has something to offer to everyone. A mixture of tradition and modernity, Taipei City is a paradise for shopping enthusiasts. Here you will find the world’s tallest building, Taipei 101, which is below the floors of a giant mall. Another mall, smaller, Sogo, both is quite expensive. With the coming of night markets in Taipei are open at night, very crowded and full of life, affordable, best known as Shilin.

Grand Hyatt, Taipei

No culture is neglected in Taipei city with many museums: National Museum, Taipei Gallery, National Museum of History Museum in Taiwan clip. The most prominent is the National Palace Museum, which many regard as China’s best museum, with more than 7,000,000 pieces of the collection – paintings, historical relics, calligraphy, jade objects, engravings and wood carvings, works in bronze, books and documents. Nature lovers can visit the Yangmingshan National Park, where you will find not only plants and trees, but also various animals, especially birds of all kinds.

In Taipei there are two important monuments dedicated to personalities in the history of Taiwan, Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek. Sun Yat-sen was a famous Chinese revolutionary, who managed to overthrow the Qing Dynasty. It was then the founder of the Kuomintang and the first provisional president of Taiwan, and wanted the union between China and Taiwan. The monument dedicated to Sun Yat-sen includes a museum, a statue and beautiful gardens. Chiang Kai-shek was a powerful political and military leader, who succeeded Sun Yat-sen, became the leader of China, and was defeated in the Civil Chinese War by the communist forces. Here you will find a concert hall and a national theater; the complex is situated in a park in Zhongzheng District. During the official festivities here have been many shows.

Buddhism and Taoism followers will surely want to visit the Longshan Temple. Built in 1738 by Han settlers who came from China, it is the meeting place for centuries of prayer for the faithful. Oriented to the south, it is built as a market with a vast interior space, being guarded by six sculptures depicting dragons, both outside the entrance. Artistic creations are delicate, painstakingly made, very realistic. But the main sculpture, which attracts believers and tourists alike, portrays Buddha and is located in the center of the main hall. In small shops you usually find traditional Chinese medicines and treatments.

Taipei By Night

Even if the long history of Longshan temple was marked by numerous conflicts and natural disasters, the temple miraculously managed to overcome them. In the first two weeks of each month countless believers come on a pilgrimage to the temple, both residents of Taiwan and foreign tourists. Taipei is Taiwan‘s largest city, and the political, economic and cultural center. It is a cosmopolitan metropolis with a lively atmosphere and diverse, full of exuberance. It represents the diversity of its buildings, and visitors who love the old streets and ancient sites should not miss the traditional masters exhibited works in the area on Dadaocheng Dihua Street, or the Longshan Temple Wanhus District and other places.

World-renowned National Palace Museum has an endless collection of art objects and precious artifacts dating from historic times to the Chinese. There are other museums in Taipei: Museum of Art, National Museum of History and Postal Museum. Yangmingshan National Park on the outskirts of the city has a unique volcanic terrain, a wide variety of forest vegetation and a large network of trails. Here you can enjoy a hot water bath, or go to the hot springs of Beitou or Wulai. Taipei has the largest zoo in Taiwan, where you can see black bears, koala bears and king penguins. Moreover, Taipei is a bustling city full of people, cars and pollution. However, people are very friendly and the food is excellent. Taipei weather is warm all year round, and occasionally appear increased typhoons.

The city of Taipei in northern Taiwan has an area of 272 square kilometers, being the largest on the island. With a population of 2.7 million inhabitants, it comprises one-eighth of the islanders. Taipei City is the industrial and commercial center of Taiwan Province. Taipei city center with the region and counties including Taipei, Taoyuan Jilong is the largest city, industrial and commercial area in Taiwan. Taipei City is the cultural and educational center of the province of Taiwan.

Taipei Is A Very Crowded City

Here are 24 institutes of higher education, including Taiwan University, Taiwan Political University and Pedagogical University Taiwan. Also, the area is the most important center of the press, publishing, broadcasting, and the greatest libraries and museums in the province. Taipei City is one of the rail and road transport hubs of the province of Taiwan. Jilong ports and the zone Danshui, Taipei and the airport is the second largest in Taiwan.

Taipei 101 is a skyscraper in Taipei, Taiwan (China). Planned by C.Y. Lee & Partners and built by KTRT Joint Venture, Taipei 101 is currently the second highest building in the world after Burj Dubai. Its original name is the Taipei Financial Center, based on its official name in Chinese (Taipei International Financial Center). The block is called Taipei 101 because it has 101 floors. What remains if you remove the grandeur of high buildings? Nothing. It can not reflect the essence of a culture or a lifestyle.  We all know how cold it can be the gray creatures with its technology, which are either miniature or are huge resembling a postmodern Babylon lacks, however, any trace of humanity.

And as the West, the capital of technology, every year dictates the market trends, has not been able to humanize the artificial and give a mystical sense of this world who do not know but we need to expand the East has shown here, and this time that such a culture could not give birth to single offspring than either they made of meat and bone, or steel and glass.

Although Taipei 101 is the tallest building in the world, ranked second with 508 m, after the Sears Towers in Chicago, 519 m, the building manages to kneel any viewer. Imagine that you are in front of a giant diamond, in thousands of colors, with eight sections, the Chinese symbol of unity, symmetry and perfection, and that what you see before your eyes is a wonder of nature, but man knew how to create a lighting system that crosses between two glass surfaces (interior and exterior windows) to create a perfect optical illusion.

As you can understand the complexity of this system, you need to know the position of each reflector, and talk of a building 508 meters, with eight sections, was thoroughly calculated. But Taipei 101 failed to disturbed only ordinary human imagination, but also that of economists who are still trying to understand how it took over 1.7 billion dollars to build this building, requiring only the beams of 590 grants worth million dollars in exterior and interior walls being invested another $ 200 million.

The building also features a unique Taiwanese lift in the world that can reach a speed of 63 km / h and can travel 1008 feet in one minute. More specifically, if you are on the ground floor to get to floor 89 of the 101 in just 39 seconds and that’s just one of the wonders of technology that they materialize in Taipei 101. The uniqueness of this building does not constitute either an optical illusion, or height, or impressive speed elevator, but that can withstand earthquakes and typhoons that could turn any building into a memory of which remained just a gigantic dust cloud.

Thus, Taipei 101 can withstand a typhoon with a power that has yet to have been ever recorded on Earth and a magnitude 7 earthquake on the Richter scale. Therefore, it is said to have been erected to remind people that you can capture something that seems so modern architecture on an evergreen that period an estimated 2,500 years. After the earthquake of 31 March 2002, which left five dead and three injured in a serious condition, the top 25 floors were strengthened, adding another four exterior walls, eight sections have been redesigned, each having the same angle inclination of 90 degrees outside and the same size, giving the impression of a truly infinite columns, has added another element supporting spiral staircase of 508 meters, concrete-filled steel poles.

In fact, the whole building is constructed largely of steel and glass. Taipei 101 features two foundations. The actual, poured 800 tons of reinforced concrete, and the second intermediate, the floor 88, which required the same amount of construction material. Moreover, since there were invented air conditioning, which could handle such surfaces were introduced two giant freezers the size of ten tanks were placed side by side, electricity is provided by the other two generators with a similar size. The top 60 meters, which made famous the building, stretches up to heaven at 92, like a flower with three petals, two indoor and one outdoor, weighing 470 tons in total, with the aim to reduce of wind power that could damage the structure of the tower.

But there are other structures that conform to the additional strength of a new architectural concept mega-colon most durable interior structure, which has two centers of gravity. Thus, the first segment is composed of the same steel columns filled with concrete, which are connected with the second segment of the Gothic-style beams that are designed not only bridges but also high mega-columns to the roof, joining them into a pyramidal central.

Strange, a New York firm of Thornton-Tomasetti Engineers chose to create a Taiwan structure of the building, leaving the American projects. But New Yorkers were not happy with such a structure to resist and added support beams, both interior and exterior, for each of the 101-storey tower and a tunnel that sections level 50, has meant to eliminate the danger that a typhoon could possibly present. They say that all human myths have a grain of truth and immortal as any construction needs not only a favorable ground, but also a supreme sacrifice.

Taipei 101 is not only the materialization of a dream, but that of an ancient myth, who in November took the form of the legend of Master Manole, and Taipei in Taiwan on the 101. Thus, if the church has killed one man to be completed, the building has killed eight Taiwanese, one for each section of the gigantic building. The legend begins just like any other. Craftsmen had finished and had put plans to work, but something, whether it was an earthquake, or just the authorities, fearful at the thought that this could destroy the city of Babylon, the system temporarily, every month, and the works. What is clear is that the skeleton could not lift more than 3 floors without it collapsing, until one day when an earthquake destroyed craftsmen working again, killing five people and crippled the other three.

This was ranked by all those involved in the project, but some news they still managed to escape. Thus, after just one week after the funeral of five and three other people in hospital, the building could finally be erected in an amazing rate of just two years for 508 meters and withstood the most complex structure in the world. Now we only have to wait 2,500 years to see if modernity has failed to materialize the Eternal City of mankind. Meanwhile, we get imaginary hat in front of the miracle of technique of oriental origin.

Taipei Streets

Ranking the world’s tallest buildings: Sears Towers (Chicago) 519 m; Taipei 101 (Taipei) 508 m; Petronas Towers (Kuala Lumpur) – 452 m; Empire State Building (New York) 449 m. Records of Taipei 101: Height from ground to top floor 508 meters (surpassing the Petronas Towers); Height from ground to roof 448 meters (surpassing Sears Towers); Height from ground to the highest level of 438 meters (surpassing Sears Towers). Details: Official launch in December 2004; Gothic architectural style and pagoda; Built area 450 000 square meters; Number of floors 101+5 in the basement; Number of lifts 61.11