Taipei臺北

The Taipei basin was home to Indigenous Ketagalan people long before Han Chinese settlers arrived from Fujian in the 1700s. The settlers built river ports on the Tamsui and its tributaries: Bangka, now Wanhua, and later Dadaocheng, where tea and camphor were shipped out to the world. Longshan Temple was founded in Bangka in 1738 by settlers from Quanzhou who wanted a place to give thanks for the crossing and to pray for safety, and it has been rebuilt after fires, earthquakes and the bombing of the Second World War.

A walled city was built in the 1880s when the Qing government made Taiwan a province and named Taipei its capital. In 1895, after the first Sino-Japanese War, the island was ceded to Japan, and Taipei became a colonial capital for 50 years. Japan tore down most of the walls, laid out wide boulevards and built the Presidential Office, the National Taiwan Museum and the Ximen Red House, an octagonal market opened in 1908. Taiwan's modern water, rail and sewer systems began in this period, and the grid you see in the middle of the city comes from it.

In 1945 Japan surrendered and the Republic of China took over the island. Tension grew, and on 28 February 1947 a street incident in Taipei set off an uprising that the government put down harshly, with thousands killed. It is known as the 228 Incident, and it shaped the next four decades. In 1949 the Republic of China government lost the civil war on the mainland and moved to Taipei with about a million and a half soldiers and civilians. Martial law was imposed and lasted until 1987, one of the longest periods in the world, and public discussion of 228 was banned until the 1990s.

Since the 1980s Taipei has changed fast. Martial law ended in 1987, the first direct presidential election took place in 1996, and the first MRT line opened the same year. Taipei 101 opened in 2004 and was the tallest building in the world until 2010. Taiwan became the first place in Asia to legalise same-sex marriage in 2019. For a visitor, the value of the history is that it explains a mix that can look odd at first: a Japanese-era brick market beside a Qing-era temple, a memorial to a general beside a park to the victims of 228, and a high-tech district built around a shopping mall.

Today about 2.5 million people live in Taipei city and roughly 7 million in the metropolitan area. It governs itself, and its future status is a live political question, but daily life for a visitor is calm and practical. You can walk from a temple to a night market to a museum without meeting a single political sign, although you will see flags on National Day and posters at election time.

Taipei sits in a basin ringed by hills: Yangmingshan to the north, the Xindian hills to the south and the low ridges of Neihu and Nangang to the east. The Tamsui River runs down the west and north side, and the Keelung River curves through the northeast. The old city grew along the river and the newer city grew east, which is why Longshan Temple and Ximending are in the west and Taipei 101 is in the east.

Think of the city as three belts. The west belt (Wanhua, Ximending and Dadaocheng) is the old port and trading quarter. Its streets are narrow, its shophouses have arcades, and its temples are working temples. The middle belt (Zhongzheng and Da'an) holds the government, the museums and the parks, and it follows the wide boulevards laid out under Japan. The east belt (Xinyi) is the newer business and mall district, with Taipei 101 at its centre. Zhongshan and Datong sit north of the middle belt and have grown into a café and design area.

The MRT was built to connect these belts. The Red line runs from the Tamsui river mouth through Taipei Main Station and the memorial hall to Taipei 101. The Blue line runs east to west along the old boulevard through Ximen and Longshan Temple. The Green line links Ximen with the memorial hall and Da'an. A visitor can cover a first visit by learning three transfers: Taipei Main (Red and Blue), Ximen (Blue and Green) and CKS Memorial Hall (Red and Green).

Addresses use a road name plus a section number, then lane and alley numbers, so Xinyi Road Sec. 5 is a different place from Xinyi Road Sec. 2. Odd and even house numbers sit on opposite sides of the street. Google Maps handles all of it, but a taxi driver needs the address in Chinese characters, and your hotel can write the next stop on a card.

For planning, four clusters fit a first visit. Longshan Temple and Bopiliao make a dawn walk, Ximending is an afternoon and evening stop, the memorial hall and Liberty Square are a morning stop, and Taipei 101 with the Xinyi malls is a late-afternoon and rainy-day stop. Each cluster is flat and walkable inside, and each is one to three MRT stops from the next.

Taipei has several hundred temples, and they are not museums. Longshan Temple is a Buddhist and Daoist temple where the main hall is dedicated to Guanyin, the bodhisattva of mercy, and the rear halls hold gods of fortune, of the sea, of examinations and of matchmaking. People come before work, kneel, offer incense and leave, and you can watch in a few minutes how the ritual runs.

The etiquette is simple. Enter by the right-hand door, called the dragon door, and leave by the left-hand tiger door. Do not step on the raised threshold. Take the free incense at the entrance, hold it with both hands, bow toward the sky and place it in the burner outside. Inside, follow the person ahead of you around the altars. Do not point at statues, and do not take flash photos of worshippers.

You will also see the moon blocks and the fortune sticks. A worshipper asks a question, drops two crescent-shaped wooden blocks and reads the result: one flat and one round means yes, two round means unclear, two flat means no. If the answer is yes, they shake a cup of numbered bamboo sticks until one falls out, and take the matching poem slip to be read by a volunteer or a book. You can try it, but do not stand in the way of someone who is praying.

Belief in Taipei is also practical. Small offering tables appear on the street in the seventh lunar month, known as Ghost Month, when the gates of the underworld are said to open. Locals avoid weddings, big purchases and swimming in this period, and hotels often drop their prices. Businesses set out food at their door on the 1st and 15th of each lunar month, and shop counters often hold a small shrine with fruit and incense.

Xiahai City God Temple in Dadaocheng is a small, busy temple famous for matchmaking prayers, and Xingtian Temple in Zhongshan is a large Guan Yu temple where offerings are made without burning incense. For a visitor, the best way to see belief at work is to spend 45 minutes at Longshan at 07:00, watch a full round of prayers and then walk to the herbal tea shops on Herb Lane.

Taiwan is also open in a way that shows in temple life: a Buddhist temple, a Daoist temple and a Confucian temple may sit within a few hundred metres of each other, and local people visit all of them. A visitor is welcome at each, as long as they follow the rules of the day.

Taipei is one of the best cities in Asia to eat in because so much of the good food is cheap and a short walk from the MRT. The base of it is Taiwanese food, which grew from Fujianese and Hakka roots and picked up Japanese influences from the colonial period. After 1949 mainlanders arrived from every province and brought their noodles, dumplings and breakfast breads, so a single street can offer a Hokkien oyster omelette and a Shanghai soup dumpling.

Beef noodle soup is often called the national dish, and its origin in Taiwan is tied to soldiers and civilians who came after 1949. It is a braised beef and wheat-noodle soup, cooked in a soy-and-spice broth, and there is an annual contest for the best bowl. You can try one at Yong Kang Beef Noodle Shop near Dongmen Station, or at any neighbourhood shop for a lower price. Xiaolongbao, steamed soup dumplings with thin skins, are the other signature, and Din Tai Fung, which began in Taipei, made them known worldwide.

Breakfast is a category of its own. At places like Fuhang Soy Milk in Huashan Market, people queue at 06:00 for warm salty soy milk with vinegar and dried shrimp, a baked flatbread and a fried dough stick. It is a Taiwanese habit to eat a savoury breakfast out, on the way to work, in a shop that is closed by noon.

The night market is the most visible food institution. Stalls set up at dusk on streets and in covered lanes, and each one sells a single dish. Ningxia Night Market is a short street of local snacks, Huaxi Street is a covered market near Longshan Temple, Shilin is the largest, and Raohe has a temple at one end. Eat what has a queue, carry cash and small notes, and do not be alarmed by stinky tofu: the smell is stronger than the taste.

Drinks matter as much. Bubble tea, milk tea with tapioca pearls, was invented in Taiwan in the 1980s, and a shop on every corner sells it. Order by choosing the sugar level and the ice level, for example half sugar and less ice. Tea shops on Dihua Street and Yongkang Street serve oolong grown in the mountains, and a tasting of two or three teas costs less than a large bubble tea.

A few rules keep it easy. Look for a busy stall with a short menu, ask the price before they cook, and tip nothing. Vegetarians can use the Buddhist vegetarian buffets that appear on every block and are marked with the character 素. Food safety is generally good, and the risk is heat and crowds more than water.

Two big public spaces in the middle of the city show how Taiwan has argued with its own history. The Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, completed in 1980, is a white octagonal hall with a blue roof at the top of 89 steps, a nod to his age at death by Chinese counting, and it faces a vast plaza with a three-part arch. It was built as the centrepiece of a personality cult under martial law, and after democratisation it became a place to debate what to do with that legacy. Today it holds an exhibition on his life and a changing programme, and the plaza hosts concerts and school events.

A short walk away, 228 Peace Memorial Park and its museum tell the other side of the story. The museum documents the 1947 uprising and the decades of White Terror that followed. Together, the hall and the museum are a lesson in how a democracy has chosen to display the past: it has kept the hall and added a place to remember the victims. Change is still under discussion, so check the current display when you visit.

Taipei 101 is the modern counterpart. It rises 508 metres, and its shape of stacked segments echoes a pagoda and a bamboo stem. A huge steel ball called the tuned mass damper hangs between the 87th and 92nd floors to steady the building in typhoons and earthquakes, and you can see it from the observatory. The tower was the tallest building in the world from 2004 to 2010, and the mall at its base is one of the city's most popular.

Smaller sites fill in the middle. The Red House Theater has been a market, a cinema, a theatre and a creative-market plaza, and the neighbouring streets became a centre of LGBTQ life after martial law ended. Bopiliao Old Street was saved from demolition and restored as a heritage block, and it now hosts exhibitions and film shoots. The Songshan Cultural and Creative Park, a former tobacco factory, and Huashan 1914, a former winery, show how old industrial buildings became design spaces.

For a visitor, a good way to see this layer is a single morning: the memorial hall at opening, 228 Park and its museum, then the Presidential Office building from the outside before the lunch queue at a beef noodle shop. Keep quiet during the guard ceremony, avoid the marked route, and if you photograph the statue, do not climb on the steps.

Taipei's year follows the weather and the lunar calendar. The best window for a visit is October to early December: 20 to 27 degrees, lower humidity and less rain. Summer, June to September, is hot, humid and stormy, with typhoons from July to October. Winter is cool and drizzly, around 13 to 20 degrees, and buildings often have thin walls and no central heating, so it can feel colder than the number.

The lunar calendar brings the big holidays. Lunar New Year, in late January or February, closes many shops and small restaurants for several days and fills trains and flights. The Lantern Festival ends the season, with lantern displays and busy temples. Tomb Sweeping in early April is a long weekend for family visits, Dragon Boat Festival in June brings rice dumplings and boat races, and Mid-Autumn Festival in September or October is a time for moon-viewing and barbecues. Ghost Month falls in August or September.

Daily life for a resident is dense and convenient. Most people live in apartments, ride the MRT or a scooter, and eat out for many meals. Convenience stores every few hundred metres act as parcel points, bill-payment desks and cafés. Sports fans follow professional baseball, and many people exercise in parks at dawn: expect to see tai chi, dancing and group walking in Da'an Forest Park and around the memorial hall before 08:00.

A few habits will help you fit in. Stand on the right of escalators, queue for the MRT on the marked spots, do not eat or drink in the paid area, and keep your voice low on trains. Take your shoes off if you enter a home, and do not stick chopsticks upright in a bowl. Tipping is not expected. If you are unsure how something works, ask; people are usually patient, and translation apps handle the rest.

For a first trip, the most useful planning rule is to match the weather. Do outdoor sights before 10:00 or after 17:00 in summer, keep a museum or mall for the afternoon storm, and carry a compact umbrella in every month. Go to a night market on a dry evening, take a taxi or Uber after midnight when the MRT has stopped, and keep two or three days free of a fixed schedule. Taipei rewards slow days more than a packed list.