Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall; National Taiwan Museum; Food Tour

This afternoon, I visited the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall and the National Taiwan Museum. In the evening, I went on a Taipei food tour.

The backside of the Chiang Kai-shek memorial
The backside of the Chiang Kai-shek memorial

I’ve only started to type this post, but despite considerable activity, including an evening outing, which I don’t normally do, I expect it to be short. It’s not that I didn’t have a full afternoon and evening. I did. It’s just that by the time I got back to my hotel after the food tour, it was after 10:00 p.m. and I hadn’t yet finished writing my morning post, let alone started this one.

So it’s way past my bedtime now, and I need to wrap this up quickly. Sorry about that. I hope it doesn’t end up being too short. But if it does turn out longer than I expected, I’m not going to spend one second coming back and correcting this introduction.

I could have put off writing this until the morning, but by then I would have forgotten everything I did this afternoon and evening, rather than just most of it.

Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall

Looking down from the patio at the top of the 89 steps at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial. The National Theatre and National Concert Hall are in the background.
Looking down from the patio at the top of the 89 steps at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial. The National Theatre and National Concert Hall are in the background.

Chiang Kai-shek was an authoritarian leader who was defeated in the Chinese Civil War in 1949, but became a leader of the Republic of China, which is Taiwan’s official name. Taiwan became a de facto independent nation, but both Taiwan and mainland China pretend that there is only one China.

As I said, he was an authoritarian leader. During his time in power, he had dissidents agitating for the end of his regime arrested and tortured. So, he’s probably not the best person to celebrate, but he did lead Taiwan into its current status as a booming nation, which it and mainland China pretend is not a nation. And, for that, he gets a monument.

You’d expect that an authoritarian leader might order such a thing for himself, but no. It was constructed after his death.

Large statue of Chiang Kai-shek
Large statue of Chiang Kai-shek

Some leaders are memorialized with a lousy little statue. Chiang Kai-shek, on the other hand, is memorialized with a huge structure.

There is a huge bronze statue of Chiang Kai-shek there. But to get to it, you must climb 89 steps on any of the four sides of the building. How do I know there are 89 steps? Because that’s what my guidebook told me there are. It’s not a randomly chosen number. They decided on 89 steps because that’s how old he was when he died.

At the top of the 89 steps, a wraparound patio affords views of the nearby area, including the beautiful National Theatre and National Concert Hall just across the large “Liberty Square” in front of the Chiang Kai-shek Monument. There’s also some peaceful, green parkland on the other sides surrounding the monument.

Chiang Kai-shek's former state cars
Chiang Kai-shek’s former state cars

When I visited, there was a children’s book fair in Liberty Square. The children’s books in the stalls and the children’s activities going on were good clues that that’s what it was. But I was able to confirm it because all of the signage, including over each booth, had English as well as Chinese.

The 89 steps mean there is room for a large hall underneath the statue hall. The Chiang Kai-shek Memorial uses that for a small café, a gift shop, and a museum. The museum is divided into two sections. The first tells the story leading up to the launch of democracy in Taiwan. Much of this is the “leading up” part, including the revolutionaries and demonstrations that led to it and the oppression of those leading the democracy movement.

Mock-up of Chiang Kai-shek's former office
Mock-up of Chiang Kai-shek’s former office

The exhibits in this section included mostly photographs and text. My thought was I’d walk through, reading the text on displays that looked interesting to me. I was foiled. I entered the museum and saw that all of the text was in Chinese only. There was not a word of English. I returned to the front and to a desk that I had intentionally ignored on my way in. There, I picked up a free English audioguide after surrendering my driver’s license as collateral for its return.

I then listened to much of the information about the democracy movement, its suppression, and its eventual success.

The second section of the museum is about Chiang Kai-shek. There are a couple of his state cars, some of his clothes, some of his medals and awards, and a mock-up of his office. The audioguide also addresses this section, but I didn’t use it. In this section, all text was in both Chinese and English.

National Taiwan Museum

Pagoda in a pond in a park containing the Taiwan National Museum
Pagoda in a pond in a park containing the Taiwan National Museum

After the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial, I visited the smallish National Taiwan Museum. It’s located at one end of a pleasant little park. The park has a pagoda-like structure in the middle of a pond. I suspect the pond normally has some fountains shooting out of it because I saw what looked like water jets poking out of it, but they were turned off.

The museum’s exhibits are spread over three floors, although an atrium cuts down on some of the available space. They tell the story of Taiwan, its history, some of its prehistory, and its flora and fauna. The exhibits include text, videos, models, and artifacts, including, but not exclusively, taxidermy.

I lied. There is another level in the basement with two sections. However, the museum floor plan lists them as children’s exhibits. I decided not to go down there. I’ve seen children before. And if I walk around enough, I’m sure I’ll see more. Besides, I’m morally opposed to using children as museum exhibits. But maybe I misunderstood.

Deity figures at the Taiwan National Museum
Deity figures at the Taiwan National Museum
Taxidermy at the Taiwan National Museum
Taxidermy at the Taiwan National Museum

Taipei Food Tour

Oyster omelette
Oyster omelette

Food tours are a relatively new thing for me. I don’t remember going on any before this trip. Then again, there are many things I do that I forget. At least, I think there are, but I forget. So maybe I have done them before. Who knows?

The point is that I enjoyed the food tours I did in Bangkok and Chiang Mai so much that I booked one here in Taipei too.

The guide’s name for the Taipei food tour was Chester. He was great. He talked a lot about Taiwan cuisine, Taiwan’s history, and the area we walked through. His English was impeccable, and he had a perfect North American accent. I was the first to arrive at the meeting point. (There were five customers in all: me and a group of four.) I had some time to talk with him before the other four arrived.

I asked him if he’d lived in Taiwan all his life. Yes, he has. I asked him where he learned English. He likes the language and has studied it. Then I asked him how he picked up a North American accent. He said he’s watched a lot of Hollywood films.

Then, we talked a little about the relationship between Taiwan and mainland China and how the Taiwanese feel about that. It was an interesting conversation. The other four arrived, and Chester began the tour.

Soup dumplings
Soup dumplings

We ate our food at stalls in a couple of clustered night markets in Taipei and one small restaurant immediately beside a night market. I took pictures at the first few stops, then I forgot to take one. After that, we ate standing up and it was too difficult to take a photo with one of my hands full. I’ll post the pictures I did take, but they’re well less than half the dishes we had.

Unlike on the Bangkok food tour, Chester didn’t provide a list of the dishes we tried. Nor did he hand out general notes about the cuisine like what I got on the Chiang Mai food tour. So I forgot some of the dishes, and I won’t be able to list them in the order we had them, but of the ones I remember, the first was an oyster omelette with a delicious sauce.

After that, I’ll get the order wrong, but we had a rice and pork dish, with a thick, rich sauce. It was served with sides of duck eggs, cooked cabbage, and cooked bamboo shoots. My favourite of those dishes and sides was the cabbage. The duck egg tasted pretty much like a hard-boiled chicken egg, except there was some sort of sauce baked on the outside.

There were also soup dumplings. This was my favourite. It was not dumplings in soup, but rather Chinese dumplings with, I’m not sure what the meat was, but there was a bit of soup inside the dumplings. It was delicious.

Pork and rice dish with duck eggs, cabbage and bamboo sides
Pork and rice dish with duck eggs, cabbage and bamboo sides

We also had Taiwanese Tempura. Which was not like Japanese tempura. It was more like fish and chips, without the chips. It was a piece of fried, battered fish, served on a long stick run through the length of the fish. I don’t know what type of fish they used.

In addition, we had a crispy scallion pancake that was probably my second favourite.

Oh, about that dish for which I don’t have an excuse for not taking its picture—it was stinky tofu. If you want to know what it looked like, think of chunks of fried tofu. It looks like that. Chester explained that there are different ways of making stinky tofu that depend on the way it’s fermented. (That’s what stinky tofu is; fermented tofu.) Chester said that he chose a stand that he thinks offers the best stinky tofu. It’s less stinky than some of the others you can get. There are also different ways it can be served. We had it fried, but you can also get it in soup. (However, Chester said he’d never heard of it in beef noodle soup, which I chickened out of yesterday.) There was a bit of a stink to it, but not much. And I thought it tasted pretty close to regular tofu.

There were also a couple of desserts. One was little doughy balls made of, if memory serves, taro, beans, and sweet potatoes. (Those were separate balls, not all ingredients in one.) Plus, there was a jelly ball surrounding it. I think it was tapioca.

At one point, Chester took us into a 7-Eleven and walked us up and down some of the aisles, showing us Taiwanese beers and iconic Taiwanese snacks. 7-Elevens are part of the contemporary Taiwanese culture. The oyster omelette is so popular here that they even have oyster omelette-flavoured potato chips.

That’s all I can remember and stay awake to write. See you tomorrow.


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