Taiwan Today

The beautiful nights, the happy nights
Taipei's nights are full of green and red lights
They flash and shine brightly
Young maidens who crowd the streets
Will greet us warmly and make visitors feel at home
The happy nights. Come! Oh come!
Like a 16-year-old girl in the prime of her life
Like a blossoming flower
—Song, "Night in Taipei"

A flower just bursting into full bloom, the Taipei of today is wrapped in 272.15 square kilome­ters of land, including six satellite towns, but with only 102 square kilometers suitable for build­ings. The remaining 63 per cent consists of steep hills, river beds, flood plains and other lands not physically or economically adapted to urban devel­opment. Within this small space the bustling life of nearly 2 million inhabitants and the annual flow of 650,000 tourists through Sungshan International Airport assure ceaseless change and move­ment.

On weekdays life is a great rush from 7 in the morning till 9 as government employees, other workers, students and housewives jam-pack buses and crowd the streets on their way to offices, factories, schools and markets. Traffic slackens a little in mid-morning but taxis and private vehicles still throng the streets. Around noon, sidewalks begin to fill up with people trying to get a seat at one of the many food stalls to be found around the corner from towering office buildings. Streets quiet a little in early afternoon but not for long. The trek home begins after 4 and lasts until nearly 7. Crowded buses thread the traffic jams to deposit their human cargoes in the residential areas surrounding the government and commercial districts. Not everyone goes home. The night people are already home in the city's centers. Others stay downtown or come from the city's hinterlands to shop in the big department stores or smart shops. Movie houses pick up patrons at 6:30 or so and again at 9. Song halls draw those who prefer live entertainment to the movies or to the endless soap opera of evening TV. Retail businesses close at 10 and the streets begin to empty. Buses carry home shop clerks and night school students. Taxis take over to transport the late movie goers and dance hall customers. The city sleeps by 11 for most and by 2 for nearly everyone.

Taipei residents are of the middle class and living in heavily populated areas. Average popula­tion density of the city is 6,852 persons per square kilometer, with the highest ratio of 75,397 per square kilometer in the residential Chienchen District and the lowest density of 1,538 per square kilometer in the newly developing Neihu District. The projected population for 1980 is nearly 3 million. In 1967, when Taipei City became the 13th Special Municipality of the Republic of China, it had a population of less than 1.5 million. This was more than double the 480,000 of 1949 and close to a sevenfold increase over the 271,754 persons of 1945, when Taiwan was restored to the Republic of China at the end of the Second World War.

In 1829, Mengchia, the predecessor of Taipei, had a population of 20,000. Taipei's first settler, Chen Lai-chang of Fukien province, arrived in 1709. Eleven years later, the small market town of Mengchia began to take shape on the banks of the Tamsui River. Mengchia gave way to Taitaochen and then to the Inner City, the three commercial centers of Taipei during the 18th century. These were not connected. Paddy fields, swamps and graveyards separated them.

Mengchia was a trading post for mainlanders and the aborigines then living along the Tamsui River. The name was the Chinese phonetic equivalent for the aborigine word "moungar," meaning canoe. The aborigines came upstream in canoes to trade.

In 1735, more Chinese migrated to the Taipei basin and cultivated land to the east of Mengchia. When the port of Tamsui at the mouth of the river was opened by the imperial Manchu government in 1788, junks could sail up the stream. The village which was to be Taipei gained further importance as a commercial center. In 1808, the naval base at Tainan in the south was moved to Mengchia and in 1809 the town became the seat of Taipei county. Chinese settlers poured in to profit from this riverbank market, forcing the aborigines back into the mountains. Few aborigines remained in the Taipei basin by 1820. The golden days of Mengchia were those between 1820 and 1850. Many Chinese temples were built near small mar­kets which gradually spread eastward. Mengchia proper had about 5,000 households in the mid­-19th century. Its importance was second only to that of Tainan in the south and Lukang in central Taiwan.

Mengchia declined because silting of the Tamsui River blocked access to big ships. Other retarding factors were the failure to build a bridge across the river to join the Mengchia market to Hsinchuang and conflict between Chinese settlers that lasted from 1851 to 1861. This conflict resulted in a move slightly northward by one of the groups. These people built a settlement known as Taitaochen, literally "big open rice field," in 1853. Soon the new community was competing with Mengchia for trade. Tamsui port was expanded in 1860 and the Dutch, Germans and Americans opened consulates there. Sizable tea plantations were established by Chinese. Taitaochen replaced Mengchia as the trading center for tea and camphor, which then were the leading exports. More than 4,000 girls were employed in 60-odd tea factories. Taitaochen was the chief residential area for foreigners. Further silting of the Tamsui forced another move of commercial activities to Inner City.

East of Mengchia and south of Taitaochen, the Inner City was settled in 1873. Taiwan became a prefecture in 1875 and a province in 1885. Liu Ming-chuan of Anhwei was appointed the first governor. He was determined to move the capital from Tainan in the south to a central or northern location. After inspecting many possible sites, he chose the Inner City. A memorial to the Manchu court received prompt assent and work began at once to enlarge and modernize the city, which was given the name Taipei. The capital was moved in 1891. In the vision of Liu Ming-chuan, Taipei was to be the symbol of a new Taiwan. He constructed his residence and government offices in the Inner City, and established a revenue bureau, telegraph office, power plant and several factories.

Part of the Inner City was built according to definite plan. The roads ran fairly straight. In 1878, work began on a city wall. Five main gates were built. Most buildings were two-story shop­-houses with courtyards and residential quarters on the upper floor or in the rear. Lots were nar­row and not very deep. Architecture showed little variation. Arcades sheltered pedestrians from the rain. Second floors extended over the arcades. The population was 40,000 when Taiwan became a province in 1887. It was in this same year that Liu Ming-chuan switched on Taipei's and China's first electric light. Liu was aware of the need for defenses. Heavy guns were mounted on the new city wall. An arsenal was established at Taipei and batteries built at five ports. Telegraphic communication had linked Tainan and Taipei as early as 1876. Liu extended the line to the northern port of Keelung and opened a school to train telegraph operators. In 1889, work began on China's first railway, a line between Taipei and Keelung. Con­struction took a year and was completed just before Taipei become the capital.

Taiwan was ceded to Japan in 1895 under the Treaty of Shimonoseki that ended the first Sino-Japanese War. Taipei remained the capital. The population was 47,000 with 50 per cent in Tai­taochen, 42 per cent in Mengchia and 8 per cent in the Inner City. The Japanese replaced the city walls with roads, leaving only the gates. The typhoons of August, 1911, destroyed many of Taipei's old houses and gave the Japanese opportunity to rebuild much of the city. New govern­ment offices and commercial buildings were of cement, brick and steel in Western style. The first master plan for Taipei was promulgated in 1902 and revised in 1937. Based on Tang dynasty (618-907 A.D.) planning principles of a grid with broad avenues, this plan gave Taipei its present street system.

With the surrender of Japan in.1945 and the return of Taiwan to the Republic of China, Taipei came under administration of the Provincial Government. During the 50 years of Japanese rule, the area of the city more than doubled and the population grew to 80,000 in 1920 and to 271,754 in 1945. The influx of mainlanders and migration from rural areas and smaller cities combined to swell the population to 1,500,000 by 1967. In that year Taipei was elevated to the status of special municipality directly under the jurisdiction of the Executive Yuan (Cabinet) of the Central Government. Administration of the city is in the hands of a mayor appointed by the Executive Yuan. The city council is popularly elected.

Taipei has had six mayors and two acting mayors since 1945. Huang Chao-chin, the first postwar mayor, died recently. Among former mayors, Henry Kao is now Minister of Communica­tions under the administration of Premier Chiang Ching-kuo. He was sometimes referred to as the "strong man of Taipei" by the foreign press. He served as mayor for 11 years, the last four as a political appointee. He envisaged Taipei as a city of broad boulevards and green parks. There would be many neighborhoods and communities so as to avoid concentration of population. Each neigh­borhood would have its own schools, cultural cen­ters, markets and park's. Places of work, shopping centers and the central business district would be easily and quickly accessible by bus.

The task of implementation has passed into the hands of Chang Fung-hsu, 44, of Pingtung in southwestern Taiwan. Chang received the seal of office from Henry Kao in a ceremony presided over by Premier Chiang Ching-kuo on June 10, 1972. Mayor Chang holds a master's degree from the University of New Mexico. He was magistrate of rural Pingtung for eight years before his appoint­ment. His problems are numerous.

Premier Chiang has described the Wanhua and Penchiao areas of Taipei as at least 20 years behind the Chungshan North Road area in terms of con­struction and environment. Beautification of city streets and thoroughfares cannot be carried out at the expense of back alleys and side lanes, he said.

In Japanese times, Taipei was a small, sleepy, far-out town where not much happened and where Japanese came only on business. Nor did any big change occur with the 1945 retrocession to the Republic of China. Taipei became the dusty capital of the smallest province. In 1949, Taipei was chosen as the temporary capital of the Re­public of China and the seat of governmental efforts directed toward recovery of the mainland. Swift change and rapid growth followed.

All of the ministries and agencies of the National Government are housed in Taipei. Some are using buildings constructed during the Japanese period. Others have built new structures, most of them in the heart of the city. The military establishment is also represented, although there is a growing tendency to move barracks and dependents' quarters to the outskirts. The Taiwan Provincial Government was moved to the Taichung area of central Taiwan in 1956.

Taipei is the business and industrial center of Taiwan province, unrivaled even by Kaohsiung, a southern city nearing the 1 million mark. This means employment opportunities. Taipei has become the principal destination of people moving from farm or small town to city. Other cities of the island are changing but slowly. Taipei is ex­ploding. Ten years ago there were few buildings of more than four stories. Now there are scores and this soon will give way to hundreds. The new Taipei Hilton Hotel opening in 1973 is the first building of more than 20 stories. Multistory office structures are overbuilt and underoccupied for the time being. The main reason is the city's effort to encourage construction through the heavy taxation of vacant lots.

People of Taipei have the highest standard of living in Taiwan. This is reflected in the dozens of big department stores, the growing number of supermarkets, the places of entertainment and the endless construction of high-rise apartment buildings with flats which sell for prices ranging from US$5,000 to US$50,000. As in any city, not all residents are rich. For the last decade the city government has been building low-rent public housing and moving squatters out of their shacks. Housing projects are now under way for residents of the Wanhua and Talungtung areas, Taipei's oldest. The cost will be US$20 million. More than 5,200 squatter families are to be resettled in the Nanchichang area.

A city the size of Taipei has an understandable interest in family planning. Two weeks after his assumption of office, Mayor Chang established an independent family planning agency to seek the reduction of a birth rate which stood at 2.417 in 1971. The people who are coming from rural areas bring with them the cultural pattern of big families. They will take a lot of persuading. Tai­wan family planners recently faced the challenge of a couple with 13 daughters and 2 sons. The mother said she thought the family was of sufficient size, but the father said he would have no objection to a few more children.

Prosperity has helped keep Taipei's social welfare obligations low. A four-year program from 1966 through 1969 cost a little less than US$11 million and included slum clearance, relief, medical care and housing. The budget for the current four­-year plan is slightly smaller and emphasizes voca­tional training and job placement as well as the usual welfare services.

Markets have not been able to keep up with Taipei's growth. The new supermarkets are popular but there are only a few in the basements of department stores or in apartment/business buildings. They do not answer the need for neighbor­hood markets. According to the official count, the housewife is served by 38 markets populated by some 4,000 retailers. Registered streetside stands and itinerant peddlers number another 7,000. The actual count of the latter is probably around 30,000. These are unlicensed and lightly con­trolled.

City plans call for the establishment of 40 new neighborhood markets and the modernization of the 38 old ones. Stress will be placed on sanitation, control of rodents, elimination of flies and mosquitoes, wider use of refrigeration and presenta­tion of attractive, well-lighted displays. When the new markets are built, the days of the street hawkers will be limited. The informal businesses are countenanced now because they perform a public service. The housewife would have to walk long distances to the old markets if the peddlers and portable kiosks did not come to her.

The last 10 years has seen big changes in marketing, even though the designated areas have not been much enlarged. Paper bags and plastic sacks and containers were scarcely known a decade ago. Meat and fish were wrapped in banana leaves. The housewife took her marketing basket for vegetables. Eggs were packed in straw sleeves. Rice was measured into her own container or poured into a sack which looked more like pulp than paper.

Now paper bags are available in all shapes and sizes. Plastic is locally made and so cheap and plentiful as to constitute a disposal problem. The smallest shops have refrigerators and freezers. Chilled and frozen pork has come to market from the new slaughterhouse outside the city - not es­pecially to the homemaker's liking. Fresh meat is preferred for Chinese cooking. Some housewives say that freezing changes the color of pork and that they can no longer judge quality.

Dietary habits are changing. Much more bread is eaten and no neighborhood is without one or more bakeries. The consumption of canned foods has doubled and redoubled. The same is true of bottled drinks. Experiments are under way to grow more of Taipei's vegetables in greenhouses and avert the sharp price fluctuations which afflict the marketplace in time of typhoons or flooding rains. Dairy products are in strong demand for adults as well as for children. Even cheese is on sale in all-Chinese neighborhoods. Not long ago Chinese regarded cheese in the same light (and smell) as Westerners do Chinese "stinky bean curd." Ice cream is as common as pea pods and Chinese cabbage.

Department stores of the street are not a new phenomenon in Taipei. They were found in the downtown area through the 1950s and 60s. Now they have moved into the residential neighborhoods where there are not so many shops selling clothing, shoes, hardware and sundries. Goods are packed into big cartons and transported on the back of motorcycles. The entrepreneur spreads a tarp or sheet of plastic at the streetside and lays out his merchandise. Buyers are recompensed for the necessity of stooping by prices which are low and sometimes ridiculously so. Such hawkers buy up overstocks and especially goods, such as textiles, which may have been frozen out of export markets by the imposition of foreign quotas. Manufacturers go by the theory that it's better to gain back half the cost than nothing at all. The rule is caveat emptor, of course. There are no guarantees of quality and the merchandisers may not be in the same neighborhood two days in a row.

Taipei's public utilities are continuously on the run (and some residents say endlessly digging up the streets) to provide water, lights and gas. The Taipei Waterworks has improved filtration and increased pressure to improve service to areas which used to get only trickles in the summer. Old, leaky mains are slowly being replaced. Northern Taiwan has adequate rainfall but dependence on Taipei's rivers is increasing as wells are phased out to keep the city from sinking into the swampy land on which it is built. Taipower generation has reached a level of 3.5 million kilowatts and dependence on seasonal hydroelectric sources has been reduced. Households have never been rationed. Dry season rationing to industry has been virtually eliminated.

The city cooks with gas. Soft coal is banned for cooking and heating of water, although some still gets through checkpoints and into firepots. Smog has been reduced by the use of tanked gas. The Greater Taipei Gas Company hopes to be piping gas to half the residents of Taipei by the mid-1970s but has not yet been able to reach agreement with city authorities on rates.

Transportation is another problem which taxes the patience of Taipeilanders and the resources of the city. Ten years ago, Taipei moved by bicycle, pedicab, lumbering old buses and a few taxis. Private cars were for the very rich and high officials. Pedicabs have been outlawed. So have hand-drawn carts. Motorized triwheelers are on the way out. Motorcycles and scooters have become more numerous than bicycles; the count is about 150,000. Private cars number some 16,000 and are increasing by more than 5,000 annually. The number of buses has risen from the few hundred of 1960 to some 1,300 and taxis from 1,000 to more than 10,000. Four private bus lines are augmenting services of the municipal line, which soon will add 200 new vehicles while retiring some of its old ones.

More vehicles have required widening of streets. Subways and overpasses have reduced crossing jams at the mainline railroad tracks which run through the heart of Taipei. The number of east-west and north-south arterials has been increased and more high-speed access highways provided to suburbs of north and south. The new North­-South Freeway linking Keelung and Kaohsiung will skirt the northern edge of the inner city and relieve Taipei streets of the volume of through traffic.

Pedestrian subways and overwalks have helped speed the traffic flow in the downtown area. In residential districts, more traffic lights have been installed to regulate the flow and give pedestrians and cross-town traffic a chance. Still undecided is the question of what to do about the rail tracks. A plan of the 1960s to elevate them was recon­sidered. Implementation of plans to electrify the west coast line would necessitate construction of a subway or the removal of the tracks from the city. So far there has been little" discussion of a subway to serve Taipei intracity commuters.

Increase in the number of private cars and the prospect of locally made utility vehicles selling at about half the present price have called urgent attention to the lack of parking space. Such park­ing lots as exist downtown are disappearing because of the need for building sites. No parking garages have yet been built. Some apartment house base­ments have been reserved for garage use, but most owners prefer to leave their cars on the street. No limit on private vehicles has been proposed, as in Hongkong, but city authorities are aware that cars must be parked somewhere and that the problem is taking on pressing proportions.

Tracks may be a nuisance, but the Taipei resident can catch a train to eastern, western or northern suburbs from the center of the business district. Expresses speed south to Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung from the same station. Service is frequent and the ticket price is low. Taipei's international airport is located on the near eastside only 10 to 15 minutes, depending on traffic condi­tions, from downtown. Domestic flights land and take off for major cities. A traveler can leave downtown Taipei and be in downtown Kaohsiung more than 200 miles south in about an hour and a half. The fastest train time is five hours. Plans are on the drawing board for a new international airport some 20 miles east of Taipei, but the inner city Sungshan field is expected to remain in domestic service.

Taipei's pollution has increased with industrialization and motorized vehicles but is still less serious than that in many other big cities of the world. The atmospheric outfall of pollutants is 17.4 tons per square kilometers per month. Facto­ry areas run about twice this figure, partly because some plants are still using soft coal. Detection equipment has been purchased and offenders given warning to stop spewing out pollutants. Efforts also are under way to reduce pollution of the upper reaches of the Hsintien River, from which Taipei derives most of its domestic water. The city still has no central sewage system. In older districts, night soil is collected by tankers. The new apartment areas have septic tanks. Long-term city planning calls for a system and treatment plant, but the money has not yet been budgeted. Garbage and trash were deposited in bins and collected by scavengers until a few years ago. Now the city has a fleet of combination garbage and trash trucks. Each is equipped with a music box to signal its arrival. Collections average 1,000 tons a day. The cut and fill system is used for disposal, and the present site at Neihu will accommodate 1,900,000 tons. Another site will have to be found in four years.

With three rivers and rainfall which may reach 100 inches a year, Taipei has a drainage problem. Low-lying areas are still flooded in time of down-pour, but serious damage has been materially reduced by drainage ditches, dikes and improved containment of the rivers. Construction now under way is expected to terminate Taipei flooding ex­cept under extreme typhoon conditions or the like by the end of this decade.

The city has one park in the downtown area and another in the central district. However, the biggest and best park on the side of Grass Mountain is, at least half an hour's drive away. Land has been reserved for several smaller plots to serve densely populated areas. One big private park has been opened near the airport but the admission charge is NT$20 (US 50 cents), almost as much as a movie. The city has a stadium and baseball park. New tennis courts are under construction. A privately owned indoor sports arena seats 15,000. Several small playgrounds for children have been opened. Bowling alleys and skating rinks have been privately constructed. Swimming pools are both private and public. There is one golf course in the city and two of Asia's most scenic courses are within 45 minutes' drive.

Taipei is the cultural center of Taiwan, serving all Chinese who are free to express a preference and practice the Chinese way of life. Within the city limits is the biggest single collection of Chinese art treasures in the world. The National Palace Museum in a northern foothill setting has nearly a quarter of a million masterpieces of porcelain, painting, jade, calligraphy, bronze, tapestry and manuscripts. Museums of History and Natural Science are to be found under the shadow of tall office buildings. The leading libraries and universi­ties are in Taipei. Overseas Chinese and foreign students come for their advanced schooling. This is the seat of the Chinese opera and the modern theater, and of both Chinese classical and Western music. There are symphony orchestras and the studios of the three television networks. Movie studios are here. The new Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall is the world's leading center of Chinese cultural renaissance and Confucian-based political thought.

Statistics provide some indication of Taipei's cultural importance to free China. Two-thirds of Taiwan's mass communications organs are concen­trated here, including 16 of 32 newspapers and more than 1,000 periodicals. There are 910 publishing houses and 18 radio stations. Radio sets number half a million and TV sets well over a quarter of a million. A third of the population is attending classes at 23 colleges and universities, 97 middle schools and 103 primary schools. Churches and temples number 753. Every major faith and nearly every important denomination is represented. Sixty-two hospitals and 1,231 clinics have 5,274 beds. Medical costs are among the lowest in the world for the best of Chinese or Western care.

Not surprisingly, tourists tend to devote most of their time to Taipei. Not that the big city is the only place worth seeing, but Taipei is where the action is, where wealth and power are concen­trated and where 2 million people have congregated. Taipei does not have everything, but it does have more of most things. Here are the biggest hotels, providing every amenity. Connoisseurs of Chinese food regard the Taipei selection as the best in the world and offering the most provincial and regional specialties. Shopping is good and so is security. The streets are as safe to walk by night or day as those of any other city, town or hamlet in Taiwan province.

Former Mayor Henry Kao once said he wanted to make Taipei "a garden city where sunshine abounds and the people take pleasure in life and work." The goal is yet to be achieved. But Mayor Chang and the people of Taiwan are making progress. People don't move to a city in such numbers if they think it's a poor place to live. One visitor to Taipei who had been to the mainland summed it up this way: "Peiping is quieter and Shanghai is bigger but Taipei is much more alive and interesting. No one with freedom of choice could possibly prefer either of the first two." Taipei's imperfections are those of a people who try. In mainland cities, the people are not conceded the right to make an effort of their own.