Taiwan's largest city - Taipei, temporary seat of the National Government of the Republic of China - expanded its land area by four times and grew by more than 300,000 population the night of last June 30-July 1. The occasion was the incorporation into Greater Taipei of the suburban communities of Chinmei, Nankang, Mucha, Neihu, Shihlin and Peitou. Area was increased from 67 to 272 square kilometers (169 square miles) and population from 1.2 million to about 1,550,000. The expansion took place just one year after Taipei became a special city directly under the Executive Yuan and on an equal footing with Taiwan Province.
Mayor Henry Kao, who is now appointed by the President of the Republic, presided at a takeover ceremony in Taipei City Hall. Separate ceremonies were conducted in each of the suburban towns, which now take their places with Taipei's 10 other administrative districts. The new and larger city will have a trebled budget to cope with its growing pains - more than US$52 million in the 1968-69 fiscal year that began July 1 versus US$17 million or less in previous years. About 45 per cent of spending will be for education, including the nine-year program of free schooling that starts this fall.
Taipei is not an old city. Its origin goes back to around 1720, when the Chinese were beginning to move north into Taipei basin. At that time the site of the city was swamp and forestland inhabited by aborigines. Chinese farmers began to till the soil and trade with the natives. Trade was conducted at a place beside the Tamsui River that came to be known as Meng-chia, a phonetic imitation of the aborigine word for canoe. The aborigine people living along the upper reaches of the Tamsui and the tributary Hsintien brought their sweet potatoes and other trade goods to market in canoes.
Meng-chia grew more rapidly after the government opened the port of Tamsui to Chinese mainland trade in 1788. At that time the Tamsui River was navigable for ocean-going junks as far as Meng-chia, which was situated near the junction of the Tamsui and the Hsintien. A naval base was located at the town in 1808 and it became the seat of Taipei county in 1809. The aborigines were pushed back into the mountains; by 1820 only a few were left in the Taipei basin. Meng-chia had its heyday between 1820 and 1850. Trade grew rapidly and population rose to 5,000 households.
Silting of the Tamsui reduced Meng-chia's convenience as a trading post. Thereafter Chinese settlers became involved in a dispute that led to one group's withdrawal to a site just to the north. The new town - Ta-tao-cheng - was also beside the river and soon supplanted Meng-chia in trade volume. It was from here that the teas of Taiwan started moving out to the world after 1860. At one time as many as 4,000 girls were working in some 60 tea-processing factories. This was also the center for the shipment of camphor, another major export of the time. The final phase of early Taipei's growth carne with establishment of the so-called "inner city" east of Meng-chia and south of Ta-tao-cheng. The area was within city walls that were not torn down until Japanese times and was more suited to large buildings and broad streets than the older riverside locations. The inner city's development began about a quarter of a century after that of Ta-tao-cheng.
Taipei was made a prefecture in 1875 and the inner city become the site of the administrator's office. The city was linked to its port of Keelung by railroad in the late 1880s and was made the capital of Taiwan in 1891. The Japanese designated Taipei as the seat of the governor general's office when they assumed control in 1895. At that time the three parts of the city had a population of 47,000 - 50 per cent in Ta-tao-cheng, 42 per cent in Meng-chia and 8 per cent in the inner city. When the walls were torn down, the city gates were left as historical monuments. They still stand. The typhoon of August 1911, wreaked heavy destruction and led to the reconstruction of much of Taipei.
Mayor Kao reported on Taipei's recent progress on television, at a press conference and at the City Hall ceremonies. He said that much of the last year was spent on preparatory undertakings and that the city may not yet have the new look that citizens expect. Advances of the coming year will be more spectacular, he said, especially in traffic control, construction and drainage. He called attention to these developments:
-Improved equalization of urban land ownership under the principles laid down by Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the Founding Father of the Republic of China. Nearly 164,000 plots of land are undergoing re-evaluation and assessment.
-Construction of new schools and classrooms for the nine-year education program. Twenty-two additional junior high schools with 701 classrooms have been built and 33 more schools and nearly 1,800 classrooms will be constructed within the next three years.
-Three demonstration communities have been established and 10 more are planned in the six new administrative districts. More attention is being given to social welfare and relief in accord with Dr. Sun's Principle of the People's Livelihood.
-Improvement of environmental sanitation through the purchase of garbage trucks and increase in collection services. Eighty-one trucks were added last year.
-Construction of overhead pedestrian passages across busy intersections and the tiling of sidewalks in the downtown area and the Chungshan North Road shopping district. Thirteen of the pedestrian flyovers will be in use before the end of the year, several to serve schools. Newly opened is a bridge linking the center of the downtown area with the West Gate theater district. This structure has six access stairways and will assure the safe crossing of two streets and the mainline railroad tracks. Tens of thousands of people are using the structure daily.
-Expansion of the water supply.
-Additional police protection in the newly annexed townships.
Mayor Kao said that the city is giving itself only three years to become second to none in East Asia. Emphasis will be placed on improved transportation, environmental sanitation, slum clearance and beautification.
Taipei has been bursting its construction seams during the last three years. Before that growth was lackadaisical. Suddenly came the discovery that free Asia's fastest growing city was drastically under built. Risk capital went to work raising office buildings and big and small apartment projects. In 1960, the city didn't have any apartments worthy of the name. Today it has thousands, some of them high-rise structures. The standard height of ordinary multiple dwellings has risen from two to four stories.
(File photo)
Taipei construction volume for the 1967-68 fiscal year was estimated at US$75 million and the 1968-69 figure may be twice that. Contractors are being encouraged to use better materials and improve both architecture and appearance. An architectural commission will be established to review plans and specifications. In public housing, the city will spend nearly US$8 million on 5,117 units, mostly for dispossessed slum dwellers, in the current fiscal year. A more ambitious program will get under way next year. Forty thousand low-cost units are planned in four years.
Although Taipei has plenty of room in which to grow, its inhabitants - like those of most Asian cities - prefer living in the thick of things rather than commuting from the suburbs. This has raised land cost to the point where contractors are compelled to economize on green belts, streets, alleys and other open spaces. This will become one of the city's pressing problems in the years just ahead.
Public health expenditures will exceed US$12 million in the next four years. New hospitals will be built and old ones expanded. Clinics will be opened. The goal is a community in which no one will lack for health services, regardless of income. US$7 million is earmarked for improvement of environmental sanitation. Garbage and trash collection will be augmented, disposal modernized, and air and water pollution combatted. A sewerage system will be planned in a United Nations-sponsored study.
Markets of the city are old, small and not equipped for the sanitary handling of foodstuffs. About US$1.2 million will be spent for the construction of a new wholesale market with capacity of 300 tons of vegetables and fruit daily. Refrigeration and modern handling equipment will be installed. The city has only 19 major retail markets and some 50 new ones must be built. In 1946, a shop with 36 square feet of space served an average of 173 customers daily; today the figure is 385. A number of the new markets will be in the suburbs.
Biggest headache of all is transportation and traffic. The city has few north-south and east-west thoroughfares. Existing streets are mostly narrow. Not all of the new ones are as wide as they should be. A few years ago, Taipei had only a few buses and taxis and a handful of private cars to contend with. Most people traveled in pedicabs, on bicycles or on foot. Those coming in from the suburbs took the train or highway buses.
Thousands of taxis, hundreds of additional buses and scores of thousands of motorcycles and scooters have been dumped into the city since 1960. The only subtraction has been some 20,000 pedicabs and a few hundred ox-drawn carts and two-wheeled drays. Still slated for extinction are more than 11,000 three-wheeled carts. New powered vehicles are coming into use faster than carts and bicycles can be eliminated.
A number of street and highway projects are in progress, especially construction to improve transportation to the suburbs. Planned within the next year is a bridge across the Keelung River in the eastern part of the city. This will provide a north-south arterial to relieve the traffic jams on Chungshan North Road. Jenai Road, which runs east from the downtown section, will be Taipei's broadest and most beautiful boulevard when reconstruction is completed next year.
Taipei never had street cars. Its public transportation has depended on buses. For years the city had one of the world's lowest fares (only US2½ cents). But this meant lack of funds to buy new vehicles and to maintain old ones. The fare was raised to US3¾ cents about a year ago and the bus fleet was augmented to the present total of some 640. However, the rapid growth of Taipei has made this number grossly insufficient. Old buses have had to be kept in service. Waits of up to an hour must be borne by some bus passengers at rush hours. There isn't room for all who want to ride.
The city has decided to franchise at least five private bus companies. Each must have at least 100 new buses, parking space, maintenance shops and other facilities. Fifteen companies have applied. The top five together have more buses than the city, which plans an expansion to 1,000 vehicles. Not settled yet is the distribution of routes. This will be a thorny question; some routes are money makers and others are not.
Taipei has good rail connections to its port of Keelung to the northeast and to the cities of the northwest and southwest. Some suburban lines are also in operation. The problem is entry to the city. All tracks are on the surface, including the heavily traveled mainline that stretches from Keelung through Taipei to Kaohsiung in the south. The railroad station is in the heart of Taipei and many switching operations take place in yards located adjacent to it. One grade crossing on a north-south street just east of Chungshan North Road (which crosses the tracks on a viaduct) is blocked by trains for 12 hours out of every 24.
Three proposals have been made: to elevate the tracks, to put them underground or to remove them from the center of the city. The plan for elevation was strongly favored at first because of its economy and the release of surface space for sale or lease to business interests. Then elevation came under criticism in newspapers and from officials of the National Government as obsolete and disfiguring. It was suggested that a subway system might cost much more but that the sale or lease of the unimpeded surface right-of-way would bring a very large financial return. Removal is frowned upon because of inconvenience and the increased load such a solution would place on municipal transportation.
Inclusion of six satellite towns within Taipei gives the city an additional 170 square miles (File photo)
Even the airport is a problem. Taipei long has rejoiced in having one of the most centrally located airports in the world. From Sungshan International to the downtown area or to the Chungshan North Road shopping and hotel district is only a matter of 15 minutes. But the jumbo jets are coming and after that the supersonic transports. Runways can and will be lengthened, new aprons added and the terminal enlarged to take care of the jumbos. Not so the supersonics, which will bring a sonic boom that may be too much for the heavily populated, fast-growing northeastern part of the city. Tentative plans call for a new airport at Taoyuan about 15 miles west. Take-offs would be over sparsely populated areas and the sea.
Taipei will not be the loser, in any case. Sungshan will remain a close-in asset for increasing domestic flights. Or if the present airport were to be subdivided for residential and business use, it would probably bring a financial return sufficient to pay for the new field and expressway to the city. Regardless of what is finally done, Sungshan will continue to serve travelers for many years. The terminal is now being air-conditioned for the comfort of the nearly 1,000 passengers who pass through it daily.
Another sign of Taipei progress will be seen soon with the installation of parking meters along the west side of Chunghua Road where parking is now prohibited. Chunghua is a street of shops that was known as Haggler's Alley before new buildings were constructed along the railroad tracks. Just to the west is the theater district. Parking charge will be US$10 cents an hour. Still unsolved is the problem of what to do with Taipei's private cars as they outnumber parking space. The city's one large parking lot, located across from the railroad station, is to become a construction site. Some of the new office buildings and apartment structures are providing underground garage space.
The prosperity of Taipeilanders is reflected in their incomes. These are rising. In 1965 the city had only 27 citizens with "millionaire incomes" - NT$1,000,000 or US$25,000. By last year the figure had doubled. Affluence is also shown in the prices that some citizens are able to pay for housing. A unit of just under 2,000 square feet in one of the biggest apartment projects now under construction sells for US$17,500. Such a price tag would have been unthinkable only five years ago. Slightly smaller apartments in a nearby project cost US$12,500 and the buyer must pay for the interior finishing. Although still two or three months from completion, both apartment houses are sold out and have been for some time. Buildings in preferred locations frequently are half sold before the foundations are laid.
Culture is growing along with the city. The Taipei Municipal Symphony Orchestra has become a full-time professional organization under the city Bureau of Education. There will be 40 full-time and 30 part-time players. This is the island's second professional orchestra, joining the Taiwan Symphony. A municipal auditorium and concert hall are in the planning stage. So is a conservatory of music. Lovers of Chinese opera are looking forward to renaissance in that art, which is the principal indigenous drama of the Chinese people. Already undergoing expansion is the building of the National Palace Museum in suburban Taipei. This will double the number of art treasures that can be shown at one time. The museum, which has a collection of nearly a quarter of a million pieces, has been described as the greatest cultural asset of either Taipei and Taiwan.
Taipei has been criticized for its conglomerate architecture and its slowness to catch up with the times. Tourists like the city, however, as testified by about 350,000 (including 50,000 American GIs) who will come before the end of this year. Travelers enjoy Taipei's shopping, its nightlife, its exotic culture and a Chinese cuisine that is the world's best and most varied. They have overlooked the city's shortcomings to give Taiwan the fastest rate of tourism growth in Asia. Now some of the faults will be remedied. Taipei can look forward to the more attractive utilization of a pleasant setting that includes three rivers and hills rising to 2,000 feet. After 250 years of existence, the next 50 look like the city's best and most progressive. With the population already topping 1.5 million, Taipei's planners are blueprinting a future for from 2 to 2.5 million people. The question is whether they are thinking big enough and looking as far ahead as they should.