Taipei didn't look any different on July 1 than it had on June 30. But appearances can be deceiving. It was not the same city.
On June 30, Taipei residents went to bed as wards of the Taiwan Provincial Government. The city had no independent taxing powers. Tax revenue went to the Provincial Government and a sizable amount did not come back to the city in the form of much needed civic improvements and services. On July 1 the citizens woke up to find themselves masters within their own much enlarged city limits. Their taxes could be kept at home to benefit Taipei. Their highest authority had been changed from the Taiwan Provincial Assembly to the Executive Yuan (cabinet) of the National Government.
Taipei had become the 13th special city of the Republic of China to rank with such great metropolises as Shanghai, Nanking, Peiping, and Canton. Its status had been made co-equal with that of the province in which it is situated. Six satellite towns were incorporated in Greater Taipei to raise the population close to the 1 ½ million mark. The same mayor-Henry Kao-sat in the chief administrator's chair, but now he was the appointee of President Chiang Kai-shek.
Taipei Mayor Henry Kao. (File photo)
It was President Chiang who set the keynote of the change as he swore in Mayor Kao, a Taiwan-born leader who had been elected chief of the Taipei city government in 1964. The President said status as a special municipality would help Taipei to modernize more rapidly and at the same time to fulfill its responsibilities as the nation's wartime capital. The National Government has had its seat in Taipei since the 1949 Communist usurpation on the Chinese mainland. President Chiang said two of the most pressing problems facing the city are urban land equalization to check soaring property prices and the extending of free education from six to nine years without competitive examination.
Vice Premier S.K. Huang presided at Taipei elevation ceremonies attended by more than 2,000 dignitaries. He predicted that the change would augment the prosperity of the province as well as of Taipei. The vice premier handed over to Mayor Kao the great seal of the special city. The mayor then told the gathering in the City Hall auditorium that he would work for urban land equalization, the nine-year education program, and these additional advances:
—Improved traffic conditions and more roads.
—Zoning and constructive use of vacant land.
—Establishment of more parks and civic beautification.
—Better drainage and environmental sanitation.
—Social welfare for the city's people.
—Promotion of civic assets that will help attract tourists.
Taipei's city council of 60 members has been held over until next year, when new elections will be held. Under regulations laid down by the Executive Yuan, the new legislature will have 35 members for the first million of population and an additional councilman for each 50,000 over one million. This is expected to mean 44 seats in the first new council. One-seventh of those elected must be women.
Increase in Area
Old Taipei had an area of 67 square miles. The New Taipei has an extent of 276 square miles-sort of a junior Los Angeles set down on a subtropical island off the coast of China. Administratively, the new Special City has a Secretariat; Bureaus of Civil Administration, Finance, Economics, Education, Police and Public Construction; Social Security and Sanitation Boards; and Information, Personnel, and Controller's Offices. Beginning next year, the city will have its own bank.
Historically speaking, Taipei is a relatively new city. At the beginning of the 18th century, the site was swamp and forest land. As trade sprang VP between aborigines and Chinese settlers, sweet potatoes was the principal medium of exchange. Trading was carried on at Mengchia (now called Wanhua), the oldest market in the Taipei area. The word is a phonetic version of the aboriginal word Manka, meaning "canoe". Aborigines living upstream had to take canoes to reach the trading place, hence the name.
Taipei after Japanese occupation in 1895. The city's oldest business district, Manka, is now called Wanhua in Mandarin. Tataocheng, the island's largest tea processing center, was renamed Yenping North Road after World War II. The Inner City was surrounded by brick walls until the first few years of the Japanese administration. (File photo)
The Mengchia trading post was located at the junction of the Tamsui and Hsintien Rivers. By 1788, the Chinese government had developed a port at the mouth of the Tamsui. Junks from the Chinese mainland sailed up the stream to trade at Mengchia. By 1809 the trading post had become the scat of Taipei county. The period from 1820 to 1850 was a golden one for Mengchia, which had 5,000 households to qualify as a rival of Tainan in the south. However, the Tamsui River silted up and in the 1851 to 1861 period Chinese settlers fell out among themselves. Some of them moved a short distance north and built a settlement called Tataocheng, which means an open space for drying rice. The new area began to prosper. As the tea trade increased Tataocheng grew and prospered. More than 60 tea-processing factories employed from 3,000 to 4,000 girls. Camphor also was an important export. The tea business continued to grow under the Japanese; by 1915 the factories numbered 100. But Tamsui silting was continuing. Thereafter commercial activities were concentrated in the Inner City east of Mengchia and south of Tataocheng.
Capital Since 1891
The Chinese government made Taiwan a prefecture in 1875 and chose the Inner City as the seat of the administrator's office. At last Taipei was in a position to surpass Tainan. When Taiwan was made a Chinese province in 1885, the governor's official residence and other government offices were built in the Inner City. China's very first railroad connected Taipei with Keelung in the north and Hsinchu in the south. In 1891, Taipei was officially designated as the capital of Taiwan. The Japanese came in 1895 and likewise accepted Taipei as the political, social, and cultural center of the island. At that time the city had a population of 47,000 - 50 per cent in Tataocheng, 42 per cent in Mengchia, and 8 per cent in the Inner City.
Japanese colonizers regarded Taipei's prospects as good. The city gates were left as historical monuments. Otherwise, extensive rebuilding took place. Typhoons-such as that of 1911—provided plenty of opportunity. Taipei was the administrative center throughout the 50-year Japanese stay in Taiwan. The city became one of the nerve centers for Japan's advance into the South China Sea. As such, it was attacked by American bombers. Shelters are still to be seen in tens of thousands of Taipei backyards.
After retrocession to China in 1945, Taipei was divided into ten administrative districts, including 225 roads and streets plus 2,831 lanes and sub-lanes. (File photo)
Today's Taipei is a city in search of solutions to a number of growing problems: traffic, drainage and flood control, water supply, land utilization, zoning, schools, parks, social and cultural development, slum clearance and social welfare, police and fire protection, and the ceaseless flow of people from the countryside.
Engineers have called Taipei's traffic pattern one of the world's most complicated. The number of four-wheeled vehicles is not high—only about 40,000. Two and three-wheeled vehicles provide the complication. They number hundreds of thousands-bicycles, scooters, motorcycles, handcarts, and tricycle pedicabs and peditrucks. The city's main streets have been constructed with special lanes for bicyclists, but the usefulness and safety of the slow traffic lane has been largely destroyed by the incursion of the small powered cycles. Authorities claim that the Taiwan traffic toll is the world's highest for the number of vehicles.
Some Improvement
Steps already taken to improve traffic conditions include reduction of the number of pedicabs, looking toward elimination; a requirement of examinations and licenses for the operators of small motorcycles; improved street engineering and traffic control; tighter enforcement of regulations and stiffer penalties for offenders. More of the same is in store. The city now will have more money for traffic projects and augmented policing.
Three rivers flow through Taipei. Typhoons sometimes bring downpours of several inches in a few hours. When that happens, low-lying areas of the city are flooded. Minor flooding may result from a summer thundershower. Drainage ditches must be enlarged and kept free of silt and debris. More should be dug. All this costs money.
Taipei has outgrown its rivers as a source of domestic water. An additional supply is being pumped from deep wells. More people and improved environmental sanitation are increasing the demand faster than the supply. Summer shortages are chronic in some neighborhoods.
The city always has seemed to have plenty of land and still has growing room. However, some choice land has been kept idle, presumably for purposes of speculation. Little attention has been given to zoning. Businesses, industries, and residential areas are all mixed up in a crazy-quilt pattern that the new special city must try to sort out.
Schools under construction will be inadequate to accommodate the increase in pupils under the nine-year education program. Money must be found for more. Many parts of the city are without parks, although green-belt space has been set aside. Squatter shacks are a familiar eyesore. Police are not sufficiently mobile and their communications are poor. Fire equipment is obsolescent and pieces are too few.
Attractions, Too
These problems are not so different from those faced by cities all over the world. However, the high pace of population growth has made the Taipei burden heavier than that born by most other urban centers. Obviously, not everything about Taipei is wrong. Its attractions for newcomers must be real enough.
Incorporation of six satellite towns within Taipei gives the city an area equivalent to two per cent of the whole of Taiwan. (File photo)
Taipei City has a picturesque hill—girt location. Some critics have called the city drab, not without reason. Architectural styles are mixed up and some are lacking in either imagination or beauty. However, some new buildings interestingly combine Chinese and western styles. The skyline is pushing upward and the city is bulging outward.
What Taipei lacks in looks it more than makes up for in bustle. Maybe it doesn't swing in the London way. But there is plenty of action by both day and by night. Culturally, it is the island's center. Business also has been concentrated in Taipei, although Kaohsiung—200 miles to the south and Taiwan's second largest city at around 600,000 people—has as much or more industry. The Taipei count was 1,700 factories, 10,000 companies, and 22,000 stores and shops before the six suburban towns were added. Taiwan's only international airport is a mere 15 minutes' drive from the heart of Taipei, yet has a strip that can be lengthened to accommodate the supersonic jets. Keelung harbor less than 25 miles to the northeast is the island's second largest port after Kaohsiung. Taipei's shipping needs have increased to a point where the reopening of Tamsui on the northwestern tip of the island is under study.
Some 30 universities, colleges, and junior colleges have their campuses in Taipei. The biggest and best equipped are National Taiwan University, National Chenchi University, and the Provincial Normal University. Several centers for Chinese language studies are operating, including one administered by Stanford University to service several American universities. Primary schools total about 150 and junior and senior high schools another 100. The Laosung primary school with 10,000 pupils is one of the world's largest.
Outstanding Temples
Parks in the central area include New Park and the Botanical Gardens. A city zoo is located on the near northside, and next door is a kiddieland amusement park. Nearby Peitou and Yangmingshan have sulfur springs. Yangmingshan is one of the island's most natural and popular parks. Located in the cooler hills just to the north of the city, it is a mecca for hundreds of thousands when cherry blossoms and azeleas bloom in the spring. Boating and swimming can be had at Pitan (Green Lake) just to the south.
Temples of Taipei are favored by both residents and tourists. Outstanding are the Buddhist Lungshan temple and the Confucian temple, both in the heart of the city, and the Taoist Chihnan temple at suburban Mucha. Colorful ceremonies are held on a number of occasions during the year. On Confucius' birthday September 28, his temple is the scene of a dance that young boys are still performing just as they did 2,500 years ago.
Hotel accommodations of Taipei are excellent. Rates are lower than in Japan and about the same as in Hongkong. Nearly 3,000 rooms are available. More hostelries are under construction to take care of a tourist increment of about 35 per cent annually. Some 250,000 tourists are expected this year. The Grand Hotel on a hill overlooking the city is built in Chinese palace style and is acknowledged to be one of Asia's best in appearance, comfort, and service. Each of the three largest hotels (Mandarin, President and Ambassador) has more than 300 rooms.
Chinese cuisines of a dozen provinces are served regularly at hotels and in the city's many modern restaurants. Taipei is without a peer among the cities of the world in the wide variety of its Chinese food. Prices are low. There are three theater restaurants that have floor shows lasting from an hour to two hours as well as excellent food. Night life hums. There are dance halls, cabarets, the Chinese equivalent of the Japanese geisha establishments, and the ubiquitous coffee houses. Taipei austerity is a thing of the past. If the city lacks for anything, that shortage is not readily apparent.
Taipei's greatest responsibility in the modern era is to be found in its role as the seat of the National Government. As President Chiang has attested, this is a principal reason for promotion to special city status. In time to come, Taipei will no longer be host to the National Government, which will return to Nanking when the mainland is liberated. But at that time the Provincial Government presumably will move back to Taipei from a suburb of Taichung, 100 miles to the south, where it was transferred a decade ago.
City in a Hurry
Taiwan is on its way to becoming a metropolis in a hurry. The population was 271,754 at the end of the Japanese period less than 22 years ago. The exact figure at special city elevation was given as 1,459,103. Greatness does not necessarily equate with numbers. Only time will tell whether Taipei is to become a great city with a distinctive flavor all its own. However, both growth and the new special city status attest that Taipei has possibilities. One of old Asia's newest cities has already become one of the area's most interesting and important centers of modern Chinese life.