Taiwan Today

Many of those who live or work in Taipei City like to think of Yangming Mountain on the city’s northeastern edge as a huge backyard garden where they can escape from the stresses of city life and relax. Denizens of the capital city know that after just a short drive, they can reach a number of scenic spots, hot springs, outstanding restaurants or Yangmingshan National Park. Earlier this year, however, the city government’s Department of Cultural Affairs began recommending that in addition to stopping at such attractions, visitors might want to consider spending a few hours at four historical buildings along or near Yangde Boulevard, the main road connecting the city and the Yangming Mountain area.

The first of the historic buildings is the Shihlin Official Residence, which served as the home of former President Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石, 1887–1975) and the first family for a quarter of a century until Chiang passed away. The grounds originally hosted a horticultural experimental station set up by the Japanese, Taiwan’s colonial rulers from 1895 to 1945. After the departure of the Japanese, the Taiwan Provincial Government used several structures on the property as guest accommodations. In the late 1940s, architect Yang Cho-cheng (楊卓成) redesigned the complex to serve as the home of the first family, a role it took on in 1950. In 2005, the residence was designated as a national historic monument by the Ministry of the Interior.

More than a Home

When the first family lived at the Shihlin Official Residence, the property was heavily fortified and closed to the public. The dwelling was more than a home, however, as it also served as a place where many important political matters were decided. It is said, for example, that the decision to hold Taiwan’s first county-level election in 1950 was made there. In addition, government officials often used the residence to meet and host visiting foreign dignitaries.

Most of the residence—including the garden, the Victory Chapel where the first family attended religious services, the Ciyun Pavilion built to memorialize Chiang’s mother and the Xinlan Pavilion where family members celebrated birthdays—was opened to the public in 1996, although the two-story Western-style main mansion was still off-limits to the public at that time. It was not until 2011, after five years of restoration, that the mansion’s first floor, including the dining room, living room and recreation room, were opened. The second floor’s bedrooms and study opened this year.

Occupying an area of 9.28 hectares, the Shihlin Official Residence features two main areas: the mansion and the garden. Each year in late February, there is a rose festival held in the garden, as the rose was the favorite flower of Chiang’s wife. The residence’s European-style rose garden is home to more than 5,000 roses belonging to more than 200 species. The garden is also home to a chrysanthemum show—one of the largest in Taiwan—in November and December each year.

A short drive from the Chiang residence takes one to Soochow University and the Chien Mu House, the second historic building recommended by the city government. Chien Mu (錢穆, 1895–1990) is considered one of the greatest 20th-century Chinese historians, philosophers and educators. Chien actually received little education in schools but gained his knowledge through traditional home study instead. He began teaching in universities in mainland China in the 1920s and in 1949 arrived in Hong Kong, where he co-founded New Asia College. He later received honorary doctorates from both Yale University and Hong Kong University.

In 1967, then-President Chiang invited the scholar to relocate to Taiwan and sweetened the offer with the gift of what would become the Chien Mu House, which had been designated for use as a guesthouse. Chien accepted the president’s offer and began working in Taiwan as a freelance academic, performing research and giving lectures at universities until he retired from teaching in 1984.

Chien named his residence the Sushu Building to commemorate his mother, as the building she had lived in was called Sushu Hall. The maple trees that form a corridor from the gate to the building, as well as the bamboo and tea trees in the yard, were all planted by Chien and his wife.

The two-story Sushu Building is actually not very big. The living room occupying the larger part of the first floor served as a classroom where many learned from the master, while the second floor contains a bedroom and the study where Chien completed more than 50 books and numerous articles on Chinese classics, history and Confucian philosophy. The building’s simple furniture reflects its owner’s disciplined lifestyle.

Chien and his wife lived in the Sushu Building for 22 years until opposition legislators began claiming that the residence constituted the illegal occupation of public land. The uproar convinced the couple to move and the house was subsequently left uninhabited and untended for several years. It was not until 1992 that the residence was reopened by the Taipei Public Library and converted into a memorial hall. The city government then renovated the property and named it the Chien Mu House in 2001. It is currently managed by the Taipei Municipal University of Education.

The original inhabitant of the third recommended residence on the flanks of Yangming Mountain was editor, inventor and writer Lin Yu-tang (林語堂, 1895–1976), who wrote 35 books and numerous essays in English and Chinese, compiled a Chinese-English dictionary and invented the first Chinese typewriter. In addition to those achievements, Lin is probably even better known as the “Master of Humor,” as he was the first to translate the Western conception of the word “humor” into Chinese. Lin introduced the concept in mainland China in the 1920s.

For a large part of his life, Lin traveled abroad. “No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow,” he wrote. In his 70s, Lin decided to look for that old, familiar pillow in Taiwan. He returned home in 1966 and resided on the island for the last years of his life.

The aptly named Lin Yu-tang House was designed by Lin himself and integrates Chinese architectural principles and Western aesthetics, with notable features including blue tiles, white walls, arches and winding corridors. In his description of the house, Lin wrote: “In the dwelling there is a garden, in the garden there is a house, in the house there is a courtyard, in the courtyard there is a tree, on the tree there is the sky, in the sky there is the moon, what a fortunate life!”

When Lin passed away, his wife passed the house along with the scholar’s book collection, original manuscripts and various other items to the Taipei City Government, which turned the property into the Lin Yu-tang Memorial Library in 1985. Parts of the residence were subsequently used to house an exhibition room and café. The site reopened in 2002 as the Lin Yu-tang House.

One must-see part of the residence is the room where models, photos and early plans for some of Lin’s inventions are showcased. The most impressive invention on display is likely Lin’s prototype Chinese typewriter, or Fast Typewriter, as he named it. Using the Instant Index System Lin created, the machine allowed users to type up to 50 words per minute with minimal training. After Lin made the prototype in 1947, however, the typewriter became a victim of the Chinese Civil War, as no manufacturer was willing to put it into production in a time of such social unrest. Later, the typewriter’s patented keyboard design, which relies on 64 keys to “spell out” 90,000 Chinese characters, was used by US-based IBM Corp. and Itek Corp. in electronic translators. After Lin passed away, Taiwan’s MiTAC Inc. also devised a Chinese character input method based on Lin’s Instant Index System, which is now one of the most commonly used Chinese computer input methods worldwide.

Different Philosophies Toward Life

After Lin and Chien Mu returned to Taiwan and took up residence below Yangming Mountain, they became good friends. The two, however, had quite different philosophies toward life. While Chien led a very disciplined existence, Lin preferred a more leisurely lifestyle, an attitude reflected in one of his quotes: “If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live.”

The fourth recommended home is located further up Yangde Boulevard near the main parking lot of Yangmingshan National Park. A small alley leads from the parking area to the Grass Mountain Chateau, which was built by the Taiwan Sugar Corp. in 1920 to host Japanese Crown Prince Michinomiya Hirohito, who later became Emperor Showa, during his stay in Taiwan. When the Nationalist government moved from mainland China to Taiwan in 1949, the Grass Mountain Chateau became the first presidential residence, and the Chiang family lived there for several months. After the first family moved to the Shihlin Official Residence, Chiang used the Grass Mountain Chateau, which is built upon a strategic high point, as a summer retreat.

The chateau’s main building is a Japanese-style structure, while four subsidiary buildings were designed as guard residences. Like the Shihlin Official Residence, Grass Mountain Chateau was left uninhabited for a number of years after Chiang passed away. In 2002 the Taipei City Government designated the structure as a historic building and restored it before opening it to the public the following year. Much of the main building, including the guest rooms, living room, reception room and study, was maintained in the original state, while the four subsidiary buildings were opened to artists to use as exhibition spaces.

Unfortunately, most of the main building’s original structure and many of the exhibits were destroyed in a fire in 2007. In order to restore the old chateau to its original appearance, the city government invited a group of academics specializing in the preservation of historic structures and experts in Japanese architecture to draw up a restoration plan. In 2011, the chateau was reopened as a historical site, although all of its exhibits—including clothes, pictures and documents—are now replicas, thanks to the fire. In addition to history, Grass Mountain Chateau focuses on the arts, culture and ecology, while an on-site café serves tea, coffee and several of Chiang’s favorite dishes.

Either by coincidence or due to the attractiveness of the mountainous, forested neighborhood, three important figures in Taiwan’s history chose the Yangde Boulevard area as their home. A stop at their old residences, where important political decisions were made, scholarly discussions were conducted and tens of thousands of words were written, adds the unique flavor of history to any trip to the Yangming Mountain area.

Write to Jim Hwang at cyhuang03@mofa.gov.tw