July 2

Where we are staying in Taipei is right next to some of the major attractions. One of the most well-known is the Chaing Kai-Shek memorial park. This is a huge park with gardens around the perimeter and then a huge memorial building in the middle on one end and the National Theater and National Recital Hall on the other end. It also has a huge main gate. 

We started our visit with the memorial building. The top of that building has a giant statue of Chaing Kai-Shek sitting in a chair. It reminds me a lot of the Abraham Lincoln memorial in Washington DC. By the sides of the statue are two guards who stand at attention without moving or talking or showing any facial expressions while they are on duty. Then, on the hour, two new guards come to replace them and there is a 10 minute ceremonial march thing that they do for the switch. It was cool to see and think about this country’s military history and the important role it has played in the freedoms they now experience. After watching them switch the guards, we went downstairs to a museum that they have about the life of Chaing Kai-Shek. 

So very briefly (and based on my limited understanding), Chaing Kai-Shek was one of the military leaders that helped with Sun Yat Sun in establishing a republic in China. They overthrew the last emperor and stopped the pattern of having emperors and family dynasties rule the nation. However, just a few years after they started the Republic of China, the Japanese came in and took over much of China. Chaing Kai-Shek was the main general in leading the revolution against the Japanese and with the end of WWII, China was able to gain its independence again. Chaing Kai-Shek became the president at the time, but then there were two parties in China that had very different ideas about what the government should look like – Chaing Kai-Shek party called the KMT and the Communist Party. There were some initial military clashes between the two parties and for a while the KMT seemed to be the dominate ones. However, with Mao Zi Dong, the Communists grew in power and started taking over more and more parts of the country. I am not entirely sure why, but the United States ended up backing the Communists. I think they saw Chaing Kai-Shek as to much of a dictator, which is interesting given the way that politics in Taiwan has turned out (right now very much a republic) compared to China. Anyway, as the Communists were taking over more and more parts of China, Chaing Kai-Shek kept moving the government and the countries gold and art south to places where the KMT had more strength. Eventually though they had to leave the country and went to Taiwan. At first their plan was to recoup in Taiwan and then return to take the entire nation back, but after a while the focus just turned to establishing Taiwan as its own independent nation. So Chaing Kai-Shek was the last leader of the Republic of China and the first president of Taiwan. I think he ended up serving four terms as president before he decided to retire from political life. He died at 89. It is interesting that depending on what we read, we get a slightly different picture of whether Chaing Kai-Shek was a good guy or a bad guy. Of course the museum gave a very positive overview of his life, but I can tell that the people who wrote our guidebook don’t like him very much. 

After walking around the museum some we went out into the gardens. We watched the turtles and Koi and found bridges to walk over and short tunnels to walk through. 

We were there for a couple of hours before heading to the National Botanical Gardens. We didn’t get to go inside any of the greenhouses because they were all closed on Mondays, but the outdoor gardens were extensive and very fun to walk through. 

That evening we went to a smaller night market that is not too far away from our house. The children tried some custard pucks that were filled with cheese and sausage and they loved those. 

On our way home we found the outdoor track for the college that we are right next to. It seemed to be very popular at night time. There were lots of people jogging and walking on the track, some that were just sitting and watching, and then others that were playing tennis or basketball on the courts right next to it. Christian and Ethan decided to do two laps and Agnes even did one. I ran the first one with Agnes and the second one with the boys. I was surprised at how fast Agnes was! She did a legit run for the first 2/3 of the track (it was a ¼ mile track) and was fast enough that I had to do a serious jog to keep up. Then, for the last 1/3 she slowed down a bit, but kept a full jog going until the end. It was so funny to see her short little legs moving so fast and to see her pass up some of the adults that were doing a slow jog.

The memorial from a distance.



Some of the gardens around the memorial. There was a group of ladies here playing some drums.




























The children found a turtle.



At the botanical gardens.

















This is the place we are staying in. We are the second floor right above the yellow garage. The bedrooms are up on the second floor and the kitchen and bathroom are on the first floor in the back. The front is a hair salon.


Some more stinky tofu that we tried at the night market.


The custard pucks with hot dogs in them.


A shaved noodle place with a robot shaver.