Royal guards at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei. — Photos: SANDIP HOR
“Chiang Kai-shek is our national hero; many from around the world visit Taiwan simply to know more about his eventful life and go through his legacies,” tells my guide Kim when we head towards the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, a landmark of Taiwan’s capital city, Taipei. It’s generally the first port of call for visiting world leaders, dignitaries and visitors like me who fancy world history.
Popped inside an expansive parkland, the octagon-shaped white-marble structure, with its pagoda-like blue glass roof, draws attention from a distance. The main hall which is reached via a series of 89 steps, the number matching the leader’s age when he died, houses a bronze statue of him guarded by grimly looking sentries who are replaced every hour in a rifle-twisting ceremony.
“This is just not a mausoleum but a site of pilgrimage for us,” states Kim. The long queue to enter the building testifies to his statement.
Below the hall is a museum, packed with well-collected memorabilia which not only provides valuable information about his life but also draws a nice picture of Taiwan’s history and growth under him. Spending time there I learn a lot about the man revered as the “Father of the Nation” in Taiwan like Gandhi in India or Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam.
We later visit his house where again a large crowd wandering outside testifies to his fame, even 47 years after his death in 1975.
Named by 16th-century Portuguese sailors as “Ilha Formosa” meaning “beautiful island”, Taiwan – a North-East Asian archipelago – since early 17th century has been successively ruled by the Dutch, Chinese and Japanese.
The Chiang Kai-shek Square is now known as Liberty Square.
At the end of World War II in 1945, the Chinese – then ruled by KMT party leader Chiang Kai-shek – regained control of the island sandwiched between the South China Sea and the Pacific Ocean and located nearly 160km away from the south-eastern coast of China. It hit the world headline in 1949 when Chiang, after losing the civil war to Mao Zedong’s Communist forces, left mainland China and set up his Republic of China government there in exile.
As Taiwan’s president for the next few decades, Chiang introduced political democracy and many social and economic reforms which made the nation one of the “Four Asian Tigers” alongside Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea.
Taipei is just not its political capital but also the epicentre of commerce, history and art. Beyond the Chiang Kai-shek memoirs, the city of around 2.7 million people boasts of several other touristy attractions from temples, memorials and world-class museums, not to mention many parklands, glittering shopping malls, striking night markets and exciting eating venues.
Chiang always dreamt to see Taipei as an ultramodern world city and when wandering through the city quarters its easily noticeable how his vision has turned into reality. The dazzling scale of the city’s development can be best eyed from the 89th floor of Taipei 101, a 508m-high tower which held the status of the world’s tallest building until 2010. The 360° vista of several architecturally astute skyscrapers, seen as far as eyes can go, portrays how the city has grown in recent times.
I follow the same routine, but after enjoying the vista from the tower, hike up several steps to the top of the adjacent Elephant Mountain to snatch a similar view of the city, this time with Taipei 101 dominating the skyline along with several other architecturally astute sky touching buildings.
While trundling down from the mountain, Kim mentions that when Chiang left the shores of mainland China, he had with him 10,000 boxes filled with varieties of the finest and most fragile artworks ranging from paintings and calligraphy to ornaments and potteries, as well as sculptures and rare books. It’s believed several boxes were lost in transit, but what could ultimately be recovered represents one of the best and rarest collections of Chinese art from the Neolithic age to the Qing dynasty.
Taipei 101 stands at 508m and was once the world’s tallest building.
Much of its now displayed inside 1965-opened National Palace Museum and includes rare paintings, porcelain vases, plates and bowls, bronze castings, calligraphy, books and documents. Many art lovers thank Chiang for bringing this art ensemble to Taiwan and making it public, otherwise they would have remained hidden in the vaults of Beijing’s Forbidden Palace.
His commentary makes me eager to delve into that sea of art there. However as expected, it’s impossible to see everything in one visit. So like many short-time visitors do, I browse through the highlights – one of them is a cabbage carved from jadeite, which uses the natural colours of the stone to create the vegetable.
While savouring the sights of Taipei, it strikes me if Chiang still commands the same level of admiration from Taiwanese people as he did earlier, despite noting large crowds at his memorial and outside his house. The thought hit my mind particularly when I discovered the name of the square around his memorial changed from Chiang Kai-shek Square to Liberty Square. His birthday, too, is no longer a public holiday.
“So is his popularity fading now with time?” I ask Kim when sipping coffee at the café inside the opulent Grand Hotel – the nation’s first five-star hotel where Chiang and his wife spent a lot of time entertaining important guests.
He doesn’t reply, thus leaving it to me to make my own views.
