Taipei
(1998 pop. 2.6 million). Taipei is the largest city on Taiwan and, since 1949, has been the capital of the Republic of China (the Chinese state that does not recognize Beijing's sovereignty). Located at the far north of Taiwan island, in the basin of the Tamshui, Keelung, and Takokan rivers, it is a major commercial and political center, with a wide range of businesses, cultural institutions, and temples.
In 1885, the ruling Chinese Qing dynasty (1644–1912) declared Taiwan a separate province, and Taipei, a city formed from earlier Chinese and aboriginal settlements,became its capital. During the Japanese colonial rule over Taiwan (1895–1945), Japanese relationships with Taipei's Chinese population varied between repression of nationalism and accommodation to some political aspirations of the emergent middle-class elites. When Taiwan reverted to Chinese rule in 1945, tensions with the new Chinese Nationalist governor, Chen Yi, led Taipei to become a major center of the February 28th Incident of 1947, during which the city-dwellers' mass protests against the Nationalist government were put down with some brutality. After 1949, Taipei became the "temporary" capital of the administration of Chiang Kai-shek (1887–1975). During this period, Taipei benefited from the economic boom in East Asia, and became a prosperous city. After Chiang's death, Taiwan democratized, and Taipei's mayoralty was held for the first time by an opposition politician, Chen Shui-bian, in 1994–1998.
The monumental gate at the Chiang Memorial in Taipei. (MACDUFF EVERTON/CORBIS)Taipei's architecture reflects the city's stages of development. Little is left from the pre-1895 era, but the Japanese period has bequeathed many colonial baroque buildings, including National Taiwan University and the Presidential Office Building. From the 1950s, many undistinguished concrete buildings were hastily erected, a process aided by Taipei's lack of planning laws, but since the 1980s, greater care has been taken to build more sympathetically, with many new buildings, such as the Central Rail Station and the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial, incorporating traditional Chinese architectural themes.
Taipei's environment is marked by heavy pollution. Until the early 1980s, highly polluting soft coal was burned without effective restrictions, and Taipei's position in a basin exacerbated the resulting smog. Taipei's relative decline as a manufacturing center reduced emissions (between 1954 and 1986, the proportion of Taiwan's industrial workers based in Taipei fell by half to under 8 percent), and the city authorities have attempted to cut motor vehicle traffic by building a mass transit rail system.
Further Reading
Chen Chiang-siang. (1956) The City of Taipei. Taipei, Taiwan: Fu-min Geographical Institute of Economic Development.
Helms, Bernd Hans-Gerd, and Linda Chih-ling Hou, eds. (1996) Insight Guides: Taiwan. Hong Kong: APA Publications.
Lai Tse-han, Ramon H. Myers, and Wei Wou. (1991) A Tragic Beginning: The Taiwan Uprising of February 28, 1947. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Selya, Roger Mark. (1995) Taipei. Chichester, U.K., and New York: John Wiley.
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