All articles filed in Urban Exploration & Exhibitions

As Northern Taiwan cools down, sun-seeking Taipei-ren head down South for the weekend, and that was my plan for this one. It was a great plan, one which included snorkeling with sea turtles down on Xiao Liuqiu island off the coast of Pingtung.

If Taiwan had a national pastime, shopping would be it. To say that our cities are filled with shopping districts is an understatement. In some parts of Taipei, for example, it’s impossible to state with any real certainty where one particular shopping district ends and the next one begins.

Taiwan might not yet have the summer open-air music-festival culture of Europe, nor do its major cities yet boast the 24/7, all-genres-all-the-time live-music culture of aural hubs such as New York, London, or Berlin. However, recent years have witnessed a surge in the number of fests, which are being put on all over the island. …

Ella Fitzgerald famously sang “Summertime and the living’s easy.”  But the combined heat and humidity in Taiwan’s capital city can sometimes make leisure of the outdoor variety a chore, and unless you plan to spend your daylight hours underground (totally possible in Taipei; the mall under Taipei Station heads north for about a mile), you’ll have to face the heat.

If you want to know more in general about a foreign place, you want to ask a local. If you want to know more about the culture and history of a foreign place, you want to ask a local expert. Travel in Taiwan recently did just this, paying local historian Zhuang Yong-ming a visit to learn more about one of Taipei City’s oldest districts, Dadaocheng, before going on an exploration tour of the area.