Headstones Tour 2009 Part 1 Taipei Taiwan

Tombstone Tour 2009
Part 1 Taipei

Our Headstone, Monument and Memorial tour through Asia began in Taipei, Taiwan in late February of this year. Fellow travelers John Provines, AICA and Leland Longstreth, AICA met me at the Narita Airport in Japan where we caught a flight to Taipei. After the 10+ hour flight to Narita the 4 hour flight to Taiwan was a breeze for me.

We arrived at the airport late Monday night after losing a day crossing the International Date Line and also a night’s sleep. We were met at the airport by John’s friend Joe Fang, a businessman and close friend of John’s brother. He took us to our hotel and we made arrangements to meet him early the next morning for a tour of the city. We are excited to see our first examples of Chinese headstones and our first custom headstone display in Taipei.

Taipei is noticeably hurting from the Global Economic Crisis however that was not evident from the thousands of motor scooters filling the streets. In Taipei as in many Asian countries, traffic moves like molasses. Nothing stops but there is a slow dance between the wide variety of vehicles and the constant obstructions. We never saw any road rage and all drivers seem to show a high regard for the other guy. Virtually no one uses turn signals and grandmas can cross the street against traffic without any problem.

We first visited The Grand Hotel, built 1952 at the request of Chaing Kai-Shek. It is a magnificent building, commandingly perched on one of the hills surrounding the city of Taipei. One of the great hotels of the world, The Grand overwhelms you with its size and grandeur. A standard room goes for $400.00 per night.

From there we travelled to the Taiwan Armed Forces Cemetery in the hills about 30 km outside of Taipei. This was a remote site (many Asian cemeteries, and headstone grave sites are high on otherwise unusable hills) with beautiful vistas in every direction. The huge, immaculately maintained grounds are managed by the government and the memorials were on large plots with uniform monuments of concrete, marble or gray granite and inlayed black plates with names and dates. Most plots are companions with room for the spouse.

Our next stop was at the Taipei 101 which is currently the tallest completed building in the world. The Burj Dubai is now taller but since it is not completed it doesn’t count. The Taipei 101 (509 meters or 1670 ft) was eclipsed in height once the Burj Dubai rose above 141 stories since the 101 also has a huge tower above the occupied floors. The building is designed to resemble a stalk of bamboo. After we paid the $12.00 US fee (approx. 400 Taiwan Dollars) we were able to go to the observatory and get a peek-a-boo view of this foggy city of over 10,000,000 people

Taipei 101 is earthquake and typhoon proof according to its builders. One of the most interesting parts of the building is the huge 800 ton counterweight sphere that is cradled on the 94th floor.

This damper can eliminate over 40% of the building’s movement. We had full access to the building since there were almost no tourists. Maybe it was the cloudy weather or was it the Global Economic Crisis again?

We then travelled back into the city where we were invited to tour Digimax, a startup company that is perfecting the first commercial 3-D video format that doesn’t require special glasses. We watched several videos that really appeared to jump about 12” out in front of the screen. The company will market first to airports and shopping malls where they will show advertising videos to passersby. I was impressed by all the thirtyish PhD’s who were part of the company that is developing the technology.

On our second day we visited the National Palace Museum. This museum was one of the most interesting I have ever seen. It began in the Forbidden City in Beijing in 1925 with treasures stored in the emperor’s palace. Its over 600,000 items were moved into the center of China in 1931 to hide them from the Japanese invasion. In 1949 the whole collection was moved to Taiwan to protect it from the communist forces taking over from the Nationalist government. In 1965 this museum was built to house the collection of artifacts dating from 6000 BC.

Stone carvings, calligraphy, bronzes, weapons, paintings, tapestries, curio boxes and timepieces that were collected by past emperors are available for close scrutiny. We had a marvelous time looking at the wonderful artwork produced by Chinese artists and craftspeople. The place was full of school children discovering their heritage. It did seem a little unfair that Taiwan got all these cultural treasures yet most Chinese people will never be able to see them.
After a super lunch at a quaint old restaurant we visited an old Chinese cemetery.

Actually this place was huge, just like a city of tombs and headstones. Several square miles of headstone memorials built on the sides of a valley. A unique monument style with the majority of the structure made of concrete and then sheathed with _" granite or marble. Often the headstones were only a raised tomb in the center of the grave space, and the body is covered with a slab and allowed to disintegrate. Later, some families resurrect the bones and either place them in a large vase or have them cremated and then put into the common family grave. Then they just use a marble or granite plaque added to a wall on the gravesite.

It was difficult getting around because there are few roads and sometimes narrow pathways between the graves.

People actually live here and any work that needs to be done on the tombs they do for a fee. It must be incredibly difficult to get granite slabs up and down the steep hillsides by hand and mixing and pouring concrete by hand would be a real chore. We were all glad we didn’t have to make any monuments or headstones for this cemetery.

We didn’t see any new development and there seemed to be very few open spaces in this burial valley. We also heard that more people in Taiwan are using cremation now instead of full body burial.

We finished out our visit in Taiwan with a trip to one of the Largest Buddhist Temples in Taipei. There were a lot of People celebrating the founding of Taiwan.

All in all we found Taipei a beautiful and clean city with courteous and happy people.
And next we are on to Manila in the Philippine Islands.