The island of Taiwan was annexed in 1683 by the Qing dynasty, the last dynasty of China. The Qing ceded Taiwan to Japan in 1895 after the Sino-Japanese War. While Taiwan was under Japanese rule, the Republic of China (ROC) was established on the mainland in 1912 after the fall of the Qing dynasty. Following the Japanese surrender to the Allies in 1945, the ROC took control of Taiwan. However, the resumption of the Chinese Civil War led to the ROC's loss of the mainland to the Communists, and the flight of the ROC government to Taiwan in 1949. Although the ROC continued to claim to be the legitimate government of China, its effective jurisdiction had, since the loss of Hainan in 1950, been limited to Taiwan and several small islands, with the main island making up 99% of its de facto territory. As a founding member of the United Nations, the ROC represented China at the UN until 1971, when it lost its seat to the PRC.
In the early 1960s, Taiwan entered a period of rapid economic growth and industrialization, creating a stable industrial economy. In the 1980s and early 1990s, it changed from a one-party military dictatorship dominated by the Kuomintang to a multi-party democracy with a semi-presidential system. Taiwan is the 22nd-largest economy in the world, and its high-tech industry plays a key role in the global economy. It is ranked highly in terms of freedom of the press, healthcare, public education, economic freedom, and human development. The country benefits from a highly skilled workforce and is among the most highly educated countries in the world with one of the highest percentages of its citizens holding a tertiary education degree.
The PRC has consistently claimed sovereignty over Taiwan and asserted the ROC is no longer in legitimate existence. Under its One-China policy the PRC refuses diplomatic relations with any country that recognizes the ROC. Today, 17 countries maintain official ties with the ROC but many other states maintain unofficial ties through representative offices and institutions that function as de facto embassies and consulates. Although Taiwan is fully self-governing, most international organizations in which the PRC participates either refuse to grant membership to Taiwan or allow it to participate only as a non-state actor. Source: Wikipedia
Keelung and Taipei, Táiwān
Where in the world are we?
The weather didn’t cooperate one bit today for our visit to Taipei, but I guess that wasn’t a surprise after the really rough day and night we’d had. Captain Ravera made an announcement about 8am that our arrival in the port of Keelung would be at 10am, and immediately after that an announcement was made by the Shore Excursions Department with a revised meeting time for all excursions. Some people rightfully grumbled that it would have been nice to have that information a little sooner; after all, the original meeting times began at 7:30am (ours was 7:50am) and we all showed up and were told that it still hadn’t been settled.
Our revised meeting time was 10am, and by 10:30am we were walking off the ship into a steady downpour which didn’t stop all day. We had booked excursion Taipei On Your Own, and spent the 45 minute or so ride into Taipei looking out the bus windows at a view that was not a bit different than we would have seen driving into any major US city. Taipei looks just like home.
We were dropped off at the shopping mall under the Taipei 101 building, and stood in the rain looking up at the top of that tall building, which was buried in the clouds. Darn. We had already purchased tickets online to go the Observation Deck on the 89th floor. Oh well; at least we’d be able to say we were up there.
Looking at Taipei 101 in the clouds
The queue just to get in the Apple Store didn’t get any shorter all day
Taipei 101 displaced the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur as the tallest building in the world when it opened in 2004. It held that title until the completion of the Burj Khalifa in 2010. We immediately made our way through the mall to the ticket counter to go to the top; I had reserved us tickets for noon never imagining that we might just make it to the building by then, but it was nearly noon when we did. Signs were posted telling us that the outdoor observation deck on the 91st floor was closed due to the weather, and that visibility from the top was poor. Well, we had already seen that for ourselves. Did we still want to go up? You bet.
We took what had been the fastest elevators in the world (also surpassed by the elevators in the Burj Khalifa) to the 89th floor Observation Deck in exactly one minute. When the elevator doors opened, we walked out to see a view of the inside of a cloud. As we walked around the 89th floor, we did get a bit of a view on one side, but even that soon closed up. Still, we were glad we had gone to the top. Though we’ve gotten pretty familiar with what to expect at the top of these tall buildings, Taipei 101 offered something new to us.
What tonight’s fireworks will look like
The clouds cleared for a minute
Building details
In the clouds
In the very center of the building, suspended like a pendulum from the 92nd to the 87th floor, a tuned mass damper sways to offset movements in the building caused by strong gusts. Its sphere, the largest damper sphere in the world, consists of 41 circular steel plates of varying diameters, each nearly five inches thick, welded together to form an 18-foot diameter sphere. On August 8, 2015, strong winds from Typhoon Soudelor swayed the main damper by 39 inches, the largest movement ever recorded by the damper. A video of that movement, as well as a video of the impact of a magnitude 6.3 earthquake nearby on April 20, 2015 was shown and I uploaded copies of them to YouTube.
The world’s largest damper that minimizes movement of Taipei 101 in typhoons and earthquakes
We eventually made our way back down to the mall and went to the food court, which we knew would be packed (it was chaos). Fireworks are set off vertically from all levels of Taipei 101 at midnight on New Year’s Eve, and the area around the building is like Times Square in New York City. People were already pouring into the building since it was raining outside. Despite the long line, we bought lunch from the only Michelin starred street food hawker in Singapore who had a restaurant in the food court too. Chef Chan Hon Meng’s Hong Kong BBQ Soya Cbicken and Rice has one Michelin star, and we hadn’t made it to his Singapore street food stand but were determined to rectify that here. Finally, street food that G would eat (I had rice with tofu)! It was fantastic.
It was 3:15pm when we met back up with our group, only to be told that Princess had changed our meeting time to 4:15pm, but not until after we had all dispersed after our arrival. Lovely. That really didn’t give us enough time to do anything (the mall was packed with people waiting in line in the rain to get in) and we ended up just standing around for an hour until 4:15pm. Then, when we arrived back on the Sapphire Princess at 5:15pm, looking a bit like drowned rats, we had no time to shower before dressing formally and going to dinner late.
Luckily, a nice New Year’s Eve dinner and sharing the bottle of Veuve Cliquot champagne we’d been awarded during the three day cruise with the two couples seated near us went a long way to smoothing our ruffled feathers. We missed the start of the 8pm performance of Filipino vocalist Anna Fegi-Brown, but even that was fine, because attending the 9:45pm performance instead will help to keep us awake for the several parties around the ship at midnight.
I will publish this now, before the show starts, and those parties and the rest of the New Year’s Eve celebrations will have to wait until tomorrow’s blog post.
Our friend at the next table said something tonight that we’d ever heard before, but it makes perfect sense. Health is like the number 1 that comes before a lot of zeros, which are things like money and happiness and love, etc. All the 0’s in the world are worthless without that leading 1. To that end, I hope everyone has a safe and fun New Year’s Eve and a healthy and happy 2019.