Surprise may be the dominant emotion when you look for the first time out of the wide windows of the Shin Kong Tower Observatory located in the center of Taipei. Surprise in the sense that once you've ascended to the 49th floor, leaving the hurly-burly of nearly four million people going about their business, and look down at the urban mass far below, you realize that the capital of the Republic of China on Taiwan is really quite a small city--in naked contrast to the view from the street where one's significance is thwarted by the churning mass of people, motorcycles, taxis, and the ever-present dusty downtown construction.
This brand new building, which only opened a year and a half ago, is the singular landmark of Taipei and has become the hottest sightseeing attraction for foreign visitors to the city--a full third of which are Japanese. (If you get lost anywhere in the city, you can probably find your way by searching the skyline for the tower.) The 540-meter-per-minute high-speed elevators fling these guests up to the observatory in an astonishing 35 seconds. The tallest building in Taipei and the entire island--at least for now--the Shin Kong Tower measures almost 245 meters, has 51 stories, and looks to a great degree like the famous old granddad of skyscrapers, the Empire State Building in New York city. The tower's designer, Taiwanese-born architect Kaku Morin, who actually resides far away from his creation in Tokyo, seems to have successfully captured the gothic majesty of the original. From a distance, the tower stands alone, a lofty soft copper obelisk rising out of the din of serious urban growth.
The "Observatory" has fine unobstructed views in every direction of the city's mountainous horizons--every way but up, for it is ill designed for stargazing. But you can actually see, on a clear day after a rain, the creamy, light blue meringue of the Taiwan Straits floating between picturesque Kuanyin Mountain and the small seaport of Tamsui in the distant northwest; to the north, you see the looming, somewhat asymmetrical Yangmingshan Mountains and the Taipei suburb of Tienmu; the eastern horizon reveals a flat riparian plain which ultimately snuggles up to more low green mountains; to the south, suburbs seemingly sprout through cracks in the concrete and new buildings under construction bloom like azaleas in the springtime.
It is in fact the springtime of Taipei's existence, as its past, displayed on framed copies of old black and white lithographs which adorn the inner wall of the observatory, reveals a barren, dusty little town languishing amid the confluence of several strategic rivers on a flat, rising plain. The photographs expose the ambiguous period of the Japanese occupation and in some ways ironically depict a more tranquil era: sleepy backwater images of a town on an island that clearly had not yet begun to realize its modern destiny.
Rivers and mountains wrap Taipei tightly in its small basin. The Tamsui River, to the west, snakes around Hsimenting, the old downtown area which used to come alive every night with movie goers and loiterers and gangs of young people spending their parents' money. (Now they inhabit the tony Ding Hao shopping area on Chunghsiao East Road.)
To the south and directly below the observatory lies Taipei New Park, which is not only not new but is, surprisingly, not really famous for its beautiful trees or old buildings or the intriguing Taiwan Provincial Museum now under renovation, but as a place where young lovers rendezvous on the sly. The Presidential Office Building stands to the east of the park; from the street this building looks large and ominous and powerful, but from the dramatic height of the observatory it takes on the look of an innocent, bland playhouse. Further to the northeast of the park sits all the island's main government buildings.
The huge white monument and plaza to the southeast, the celebrated Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, manages to maintain its tremendous size even from this view from above. (The restaurant at the top of the tower is booked for months in advance of the Double Ten Day celebration--October 10th--when the sky above the plaza explodes with the vivid patriotic colors of a massive fireworks display. Shin Kong offers the best view of the celebration in the city.) To the northeast, the Keelung River plain cradles the smallish Sungshan Domestic Airport, where you lose sight of toy Boeing 737s as they climb into billowy white clouds high over the valley. At night the lights of cars draw long green-orange lines that flow over dark emerald hills on the packed freeways and out of view.
According to Wu, over 700,000 people have viewed the city from the observatory since it opened in January 1994, including various presidents of friendly foreign countries--even former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's photograph smiles proudly from the wall. (Where are the photographs of movie stars or Taiwan's famous teen idols?) Snack bars and coffee counters provide refreshment, and souvenir shops selling plastic replicas of the tower line the inner court of the observatory.
The view of the city from the top seems to be incomplete as there aren't any other buildings of relative stature; although none are in the works now, in the future the Shin Kong Tower will likely have to share the skyline with landmarks that are as tall or taller. Looking long and far from the observatory is quite like taking a brief journey from the gritty day-to-day reality of the city.
The view offers a qualitatively different impression of this teeming, compact city in northern Taiwan. The observatory is a welcome place for schoolchildren and tourists, and for lovers who enjoy the endearing nights of the city once the sun has given up on another day.