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Shilin District Travel Guide
Taipei's largest night markets are just dots within the bigger picture that is Shilin, a district in Taiwan. It is home to many parks and museums, including the internationally-known National Palace Museum, keeper of most of China's best art collections, including masterpieces from the Forbidden City.
Opposite the National Palace Museum is Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines, which shows in pictures and in relics the aboriginal culture and lifestyles of the Formosans, the forerunners of modern-day Taiwanese. Just beside the museum is Aborigine Culture Park, where Taiwan's nine tribes are depicted through sculptural representations.
One of Taiwan's oldest excavation sites is Zhishanyan Cultural and Ecological Garden, a small hill with a main trail leading to historical sites such as the Huiji Temple, the Fortified Gate, and a small temple with a 300-year-old camphor tree. If the garden is a hark back to the past, Shilin's Taipei Astronomical Museum is a nod to the future, with its modern interactive displays, observatories, and three-dimensional narrations of anything and everything about the universe.
Patterned after the style of a Beijing palace, Shilin's Grand Mansion attracts bus -loads of tourists wishing to take their photographs in the mansion's evergreen foyer and main building façade. The Grand Mansion has tea rooms, pavilions, an abandoned airbase, and foot paths that recall the grandeur of dynastic China. Another dwelling, the European-style Shilin Residence and Gardens, was Chiang Kai-shek's house during his Taipei years.
Built in the memory of those who gave their lives for the Republic of China, the Martyrs' Square in Beian Road features a typical shrine with memorial tablets and burning incense. Its history might not interest travelers, but the temple's hourly "changing of guards" ceremony always reap some applause for the guards' rifle exhibitions and goose-like footwork.
To have some taste of Taiwanese life, a visit to one of Taipei's biggest night markets, Shilin Night Market, is a good idea for its labyrinth of alleys and streets filled with shops and eateries specializing in local Taiwanese fare like aiyu (lemon jelly), bubble tea, oyster omelet, and braised stinky tofu.
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