Photo por BC Taiwan

The Taipei 101, stands out for many heads in the airspace of the city, which is not known precisely for its skyscrapers, as it is in a seismic zone. The building has some postmodern pagoda and climbs almost to the top for a «lift bullet» that rise to 45 km / h would be the fastest in the world.

At night, from the windows of the Taipei 101 looking at the spectacle of modernity at its best, a horizon of light and shadow which looms just the skeleton of an empty city and impersonal, like a ghost moving amusement park but without people. It is the image of a dead city.

The view from Taipei 101, should be like a God, but the truth is that it sees all and can not see anything. So telescopes proliferate currency. For some speakers warn a gently used ad sales, because here are selling everything from caps, key chains, miniature building, bags, boxes, notebooks, photo-montage of the tourist postcard, the glass of liquor and chop, cups of tea and coffee, a calendar, a pin, the stamp that no longer works, the mouse pad, the umbrella, the timing and everything they have and can sell in their stores.

As befits a high-tech building, guides are not flesh and blood but an audio-guides with interactive recording. Where to advertise the characteristics of the Taipei 101. Thing as the building is 509 meters, which has 380 posts stabilizers that sink 80 meters below the ground line that eight huge steel columns filled with concrete guarantee stability, and glass windows can withstand an impact of 8 tons. But most amazing is the great deadener constant balancing «Giant», this according to how the wind blows. Right there in the balcony, you can see his big ball core supported by steel cables that works like a pendulum to straighten the building, also in an earthquake. The pendulum ball is covered by 41 layers of steel, measures 5.5 meters in diameter and weighs 360 tons.

Unlike other Asian countries, Taiwan is not a place of great contrasts. Everything is more or less modern, the story is not prominently visible and even the temples look like new. There are large pockets of poverty and there is not, as in Thailand, the contrast between the hyper capitalist opulence and Buddhist monks walking in sandals begging on the street. Here the relationship between the sacred and the profane is more natural, and even the technology enters without modesty in temples, where large screens are LCD and monks who seek in their blackberry or a word in English without any problems serving cell before of a Buddha. And there is a coin slot machines that deliver a roll of red paper with predictions Taoists. At the same time, we see ordinary people in a bar watching the live broadcast of the full-Taipei Stock Exchange, then buy shares and who bet on horses for fun.

Photo by E. Hoba

Taiwan is a Pacific Ocean island located between Japan and the Philippines, just off the mainland. Historically, Taiwan was part of the Chinese empire until conquered Japan. After reverted to the Republic of China, but in 1949 General Chiang Kai-shek (defeated by Mao) fled to the island of Taiwan with a million followers. Not declared their independence in the beginning, but were considered «real China», which planned to reconquer the mainland. That did not happen and the United Nations recognized the PRC as the only China, leaving Taiwan in diplomatic limbo difficult to define. Although in fact function as a country Taiwan.

Photography by riNux

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