Near the Taipei 101, once the tallest building in the world, is a historical KMT army village that was turned into a culture village – the Four Four South Village. Long ago I wrote about the disappearing Taiwanese Juan Cun culture and some of what I discovered of what little is left from those KMT villages. It’s a sad story, really, especially if you know someone who grew up there and has a family who still had houses in those villages. Anyhow, Taipei has been trying to transform those into something new, as they did with the Taipei Treasure Hill Artist Village, and so this Four Four South Village has a market and some events during holidays and weekends. When I was visiting, there were some artists, musicians, and various workshops taking place, and the visiting locals generally seemed engaged.
Let’s start with, well, the Taipei 101…
And make our way to the village…
To catch some performances…
and take photos of old houses…
And the Taipei 101 rising above them…
Next door was the Taipei Exhibition Center with some tourism show, and the mandatory teenagy sweet looking model doing their thing…
And a few blocks away, the Sun Yat Sen memorial hall…
and the Taipei city hall with some interesting art…
Market location:
I’d say it’s worth stopping by for an hour or two, if you’re already in the Taipei 101 area during the weekend.