Culture
The district has many cultural and educational sites including the Taipei Botanical Garden, the National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, the National Museum of History, the Taiwan Museum, the National Central Library, National Theater and Concert Hall, the 228 Memorial Park and the Chinese Taipei Film Archive. Other museums include the Chunghwa Postal Museum, the Taipei City Traffic Museum for Children, and the Taipei Museum of Drinking Water. Much of the Qing Dynasty era Taipei City lies within this district.
The 228 Memorial Park, formerly known as the New Park, has been a major gathering place for gay men in Taipei city for a long time. Writer Pai Hsien-yung wrote stories that took place in the park. The first Taiwan Pride, the annual gay pride parade, started from the 228 Memorial Park.
High School and college students frequent the area immediately south of the Taipei Train Station in the Zhongzheng District. This area has a high concentration of bookstores, cram schools, learning centers, private tutoring centers and test-prep centers.
Read more about this topic: Zhongzheng District
Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“Cynicism makes things worse than they are in that it makes permanent the current condition, leaving us with no hope of transcending it. Idealism refuses to confront reality as it is but overlays it with sentimentality. What cynicism and idealism share in common is an acceptance of reality as it is but with a bad conscience.”
—Richard Stivers, U.S. sociologist, educator. The Culture of Cynicism: American Morality in Decline, ch. 1, Blackwell (1994)
“The genius of American culture and its integrity comes from fidelity to the light. Plain as day, we say. Happy as the day is long. Early to bed, early to rise. American virtues are daylight virtues: honesty, integrity, plain speech. We say yes when we mean yes and no when we mean no, and all else comes from the evil one. America presumes innocence and even the right to happiness.”
—Richard Rodriguez (b. 1944)
“The hard truth is that what may be acceptable in elite culture may not be acceptable in mass culture, that tastes which pose only innocent ethical issues as the property of a minority become corrupting when they become more established. Taste is context, and the context has changed.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)