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Brief Encounters | Why Kaohsiung, Taiwan’s second largest city, is a cultural and culinary destination ideal for a weekend break
- An exciting programme featuring the London Philharmonic Orchestra at the recently opened National Kaohsiung Center for Arts puts the southern city on the performance arts map
- Numerous night markets cater to all manner of tastes, while shoppers will also find plenty to spend hard-earned pennies on
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Having won first prize in the awards for Best Use of a Clapped-Out Army Barracks, Weiwuying – or the National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts if you’re feeling formal – hasn’t been resting on its laurels since opening last autumn. Spread over a 10 hectare site and variously described as looking like a container ship’s colossal love child or a writhing whale (though presumably not by its Dutch architects), this is one of the world’s largest arts venues.
It goes without saying that size is not important, but Weiwuying’s tally of opera house, concert hall, playhouse, recital hall and outdoor theatre, plus a 9,085-pipe organ fashioned by German artisans to represent thickets of bamboo, is impressive, to say the least. Best of all, it’s set in rolling parkland, one of the city’s prime lungs, which serves to draw punters inside to sample the varied programmes on offer.
Upcomers include ballet from Düsseldorf, a Harry Potter concert, the London Philharmonic and that classic Chinese opera, The Battle of Dragon City. The cheapest tickets start at US$10; given that Weiwuying cost US$330 million, one can’t help but wonder who’s in charge of ROI …
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International chains have yet to make much headway in Kaohsiung, so the selection of accommodation is very much home-grown. Cream of the crop is the local outpost of Silks Club – think Banyan Tree with a dash of Swire’s Houses – which characteristically measures its spacious rooms in ping: the average is 20, ie about 66 square metres. In keeping with this column’s leitmotif, the hotel hosts regular art expos. Room rates: typically US$180 a night.
Shinier and eminently cheaper rooms (from about US$90) with a view are stacked one above the other at 85 Sky Tower, which, at 347.5 metres, is utterly unmissable. No prizes for guessing Panorama Suites’ etymology.
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Airbnbs start at around US$32 per night – and that’s for a whole apartment, though few are going to win awards for their interior decor.
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