Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall

This guide to Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei follows the marble monument built after Chiang's 1976 death, its eighty-nine step staircases and bronze statue echoing Sun Yat-sen's mausoleum in Nanjing. It centers on a 2007 clash at the front gate, when a new government tried to strip the hall's name and honor guards kept marching in slow motion regardless. For decades those guards shifted in place beneath the bronze statue, boots clicking on marble, rifles spinning, drawing crowds who never saw Chiang alive.