Chiang Kai-Shek Shilin Residence

This guide to the Chiang Kai-Shek Shilin Residence in Taipei starts with the fifty years this house sat as a black hole on the map of Taipei: soldiers at the walls, cameras forbidden, ordinary citizens kept at a distance. It follows Chiang Kai-shek and his wife Soong Mei-ling through their twenty-six years living here after fleeing mainland China in 1949, including a hidden escape tunnel a later president revealed decades on. You'll also hear the surprisingly domestic side of their private life, her insistence on freshly waxed floors, their Sunday walks to church, his taste for war films against her foreign romances.