Taichung

The boardwalk out across the mud flats measures 691 metres. It opens and shuts with the tide, so that day's hours go up at the entrance. Toward sunset the turbines behind it become silhouettes. The wind ends a visit early without a jacket.

Walls curve into ceilings here, so there is hardly a right angle in the building. The lobby and the roof garden are open without a ticket, the roof holding a shallow pool that children wade straight into.

Finished in 1963, it has nothing you would call a wall beyond four curved panels that lean against each other and go on to be the roof. It stands inside the university campus, a walk in from the gate, closed to visitors during services.

Guangfu Junior High came down in the 1999 earthquake and was left where it fell, with a roof built over it. The running track still bulges where the fault pushed it up. The classroom block leans as it landed. You look from a walkway; nobody goes inside.

The 1999 earthquake brought much of it down; every timber was numbered, taken apart and rebuilt, and the gates reopened only in 2014. The inner mansion and its garden are seen on timed guided visits and no other way.

A pavilion with two overlapping roofs stands out in the middle of the pond. It went up for the opening of the island's trunk railway in 1908 and now appears on every leaflet about the city. Pedal boats are for hire on the water.

It begins at a university gate and spreads through several lanes, and most customers are students. New snacks are tried out here before they reach the rest of the island, so you meet things no other city sells yet. On weekend evenings the crowd carries you.

A handful of old military dependants' houses and nothing more, spared demolition in 2010 because a veteran living there had painted every wall and path. Twenty minutes covers the lot, so tie it to something else in the day.

A dozen or so numbered routes climb the hill. Numbers 1 to 5 are log steps set crossways into the slope, narrow and round underfoot, where thin soles slide. Route 9-1 is the shortest at 600 metres, flat concrete for the first 400, where beginners start.

Six aisles run out from under a hexagonal roof of 1917. The trade here is a morning one, so a good half of it has packed up by early afternoon.

A 1927 eye clinic built by a Japanese doctor, now restored by a confectioner. Inside, wooden shelves rise to the ceiling stacked with boxes of sweets like a library. The ice cream window outside lets you pile on several toppings; weekend lines run long.

A large science museum opened in 1986, where the dinosaur halls and the glass greenhouse garden are ticketed separately. The greenhouse holds a transplanted tropical rainforest and feels hot and humid. Families crowd it, so weekday mornings are quieter.

The national museum of modern and contemporary Taiwanese art, free for both permanent and special shows. A broad sculpture park around the building leads north into the Calligraphy Greenway. It closes on Mondays.

Provincial government staff housing from 1969, converted into small studios, cafes and gift shops. The houses kept their yards, so every shop comes with a little garden. Weekends bring a handmade goods market to the open lot inside.

An old Changhua town that was central Taiwan's leading port under the Qing, about an hour from Taichung by bus. Its Longshan and Tianhou temples survive, and the red-brick Nine Turns Lane bends on purpose to break the wind. One alley is barely shoulder-wide.

A broad meadow farm on a plateau at 1,750m in the Nantou mountains, its sheep grazing loose. Several times a day there is a shearing show, and sheep wander up as you walk the grass. Allow two hours or more by car from Taichung; summer up there feels mild.

A red-brick station of 1917 whose clock-tower front survives intact. Trains stopped calling in 2016 when the elevated station opened, and the old platforms and tracks became a park. It is next to the new station; 30 minutes before a train is enough.

A student strip outside Taichung First Senior High School, smaller and cheaper than Fengjia. From the end of classes into the night, uniformed students crowd the fried snack and drink stalls. It pairs with nearby Taichung Park for an evening walk.

A Mazu temple in Dajia where, around the third lunar month, a procession sets out carrying her palanquin on a 9-day walking pilgrimage. On the night it leaves, tens of thousands fill the street. Other days the road outside sells butter and taro pastries.