I spent over a month living in Taipei recently to learn about the culture and experience what life was like. This followed some time in Singapore and Thailand. During each trip I spent some time visiting labyrinths. Here are the first 2 trips:
Visiting a Labyrinth and some Mazes in Singapore
Visiting Labyrinths in Chiang Mai, Thailand
And so during my stay Taipei trip I took a mini trip to the Zhongshan District of the city to visit a garden maze ! Let’s see what I found.
The Trip - Garden Maze in the Xinsheng Park Area of Taipei Expo Park
Location:
No. 105號, Section 3, Xinsheng N Rd, Zhongshan District, Taipei City, 10491
How to get there: Take the metro, either the red or yellow, but I prefer the red line to the Yuanshan station. (yellow would be the Zhongshan Elementary School station). Both require a 16-18 minute walk but from Yuanshan station you get to walk through the Yuanshan Park next to the Expo Dome and I think that is worth it rather than walking thru the city the whole way from the other stop.
When you arrive at the SW corner of main park you will walk into a large Rose Garden full of places to visit and relax and many wonderful flowers. Here is the map you will see as you enter. Lots of green space and places to sit and relax, or get some exercise.
Xinsheng Park Map - Taipei
Make your way to the end of the garden before turning right to visit the Garden Maze. You could cut over earlier and see the side of the maze, but there is no entrance on that side and you’ll miss all the wonderful flowers. You’ll find a series of signs along the way - the first tells you are on the right path, the second gives information about the maze, and the third is of a map of the maze just before you enter.
The informational sign could use but cleaning but reads:
The garden maze is actually comprised of 5 mazes that together form the Chinese Eight Trigrams. The taller outer maze, for adults, has hedges with weeping figs; the shorter inner maze, for children, has hedges or orchid trees. Each maze poses it’s own challenge; make your way to the center and you will find totems of cities, flowers. birds, beasts and ants!
Cool, so what are the Chinese Eight Trigrams you might be asking ? Well, I’ll let you read that on your own.
And now the maze. Entrances/Exits to the outside portions of the maze feature large hedge doors and are easy to spot even while inside the maze. Pathways are made of gravel and the hedges are a medium width apart. There are large stones scattered in dead ends with inscriptions (some very worn and faded) in Chinese. And the destinations of the outside mazes feature a mosaic in the center (2 shown below). Nothing complicated here as far as getting lost. The center kids maze looks great and the low hedges make it very simple.
Overall it was a nice trip. The maze is a quick visit, but the surrounding park and rose garden make it worth a visit. Oh, and it is next to the downtown airport so at some point you will have a huge plane flying overhead lower than you expect it !!
I suggest you combine this with a trip to one of the nearby museums/attractions.