Do you wish to come with me to Taipei? We started this journal yesterday, here. And we’ll simply wade back in . . .

Every tourist — and every reporting journalist, I suppose — sees the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall. Chiang is a big, complicated subject, of course. Was he a dictator and brute? Or was he what you might call a necessary and helpful authoritarian, on the way to democracy?

We will not get into this question here and now. Entire books have been written about it, and yet more will. But let me just say that I talk to liberal democrats, here in Taiwan, who have warm things to say about Chiang. This surprises me a bit. They are under no illusion, of course, about the oppressive elements of the man’s government. They know better than most.

‐Some years ago, I attended a reception for Václav Havel at the Czech embassy in Washington. In attendance were many ex-political prisoners, like Havel. They came from Eastern Europe, again like Havel. They also came from Cuba and many other parts of the globe, including Taiwan.

The stories the ex-political prisoners from Taiwan told? They were just like those of the Czechs, Cubans, Russians, and so on — horrific.

‐At the Memorial Hall, there are many photos and other remembrances of Chiang. I see Ike, visiting Taiwan in 1960. I didn’t know he came here, at that late date — the last year of his presidency. He was about 70.

‐I see Reagan visiting in 1971. Looks like a movie star, I swear — never more movie-starrish.

‐Chiang and his Madame were glamorous people, whatever we think of them — highly photogenic. Their son, CCK, who succeeded the old man? Unfavored by nature, to use an expression I learned from my British colleague (and friend and hero), David Pryce-Jones.

‐I turn into a particular room, and have a bit of a start: There’s Chiang, sitting at his desk. A model of him, rather — a big, life-size, lifelike doll. Creepy. His office is just the way he left it. The clock is stopped at the moment he died.

As I said, could give you the creeps.

‐His shrine is like the Lincoln Memorial, and seems consciously modeled on it. A guide informs me that the marble was donated by the United States.

Here’s something that makes the Chiang shrine different from the Lincoln one: There’s an honor guard, and, of course, changings of that guard. The changing of the guard is rather impressive, in its solemnity, mixed with theater. What I mean is: mixed with choreography and flair.

‐Out on Liberty Square, a band is rehearsing — an American-style marching band, as at halftime. They are doing . . . “Tonight,” from West Side Story.

“Oh, Bernstein!” I think. “That’s fame.”

Many years ago, Paul Johnson was in Perth, and heard a car salesman recite a poem by Arthur Hugh Clough (“Say not the struggle naught availeth”). Johnson thought, “That’s fame.”

After I read this — Johnson’s anecdote — I was in a little Indian village, a dot in Gujarat. In the stillness of the evening, a man’s cellphone went off. It played the theme to Love Story, by Francis Lai. I thought — following Johnson — “That’s fame.”

‐Many lovely people in Taipei bow to me, and I bow back — in kind of a sloppy, awkward, half-assed way. Remember how Clinton would give a salute, ridiculously?

Yeah, he’d get off Air Force One or Marine One or something, and there’d be a serviceman at the bottom of the stairs, saluting him, and Clinton would give this desultory, perfunctory salute-wave back. Many people laughed at him for it.

Well, my bows in Taipei are the equivalent of Clinton’s salutes. Pathetic.

‐People in Taiwan must get sick of being asked the same question by Western journalists like me: “Are you Taiwanese, Chinese, or both? What do you consider yourself?” Yet this is an important and interesting question, and you get a variety of answers.

“I’m 100 percent Taiwanese,” says one man. “I don’t even want to go to China. China has nothing to do with me.” Moreover, “I wouldn’t want to unify with them even if they became democratic,” which you must not wait up nights for.

This man’s parents came from China — so you might expect him to feel an identity with China.

A young woman’s grandparents — not parents, but grandparents — came from China. We might expect her to feel quite removed from “the motherland.” She is the face of today’s Taiwan. But . . .

She actually considers herself Chinese, as well as Taiwanese. Part of the general Chinese culture. And she has visited China several times.

Go figure.

‐The Creative Park is well named. It is pulsing with creativity, with freedom, with life. All of Taipei seems to be that way. Everyone who comes to Taiwan, or writes about Taiwan, says, “This place is throbbing with life.” It’s true.

Also, Taipei is full of young people: of babies, toddlers, boys and girls, teenagers, twentysomethings. I have some Steynian thoughts: “This is a place of the future, this is a place invested in life.”

You visit some capitals — I can think of some European cities — and you think, “Deadsville. Nice-looking, stately — but Deadsville, except maybe in the Muslim ghettos.” Taipei: the opposite of Deadsville.

‐I subsequently learn that Taiwan, not long ago, had the lowest birthrate in all the world. Its current birthrate must be near the lowest. You’d never know it from the streets. A puzzlement (to me).

‐Longshan Temple is a beautiful, graceful, exotic structure. The incense is strong, inside. Takes me back to my high-school dorm . . .

A friend tells me there are different gods for different departments of life. For example, there’s a god who watches over your school exams. And there is another god in charge of marrying — in charge of matching young men and young women. There are many young people gathered to pray to this particular god.

And I think — without a soupcon of disrespect or irreverence, I assure you — “Hey, this would be a good place for these seekers to meet someone.”

At the end of our time in Longshan, my friend says, “Have you noticed something about the temple? Almost everyone in here is young — under 30. Probably half are under 22. At most places of worship, throughout the world, you find old people. If anyone.”

Interesting, true — and, to me, another puzzlement.

‐I hope you experience the Huaxi Street Night Market someday. It is a riot of smells, a riot of humanity — a riot of freedom. There is constant commerce, social interaction. Life (to use that word again).

The phrase “riot of humanity” can be overworn, but it can also be useful. I think I’ve applied it to Huaxi-like scenes in Egypt, India, and Morocco. Missing from my experience is Carnival in Brazil.

Also missing, for that matter, is Vegas.

The Taiwanese don’t retreat to their homes at night. Taipei is still throbbing during these hours. In Professor Shelley Rigger’s book Why Taiwan Matters — indispensable for anyone wishing to know about this country — there is a chapter called “‘America Is Boring at Night.’”

She says she met a cabbie in Taipei who had worked in the U.S. for a few years. “Why did you come back?” she asked. He answered, “America is boring at night.”

I can hear many Americans say, “Speak for yourself.” Anyway — thanks for joining me, and I’ll see you tomorrow, for Part III.

To order Jay Nordlinger’s new book, Peace, They Say: A History of the Nobel Peace Prize, the Most Famous and Controversial Prize in the World, go here. To order his collection Here, There & Everywhere, go here.