228 Peace Memorial Park

For most of a century, the park now called 228 Peace Memorial Park was Taipei's clandestine gay meeting ground. Regulars called it 'the company'; novelist Pai Hsien-yung set Crystal Boys (1983) — the canonical Chinese-language gay novel — among its banyan shadows, giving Taiwanese queer life its founding literary document. The park carries a second, heavier memory: it is named for the February 28, 1947 massacre, commemorated by the white geometric monument at its centre and the museum beside it. The two histories now share the space officially — in 2016 the city designated a 'Rainbow Landscape' here, repainting an entrance gate in rainbow colours with the Tongzhi Hotline's involvement, acknowledging in public what the park had hidden for decades. Visiting: free, open daily, beside the Presidential Office and NTU Hospital MRT. The cruising era ended with the app era, but walk the banyan paths with Crystal Boys in mind and the park reads like the novel's stage set. Pairs with the Red House quarter for Taipei's full queer arc — from concealment to the first marriage-equality law in Asia.