Visiting Taiwan in search of a great-grandfather, Charmian Smith finds contemporary Taipei a fascinating contrast of traditional and modern.
As we fly over the Taiwan Strait from Hong Kong, I can see far below forested mountains rise from a long white cloud.
It's a beautiful sight, worthy of the name the Portuguese gave the island in the 16th century, Ilha Formosa, beautiful isle.
I wondered what my great-grandfather John Dodd thought as he sailed into mountainous Tamsui Harbour in 1864.
A young English merchant working for Dent & Co in Hong Kong, he came to make his fortune in the fishing village the Chinese authorities had recently opened to foreigners as a trading port.
He was to live and trade there for more than 30 years, developing a tea export industry, prospecting for oil and dabbling in many other commodities and interests, from camphor to anthropology.
He wrote several articles for the Royal Asiatic Society, the Royal Geographical Society and other publications on various subjects, including the indigenous peoples who had retreated to the mountains and remote coasts as Chinese from the mainland drove them from the plains.
Tamsui is now heavily built up, the sites of his house, godowns (warehouses), tea plantations and factories lost under tall apartment blocks and a new subway station, for the old riverside port has become a suburb of Taipei.
The only remnant I find of my adventurous great-grandfather is a property boundary stone marked D & Co, which was moved to the gardens of the former British consulate in the 1950s when his former land was being developed.
But the outline of the mountains behind the town and across the wide estuary are recognisable from old photographs.
Now a new park encroaches on what was tidal mudflats, and at the far end of the town a stylish new bridge to the fishermen's wharf is crowded with locals who come to eat and watch the sun set - or at least sink into the murk on the horizon.
This trip has been something of a pilgrimage, despite there being little of 19th-century Tamsui left to see.
The former British consulate, itself a former Dutch fort, has been turned into a museum, and wandering through the furnished rooms I couldn't help thinking of my great-grandfather drinking whisky there or dining with the consul.
Since his time, a lot has happened in Taiwan. Shortly after he returned to Britain in 1890, the island was ceded to the Japanese after the first Sino-Japanese War and remained a Japanese colony until after World War 2, when the Japanese relinquished it.
Meanwhile, in mainland China the civil war between the Kuomintang, which claimed power in the Republic of China, and Mao's People's Republic of China ended when the Kuomintang, led by Chiang Kai Shek, fled to Taiwan in 1949.
Both Taiwan and mainland China agree that China is one, but both compete as to which is the legitimate government, leaving Taiwan in an ambiguous political situation.
Dr Joe Wang, of the Government Information Office, diplomatically says he sees Taiwan as a safety valve in the relationship between an increasingly powerful China and the US.
In December 2008, direct shipping, direct flights and direct mail across the strait were reopened. Now groups of mainlanders can be seen traipsing behind guides, taking photographs and speaking a slightly more guttural version of Mandarin at many Taipei tourist sites such as Taipei 101 tower and the National Palace Museum.
Taiwan is certainly booming economically, and is well-organised and clean - Taipei appears cleaner than Dunedin, without cigarette butts on the footpaths or drink containers in gutters.
There may be lots of traffic but drivers are polite and it moves efficiently on overhead motorways and spaghetti junctions as well as through the streets and avenues below.
Generalissimo Chiang, although a dictator with little regard for human rights, is revered as a great leader.
A huge bronze statue of him looks down from the grand hall on the top floor of the Chiang Kai Shek memorial hall, an impressive white monumental building with a curved blue roof dominating a formal park.
The guards at his feet change every hour, performing a silent, slow-motion military tattoo, rather like a ballet, with complicated steps, salutes, and arms presentation, all executed with the utmost precision to the delight of the many onlookers.
When the new guards are finally on their pedestals, a minder adjusts their uniforms and the angle of their bayonets a millimetre or two and replaces the red tape around them.
In the modern city below, as you walk between buildings glittering with glass and neon, housing malls full of international brands, luxury goods and electronic wizardry or cinemas showing foreign and local films, you might find an unexpected aroma of incense wafting into the street.
If you look up, a different cacophony of colour and shape assaults your eyes in the form of dragons and demons on the upturned corners of the roofs of a temple.
Walk through the gateway invited by the glow of lamps and candles and you'll be confronted by the heavy scent of incense, gilded carvings on red pillars, gold embroidered cloths, deities with fierce red or black faces, eye-watering smoke from glowing joss sticks in huge bronze cauldrons and a seething crowd of devotees.
The host deity at the Longshan Temple is Guanyin, the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy, but Mazu, the Taoist Goddess of the Sea, presides over the rear courtyard. They are surrounded by shrines of a host of other divine personages.
Crowds of worshippers, old and young, murmur their prayers and supplications to the appropriate deity.
On the ground in front of one of the shrines, an old woman on her knees concentrates intensely as she throws a pair of stones to divine the answer to a pressing question. Nearby, a younger devotee taps a message on her cellphone.
The old China and the modern Asian tiger are inextricably intertwined in Taiwan.
Thanks to Niki Alsford of the London School of Oriental Studies who has researched the life and times of John Dodd and other 19th-century British traders in Taiwan and edited and republished some of his writings.
Charmian Smith travelled to Taiwan as a guest of the Taiwan Government Information Office.
