Or as it's now called, National Taiwan University. It is considered the top university in the country, in that the government decided that you must have the highest scores on the entrance exam to get in. While it does rank pretty well on international rankings, there is a school in a suburb of the city which on international rankings is sometimes higher. Here in Taiwan the scores needed to get into that school are much lower, partly because it's outside of Taipei and there is a severe Taipei bias in Taiwan.
Regardless in Taiwan NTU is the top dog. Getting into this school pretty much guarantees a great job. A few companies will only hire people who have graduated from NTU. As such most, if not all of NTU students are pretty arrogant. I often tell the story that at many english schools there is a entrance exam to find out what level they are. Most people don't complain, except for NTU students, their usual complaint is "my level can't be so low, i'm an NTU student!" as if being and NTU student makes their english ability automatically better. To combat this I once made a rule that if I had a company I would never hire an NTU graduate. However one year I realized that most of my friends were NTU graduates, so either not all of them are so terrible, or I'm just and arrogant jerk who can only have friends who are equally arrogant.
The school was built by the Japanese during their occupation of Taiwan. At that time it was almost solely for Japanese nationals. The campus itself is quite beautiful and considerably large. It takes up a huge chunk of the center of Taipei. The street in the photo is nicknamed "coconut street" for it's tall palm trees. It's about three times longer than in the photo, and all along it are old Japanese built buildings that are quite quaint. The campus has since expanded and tried to keep the same kind of aesthetic. It's always nice to take a walk through the campus, as it feels like you are no longer in the city.
The building at the end of the picture is the new library which was completed in 1998. The old library has been converted into a museum for both the history of NTU as well as Taiwan. I actually had no idea about this and stumbled across this while going into the first building I came across looking for a bathroom. My weak bladder paid off and I'll be showing some pics from this place in the future.
It's not all sunshine and rainbows though. Just when i was starting to love NTU, the library in the picture annoyed me. Most university libraries let guests come and study or use the books or do whatever they'd like. This one lets guests in, but they cant bring in any outside material to study there. Of course it's their right to make this rule, but being the only university I know that does this, just reeks of arrogance. Granted arrogance is this school's tradition, except instead of Japanese thinking they are better than the Taiwanese, it's now Taiwanese thinking they are better than other Taiwanese. Progress?
