City of Taipei

Photo Mosaic

Taipei is a city with the heart of a mother and the pulse of a warrior. Its Sun sits in Cancer, the most emotional, most maternal of the luminaries, here to shine as a nurturer and protector, and you feel that in the way this place cradles its people: a home carved into an ancient lakebed of the Taipei Basin, ringed by mountains and rivers, holding roughly a third of Taiwan's citizens in its greater embrace. The Sun falls in the third house of hands, hustle and communication, and Taipei is nothing if not anti-lazy: a mercurial, entrepreneurial hub, the economic, political and cultural centre of the island, threaded with railways, night markets and one of the world's great high-tech corridors.

Yet its Moon and Ascendant are both in Aries, the alpha warrior, the pioneer, the one born to be first. This is a city that finds its peace of mind through boldness and standing tall, and it built Taipei 101, once the tallest building on Earth, as if to prove it. Political heart of the Republic of China since 1949, guarded like a crab yet fearless as a ram, Taipei nurtures fiercely and never backs down.