This is a place where the standard greeting is “have you eaten?” and where dining out is so delicious and cheap that some apartments don’t even have kitchens. It’s a place where craft beer lives alongside fragrant tea, and where you can eat sushi at a Michelin-starred Japanese restaurant followed by shaved ice under the lights of one of Taipei’s night markets. It’s a place where the full scope of Chinese history is on display, from Chiang Kai-shek’s Cadillacs to Jadeite cabbages at the National Palace Museum, what is arguably the best collection of Chinese art to be found anywhere in the world. Meanwhile, you can walk along Dihua Street and travel from 19th century homes built by Fujian Chinese settlers to Baroque revival buildings constructed by the Japanese, all beneath the gaze of towering Taipei 101, the tallest building in the world until 2010. Add to all this sparkling clean streets, low crime, great public transport and a healthy clutch of hip urban regeneration projects – think early 20th-century wine factories reborn as art galleries and gourmet coffee shops – and you get one of the most underrated cities in Asia.