Neiweipi Lake
Lake restored in the 2000s
Follow the path west from the museum and the trees open on a broad, quiet lake, with a fountain sending a single plume of water into the air and the hills of Shoushan on the horizon. Royal palms line the far shore, willows and banyans lean over the water, and paths and wooden decks run around the edge. This is Neiweipi, the pond of Neiwei, and it gives the whole park its name. The name is old: a pi in Taiwanese is an irrigation reservoir, and this one supplied the rice fields of the village of Neiwei long before the city grew out to meet it.
The lake you see is a restoration. By the nineteen eighties the old reservoir had silted up and been partly filled, and when the city set aside the land for the museum it decided to bring the water back as the centre of a park. The shores were reshaped with shallow margins for water plants, the fountain was added to keep the water moving, and lawns and paths were laid out so that the lake could be walked around in twenty minutes. Look at the different edges as you go: paved promenade on the museum side, reed beds and boardwalk on the wilder western shore where the ecological park begins.
The lake is the most popular part of the park with local people, who come at dawn and dusk to walk and exercise, and it is the best place to feel how the museum sits in its landscape. From the far shore the brick building appears above the trees, and the sculpture park lies between you and it. On a still evening the reflection of the fountain and the palms is the picture most visitors take home.
Did You Know? The word pi in the name means an irrigation reservoir; the lake once watered the rice fields of Neiwei village before the city reached it.
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