The Honor Guard in Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall

【 The Honor Guard of Chinese Air force 】

(yes, that's me :P)

If you have ever visited Taipei, you must be familiar with those famous attractions like Taipei 101 or National Palace Museum. But you may not know there is a special exchanging ceremony of the Chinese Honor Guard that you cannot see it anywhere except Taiwan - the changing ceremony of the honor guard ( in Chinese, we call it "禮兵交接").

The Honor Guard is a special kind of soldier. They don't really fight in the war, instead, they usually appear in the important celebration or ceremony like the National Day. Besides those big celebration, there is another way to see the show of the honor guard - go visit Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall.

There are only three place you can meet the Chinese Honor Guard, Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall , The Martyr's Shrine , and Chi Lake. The reason you can see the honor guard in those places is because the honor guard are there to commemorate the great contribution of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, the soldiers of Taiwan, and the President Chiang.

【Video - The exchanging ceremony in Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall 】


As you can see in the video above, this is a part of the exchanging ceremony. The honor guards perform exchanging ceremony every hour on the hour from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. And during every hour, they can only stand seriously on the stage, no matter what happeneds, even you sweat a lot or feel unconfortable, they cannot move any. So a lot of people is asking "Are they real?" Yes, they are real men with well-trained.

The gun they use is a real M1 rifle(without bullet) weighted 6kg(though it looks light, but it's really heavy) and the bayonet on it is also a real one. Next time when you see the show, you should pay respect on them, because it's really dangerous, they might easily hurt themselves if they have any mindless. Never think it's an easy thing, though it looks pretty easy.

If you are going to travel in Taipei, I really recommend you to come Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall or The Martyr's Shrine to see the ceremony of exchaging.


PS.
Have you ever heard the honor guard before? Do you know what's the difference between "the Honor Guard of ROC" and "Republic of China Military Police"?

As I know, lots of people think we, the Honor Guard, are the Military Police. Since I am now serving in the honor guard of Chinese Air Force, I want to tell you: "We are totally different!".
(maybe u don't feel what's the problem with this confusion, but for us, we really don't like to be misunderstood.)