September is apple time in Taiwan. This may sound like strange news coming from a sub-tropical island, but the high mountains that occupy 80 per cent of Taiwan's area create many microclimates: pockets of flat or gently sloping land that are profitably given over to fruits usually associated with more temperate climates.

I had only been living here a few months when I discovered these exquisite mountain apples. Much smaller than their imported commercial cousins, they have a sweetness, yet also a sharpness, of taste that carries with it the genuine buoyancy and brio of fresh mountain air.

I buy them in the autumn from the back of a farmer's truck - the same way you get Taiwanese strawberries in February, all over Taipei. The apples were always harder to find than the strawberries, but now I have discovered a more reliable source: my local health-food store.

This opened a couple of years ago to what I suspected was a generally sceptical public. Its shelves were stocked with common vegetables at uncommonly high prices, plus enormous amounts of pills, lotions, dietary supplements and herbal extracts guaranteed, I used to joke, to make you live forever.

But few customers were in evidence. This will never catch on here, I thought. The Taiwanese - while often easy victims of the sales pitch and susceptible to buying anything with a hint of increased social status - remain faithful to their traditional open-air markets and 24-hour supermarkets. Recently, however, I walked into the same store in mid-morning to find it overflowing with customers. They were lined up at the old-fashioned sales counter with arms full of vitamin-rich cabbages and pesticide-free carrots, not to mention a good selection of the lotions and potions as well.

And there in a corner smiled a pile of my ruddy-cheeked mountain apples. "They're delicious," said the young female assistant, using one of the first English words Taiwanese learn, and which they seem to particularly enjoy pronouncing. I bought a kilo, shuddering only slightly at the price. And when I got home I consumed them until the juice ran down my chin.

I ate every part of them - the core, the pips, the black remains of the little flower - and contemplated devouring even the stalk. It was too good to throw away, I thought. Perhaps it would do as a toothpick.

These little apples are testimony to the continuing beneficence of nature, even in these days of genetically modified food, irradiated fruit, sterile seeds and other associated horrors. Long may they continue to imbibe their sweetness from the pure mountain air.

I like to take visitors to Taipei on a walking tour of the capital district, beginning at the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall and ending at the 228 Peace Park. The Japanese built the district as a showcase of their colonial rule. Beside the buildings that housed the colonial administration are schools and Taiwan's first modern hospital, museum and park.

For me, though, the highlights of the walk are the two museums at the beginning and the end - the lower level of the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall and the 228 Peace Museum, tucked away in a shady corner of the 228 Peace Park. Both museums tell alternative versions of modern Taiwan's history, but how they tell that story reveals much about the very different governments that built them.

The memorial hall was built by Chiang's son, Chiang Ching-kuo, in the late 1970s and for many years was one of Taipei's most popular tourist attractions. The hall's lower level is built in the palace style: high ceilings with intricate carvings supported on massive columns. The intention is to impress and awe the visitor with a vision of power grounded in the glories of high Chinese civilisation. Inside are the personal effects of the elder Chiang, along with massive oil paintings depicting his great victories over the enemies of the republic and the Japanese.

The central concern of the exhibitions, though, is legitimacy. Chiang Ching-kuo's succession to power after his father was a throwback to imperial China - doubly illegitimate in that it was not only undemocratic, but also dynastic. The younger Chiang built the memorial to his father to legitimise his own rule, connecting it to the great traditions of Chinese culture. He also sought to enshrine the myth of his father's role - as the "saviour of the race" - in a quasi-state religion: the contents of the lower level are sacred relics.

The 228 Peace Museum at the other end of my walk represents a nation-building effort by the current government of the Democratic Progressive Party. It sets out the tragic history of the "228 incident" of 1947, in which Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang killed thousands of Taiwanese dissidents. At the exit, there is a sign saying: "The only true memorial is the establishment of a just and peaceful nation."

This museum's style is a sharp contrast from the memorial hall. Its intimate, documentary approach has small exhibition rooms filled with items from everyday life, oral histories and minutely detailed accounts of mass graves complete with maps and photographs. The two museums, just a few steps apart, are perhaps the best introduction I know to the complexities of modern Taiwanese history.