I am off to Taipei to verify rumours that this city has recently emerged, with little fanfare, as one of Asia’s whirling centres of cosmopolitan chic. It is apparently one of the cities where cool hunters hunt – that is, professionals hired to scour the streets for the latest fashions and trends. I must confess, I’m a bit wary of these rumours: Taipei has never crossed my radar as anything but a grey centre of commerce. In fact, when I tell a friend that I am off to Taipei, he offers condolences: “It’s ugly, man. And you can’t breathe.”

Well, my first breath upon setting foot off the airplane is a deep inhalation of relief. We land in surprisingly green environs. The drive into town from the airport does reveal some greyness, building-wise, but it’s an intriguing grey: concrete apartments, balconies hung with clothing and birdcages, colourful evidence of dense habitation.

Yet the urban centre itself is not as dense as I expect, and the street life isn’t nearly as frenzied as what you’ll find in Tokyo, Shanghai or Bangkok. In fact, things move at a pace that’s downright stately here, even the traffic. Gaggles of motorcyclists idle obediently at every stoplight and take off in an orderly fashion when the lights go green. Initially, I worry that this stateliness may have consequences, cool-wise. In my experience, wild fashion grows out of wild traffic.

The truth becomes clear when I reach my hotel: Cool in Taiwan means calm. The United Hotel is a tiny masterpiece of modern tranquillity. The lobby is a white minimalist expanse interrupted by a Corbusian staircase; the ritual walk to the front desk is enough to tame even the most neurotic pulse. It’s hard to do minimalism with taste (“less” is often “way too little”), but the United pulls it off with élan.

The white-on-white esthetic strategy is punctuated by well-placed exquisite details. For instance, the soap dish in my bathroom is a curved plexi affair that holds the soap vertically and actually drains properly. (Have you ever experienced this in a soap dish? I haven’t.) My ideal measure of a hotel’s quality is how well it soothes jetlag, and the United is ideal in this respect: It’s like floating on a white cloud.