In 1991 it was called a preparatory office: no name, no rocket, no land of its own. Thirty-two years later, it put Taiwan back into its name. Today, its control center in Hsinchu tracks the heartbeat of nine satellites around the clock; on the day of the April 3 Hualien earthquake, it reset its mission six minutes after the quake and acquired imagery within three hours. It is now filling in the final missing parts: an orbital rocket of its own, and an approved lunar mission that could launch as early as 2028.

72 28 min read

🎨 Art

Taiwanese Cinema: The Person Speaking Beside the Screen, and a Film History That Died and Came Back to Life

In a 1930 theater, a benshi stood beside the screen and improvised dialogue for silent films in Taiwanese; ninety years later, Cape No. 7 brought five languages back onto the screen together. Taiwanese-language cinema was once the world's third-largest producer of narrative films, yet it was strangled. In the years when New Cinema won the Golden Lion in Venice, domestic films' box-office share in Taiwan fell to just 0.36%. Taiwanese cinema is not a straight line from bad to good, but a history repeatedly declared dead and repeatedly revived.

71 18 min read

🍜 Food

Taiwanese Food Overview: No Dish Is Purely Taiwanese, and Every Dish Is Taiwanese to the Core

Beside the Chiayi Fountain roundabout in 1949, Lin Tien-shou sliced chicken, laid it over white rice, and poured Minnan-style braising sauce on top; only after the U.S. military stationed in postwar Taiwan moved into Shuishang Air Base and brought large numbers of turkeys to Taiwan did this bowl evolve from chicken rice into turkey rice. From Indigenous slate-grilled wild boar, Hakka stir-fried pork intestines with shredded ginger, and military dependents' village Sichuan-style beef noodles to bubble tea invented in Taichung in 1986, and onward to the 419 restaurants included by Michelin in 2025. This island spent four hundred years cooking every borrowed dish into its own form.

69 10 min read

🏛️ Society

The Reporter: Ten Years of Turning Investigative Journalism from a Line of Business into a Public Good

From 4 recurring donors to 8,000 each month, from the Blood-Stained Fishing Grounds trilogy to the 2026 united-front special report, the costs The Reporter has burned through over a decade--eight months undercover, reporting across three countries, comparing years of violation records--are exactly the things people least want to pay to read in the algorithmic age. Taiwan's civil society, through monthly deductions from strangers' accounts, has rescued investigative journalism from a line of business in commercial media and turned it into a public good that is constantly being sustained, even as it burns through resources ever faster.

60 10 min read

🎵 Music

Taiwanese Pop Music: The Island That Made Wedding Clothes for the World, Left in the End with Songs Others Cannot Sing

In 1997, Taiwan was Asia's second-largest record market, and 80 percent of all Mandopop songs were produced here. By 2005, output value had fallen to one-quarter of its former size, the market had been overtaken by China, and even Jay Chou at his peak sold only 300,000 copies per album. When songs elsewhere can be silenced over one lyric, one flag, or one taboo, this island that lost the battle of scale turned the very question of "whether something can be sung" into its last and hardest bargaining chip.

58 10 min read

👥 People

Ang Lee: Behind Two Oscars, the Son Who Never Properly Said Goodbye to His Father

On the Oscar stage in 2006, Ang Lee became the first Asian in history to win Best Director, yet in Mandarin he said, 'Thank you all for your concern.' The world remembers Taiwan's pride and his two golden statuettes, but what he spent a lifetime filming was repression, fear, and the father who had always opposed his filmmaking and suddenly died two years earlier. From an unemployed son-in-law who cooked at home for six years to a two-time Venice Golden Lion winner, his real opponent was never the film set. It was the self he could not get past.

50 10 min read

🎭 Culture

Taiwan's Religious Faith: An Empire of Belief That Grew from Fear

The island with the world's highest temple density and Asia's second-ranked religious freedom — its two largest faiths, the Wang Ye lords and Mazu, both trace their origins to plague and death. From 17th-century military migrants binding deity statues to their bodies to cross the Black Ditch, to a 94-point Freedom House score in 2025; from the 1953 ban on Yiguandao, its 1987 legalization as the first faith to gain legal status after martial law ended, to the four great Buddhist mountain orders and the Presbyterian Church each walking separate paths in church-state relations — Taiwan's faith is not in scriptures. It is in the incense smoke at the corner of your street.

45 22 min read

🌿 Nature

Taiwan’s Climate Crisis and Net-Zero Transition: On the Day the Maanshan Nuclear Plant Referendum Failed, the Choices Set by Physical Limits Had Only Just Begun

The August 23, 2025 referendum on extending the Maanshan Nuclear Power Plant: 4.34 million yes votes, 74% in favor, but turnout of 29.53% fell short of the threshold. The referendum failed; the next day Lai Ching-te set out three principles, and seven months later, on March 27, 2026, Taipower submitted its life-extension application to the Nuclear Safety Commission. With 98% of energy imported, NT$9 trillion for net zero, a geothermal target of 200 MW but only 7.4 MW built, the world’s seventh-largest installed offshore wind capacity, the Onkalo final repository, and TerraPower’s fourth-generation nuclear power, Taiwan’s energy question has never been a political question. It is a question of physical limits.

45 26 min read

🔥 Popular now

Most-read articles over the past 7 days.

👥 People 31 views

Ke Zhi-Tang (Kowen Ko): The Taiwanese Indie Folk Singer Who Traded Seven Years of Silence for an Album

Born in Taiwan in 1990, he won the Hai Xian Award (海弦獎) in 2013 with his Coldplay covers, and that same year became the voice behind Kingston's 'Memory Platform' advertisement theme 'It Was May,' accumulating 5 million views. His 2015 debut album You Don't Really Want to Wander (produced by Chen Chien-Chi) earned double nominations at the 27th Golden Melody Awards; his 2018 second album Songs of the Bards again earned a nomination at the 30th Golden Melody Awards. Then he went silent for seven years, retreating to his room. In November 2024 he released his third album My Nova — a comeback written at a piano he had rediscovered. In 2025 he won the 60th Golden Bell Award for Best Drama Original Song with 'God's Reply' from Stars Beneath the Black Tide Island. His cousins are Wei Ru-Xuan and Wei Ru-Yun. His voice is low, weathered, and textured; he says it is not an old-man voice, just a little weathered.

15 13 min read

📜 History 29 views

Taiwan's Economic Miracle: From an Agricultural Society to an Asian Tiger

From the 1960s to the 1990s, Taiwan created an economic miracle that drew worldwide attention, transforming from an agricultural society into an industrialized country and joining South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore as one of the Four Asian Tigers.

5 17 min read

🍜 Food 27 views

Night Market Culture

164 official night markets, one for every 38,000 people in Tainan — from kerosene lamp stalls under temple eaves to food destinations that put Taiwan on Michelin's radar

10 min read