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 citations 10 min read

💻 Technology

Taiwan Space Agency: Thirty-Two Years to Assemble a Space Agency for a Country Still Assembling Its Name

In 1991 it was called a “Preparatory Office”: no name, no rockets, no land of its own. Thirty-two years later, it put Taiwan back into its name. Today, its control center in Hsinchu tracks the heartbeats of eight satellites around the clock; on the day of the 0403 Hualien earthquake, it reset a mission six minutes after the quake and captured imagery within three hours. It is now adding the last missing pieces: its own orbital launch vehicle, and an approved lunar mission that could begin as soon as 2028.

65 citations 28 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 citations 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 citations 22 min read

🎨 Art

Paul Chiang: After Forty-Five Years Away from Taiwan, Only After Coming Home Could He Paint the Best Work of His Life

In the winter of 1967, twenty-five-year-old Paul Chiang rushed to Paris to find Giacometti, only to discover that his idol had died the previous year. Over the next forty-five years, he sealed off the windows of his New York SoHo studio to search for the light within; in 1975, his Lamagna Gallery exhibition failed to sell a single painting. In the year his father fell in the 1990s, he returned to the incense smoke of Longshan Temple and painted the “Centennial Temple” series. He settled in Jinzun, Taitung in 2008 at the age of sixty-five; by the time the Paul Chiang Art Center opened in 2025, he was eighty-three.

42 citations 10 min read

🏛️ Society

Taiwan’s Diplomatic Allies and International Diplomacy: 12 Allies, 113 Overseas Offices, Visa-Free Access to 177 Countries (2026)

On January 15, 2024, 48 hours after Lai Ching-te was elected president, Nauru announced the severance of diplomatic relations, reducing Taiwan’s diplomatic allies from 13 to 12. Yet that same year, Taiwan had 113 overseas offices, its passport provided access to 177 countries, TSMC produced 90% of the world’s advanced chips, and the European Parliament passed a resolution by 432:60:71 opposing China’s distortion of UN General Assembly Resolution 2758. Recognition on paper is shrinking, the shadow network is expanding, and the interpretive battle over international law is turning.

42 citations 16 min read

🏠 Lifestyle

Taiwan Healthcare and National Health Insurance: A World Number One Where 99.6% Rests on 12.61%

The National Health Insurance card used on March 1, 1995, was rushed out under extreme pressure: six days earlier, the cards had not even been printed. Thirty years later, the right to medical care for 23 million people rests on a 5.17% premium rate, a nursing turnover rate at a 10-year high of 12.61%, and a political taboo no one has dared touch for 30 years.

42 citations 22 min read

🎵 Music

Sunset Rollercoaster: From a Photo Booth Background Shot to Coachella, 14 Years of Singing Taipei Sunsets in English

In 2010, a 19-year-old student casually chose the Mac Photo Booth preset 'Sunset Rollercoaster' as his MySpace profile picture. Fourteen years later, the band became the first Taiwanese band in more than two decades to be invited to Coachella. All-English lyrics, subtropical City Pop, and no reliance on the music industry system: from a casually selected silhouette of a roller coaster, they created one of the ways Taiwan has been heard most clearly by the world.

41 citations 12min min read