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Sat, October 3
3 articlesSemiconductor Water Use and Taiwan’s Water Resources: The Reservoir Beside the Fab
Chip manufacturing needs ultrapure water, but Taiwan’s water does not exist only inside factory pipes. It also exists among reservoirs, rainfall, drought, agricultural irrigation, reclaimed water, and local allocation. This article does not reduce semiconductor water use to a one-line conflict of "TSMC stealing water." It explains how advanced processes bind Taiwan’s island hydrology, public governance, reclaimed-water infrastructure, and global supply chains together, pulling high tech back to reservoirs, farms, and local trust.
Development of Taiwan's Electric Vehicle Industry Chain
From battery technology to charging infrastructure, exploring Taiwan's complete EV ecosystem and 2030 carbon neutrality transformation strategy
Development of Taiwan's Software Industry
From OEM thinking to software innovation: How Taiwan is finding a new positioning in the semiconductor era
Thu, October 1
19 articlesBeida Special District: Three Decades of Urban Planning and the University Town Living Experiment
From the 1895 Longenpu Battlefield to the 2026 MRT University Town, this is an in-depth encyclopedia about land, aesthetics, and selective identity.
Keelung City: The Port Closest to Taipei, the One Taipei Sees Least
At 4 a.m., the Kanzaiteng fish market is still alive with the sound of auctions. Auctioneers chant prices in Hokkien, and within seconds a crate of fish moves from fishing boats in Hualien, Yilang, and Badouzi to a Japanese restaurant in Taipei's Eastern District. In 1626, the Spaniards planted a flag on Heping Island. In 1875, Shen Baozhen changed the name from 'Keelung' (Chicken Coop) to 'Keelung' (Base of Prosperity). In 1984, this was the world's seventh-largest container port. Then three things happened at once: Kaohsiung Port overtook it, Taoyuan Airport opened, and the mining economy collapsed. Today 360,000 people live here, and 39% commute to work in Taipei. What Taipei sees is decline. What the ocean sees is a port that has never left its position.
Linkou New Town: From "Ghost City" to Northern Taiwan's Emerging Metropolis — Transformation and Challenges
In the 1970s, the Taiwanese government planned a "garden city" new town on the Linkou plateau to ease population pressure on Taipei. After decades of development, this once mocked-as-"ghost city" area saw rapid population growth and industrial upgrading following the opening of the Airport MRT in 2017, becoming one of the youngest and most dynamic metropolitan areas in northern Taiwan. But challenges remain — most notably traffic congestion and a damp, chilly climate.
Miaoli County: The Hakka County Whose Mayor Doubled the County's Debt Over Eight Years
Japanese colonial camphor in Miaoli accounted for 95% of Taiwan's total; Sanyi started with wood carving using camphor tree trunks. The first Tung flower festival was held in Gongguan, Beihe Village in 2002. In 2008, Liu Chenghong took over the county with a debt of 202 billion, and by the time he left in 2014, it reached 67.6 billion. During this period, there were incidents such as Chu Fengmin drinking pesticides, Chang Pharmacy's forced demolition, and the Hakka Roundhouse being built into a mosquito museum worth 120 million. Today, 530,000 people live in this county with the second-highest Hakka proportion in Taiwan at 62.5%.
Taichung City: Nearly the Capital in 1887, Became the Second Largest Special Municipality Only in 2010
In 1887 Liu Ming-chuan petitioned to establish Taiwan as a province with the provincial capital at Qiaozaitou in Changhua County (today's Taichung urban core), planning an Eight Trigrams-shaped city; construction began in 1889. In 1894 Shao You-lian moved the capital north to Taipei, halting work on the Taichung provincial capital. The Japanese established Taichung Prefecture on 1 October 1920. Tunghai University broke ground on Dadu Mountain in 1955; Luce Memorial Chapel was completed in 1963. At 01:47 on 21 September 1999 the Chelungpu Fault ruptured from Jiji, Nantou to Dongshi, Taichung, killing 358 in Dongshi Township. On 25 December 2010 the county and city merged and upgraded to a special municipality with 29 districts. Toyo Ito's National Taichung Theater opened in Xitun District in 2016. Today 2.86 million people live in this city that waited 123 years.
Taiwan's Urban Development and the Rural-Urban Divide
70 years transformed Taiwan from agricultural island to urban island: The light and shadow of six special municipalities concentrating 70% of the population
City Character and Regional Culture
From Taipei's international metropolis to Tainan's historic charm, how Taiwan's cities shape distinct local identities
Yilan County: Twice Choosing Its Own Fate, the Lanyang Plain Never Looked Back
On the evening of December 13, 1987, Chen Ting-nan sat across from Wang Yung-ching in a CTS studio and kept the Sixth Naphtha Cracker off the Lanyang Plain. Nineteen years later, on June 16, 2006, the Hsuehshan Tunnel opened, cutting the trip from Taipei to Yilan from two hours to 40 minutes. Then, within ten years of its opening, 6,137 farmhouses rose across this rice granary, farmland prices jumped from NT$4,000 to NT$20,000 per ping, and in 2023 Yilan County alone issued 35% of all farmhouse building permits in Taiwan. Twice, at critical moments in history, one place made a choice; the Lanyang Plain accepted the costs together with the gifts.
Bubble Tea
A beverage that conquered the globe from a casual action during an employee meeting in Taichung in 1987. The controversy surrounding the origin of bubble tea, cultural politics, and the debate over a 500-calorie health drink.
Taiwanese Tea Culture
A small island excluded from international tea quotas, which nevertheless created a golden age for the tea industry, ultimately conquering the world with a milk tea containing "small snacks."
Hakka Food Culture
The rich and diverse Hakka food culture, from the mellow aroma of lei cha to the mountainous charm of wild ginger flower dumplings, showcases the Hakka people's frugal and thrifty lifestyle wisdom
Taiwan's Coffee Culture: The Island Where Convenience Stores Sell 600 Million Cups a Year
The first coffee trees planted in Gukeng, Yunlin during the Japanese colonial period grew, a century later, into a cityscape with a café every fifty meters. Louisa Coffee has opened more than 600 locations — surpassing Starbucks. Alishan coffee has made its way into international competitions. For Taiwanese people, coffee has never been just coffee.
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.
Snow Mountain Tunnel: From an "Impossible Mission" to a Bloody and Tearful Miracle of Taiwan's Engineering
On December 15, 1997, a water inrush accident nearly claimed 300 lives, turning a TBM worth NT$1 billion into scrap metal. This tunnel, listed by the *Encyclopedia Britannica* as one of the world's most arduous engineering projects, is not just a traffic artery but a miracle forged in blood and tears by 25 martyrs and countless unsung heroes chiseling through tetrahedral sandstone harder than steel.
Taiwan's Digital Imaging and Animation Industry
From a global powerhouse of animation outsourcing to a new force in original content: the half-century transformation of Taiwan's digital imaging industry.
Tamsui River Bridge: A Colossal Landmark on the River-Mouth Horizon, Built for 'Transparency'
The Tamsui River Bridge is scheduled to open on May 12, 2026. Designed by the team of the late Dame Zaha Hadid, this single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge took thirty years of planning. Caught between the competing demands of preserving the famous Tamsui sunset and relieving traffic congestion, it redefines Taiwan's river-mouth landscape with fluid, sweeping lines.
Taiwan's Volunteer Firefighters: After Work They Put On the Uniform, Giving Localities a Second Fire Brigade
Called volunteers, yet they have statutory organization, professional training, operational command, and disaster insurance. From the Japanese-era fire-fighting associations to today's mountain search and rescue, this local force fills the time gap in the fire protection system while exposing challenges in recruitment, training, safety equipment, family support, and long-term retention.
The 2026 Advanced Subjects Test Controversy: A Structural Crisis of Educational Integrity
In July 2026, the Advanced Subjects Test was delayed for the first time due to Super Typhoon Bavi; following the release of results, 149 exam appeals were filed, all of which were rejected by the CEEC. With identical options in Biology and histogram errors in Geography, official responses merely claimed "no impact on performance." Legislators, parents, and a civic petition are demanding verifiable evidence rather than mere conclusions.
309 Village Head Books: Challengers Spending 30,000 or 120,000 See a 30% Win Rate
A novice from Taifeng Township, Changhua City, who received 732 votes in 2022 and paid 3,275 NTD for their own campaign. Out of the 13,988 village head candidates nationwide that year, only 309 submitted political donation books to the Control Yuan. When comparing these 309 books with election results, the success rate for challengers without incumbent status who spent under 30,000 NTD and those who spent over 120,000 NTD were both around 30%—the amount of money reveals how long someone has operated in the village, but it is difficult to turn a challenger into a village head.
Mon, September 28
37 articlesTaitung County: Two Offshore Islands, One Held Political Prisoners for Thirty-Six Years, the Other Has Stored Nuclear Waste for Forty-Two Years
Taitung County's 210,000 people are scattered across 3,515 square kilometers, the lowest density in the country: only 60 people per square kilometer, one percent of Taipei's. Yet this county contains Taiwan's earliest human settlement (the Peinan Site, 5,300 years ago, with 1,600 stone coffins), is home to six Indigenous peoples (Amis, Puyuma, Paiwan, Rukai, Bunun, Tao), and has Taiwan's highest Indigenous population share at 37.5%. From 1951 to 1987, Green Island's Huoshao Island held political prisoners for thirty-six years. Beginning in May 1982, Longmen on Lanyu began receiving nuclear waste; forty-two years later, 97,672 barrels are still there. On August 25, 1968, seven Bunun children from Hongye Village defeated Japan's Kansai Little League all-star team seven to zero (not a world championship team), and Taiwan's myth of baseball as the national sport began with this deception. Two offshore islands have borne the cost of an entire island.
Taiwan Enterprises: Sanchang—Sixty Years within Three Cups of Coffee, a Pair of Shoes, and an Insurance Policy
In 1964, three NTU business students founded Sanchanghang with 500,000 TWD, starting with handicraft exports. Sixty years later, it has evolved into Simple Mart (Meilianshe), Sanchang Qiaofu, Chuan Chia Fu (Quanjiafu), and Sanchang Life—a group whose daily operations are woven into the lives of almost every Taiwanese person.
Chen Shui-bian
The tenth and eleventh President of Taiwan, the implementer of the first party rotation in 2000. From a tenant farmer's son in Tainan to the first Democratic Progressive Party president, and then to the first former head of state who was imprisoned—his trajectory encapsulates the most complex tensions of Taiwan's democratic transition: inspiration, legislative foundation, storm, and rupture.
Cai Heipi: The Boy Who Grew Up Memorizing MRT Station Names, Packing Taiwan into 260,000 Subscribers
Born in 2002, Cai Jian-an started with "MRT Trivia" in high school; twelve years later, he stood on the stage of the Golden Road Awards, known as the "Oscars of the Transportation Industry." He changed his name, paused, and started again, handling research, maps, and editing himself—a model of long-termism for Taiwan's knowledge creators.
From Deserts Chang to Anpu — Two Names, One Question
She wrote 'Baby' at 13, was banned from China at 32 over a flag, and killed her own stage name at 34. Chiao An-pu used two lives to answer a question every Taiwanese person is asking: which side are you on?
Wang-a-piau: Taiwan's Battle Cards of Childhood — From Election Flyers to Schoolyard Showdowns
Starting in the 1950s, wang-a-piau were both a game in children's hands and a yardstick of peer status — the more you collected, the more weight you carried in the schoolyard after class. These cards, rooted in Chinese leaf-games and inspired by Japanese children's toys, shifted from metal to plastic and their imagery from puppet-theater characters to comic heroes. They carry the collective memory of generations of Taiwanese people. Most remarkably: in Taiwan, even election flyers could be folded by children into wang-a-piau, becoming unconventional weapons on the childhood battlefield.
The 19 Cattle of Qingtiangang: From Yuan Xing Cattle to Tainan Beef Soup, an Island's Beef Industry Breakthrough
Taiwan's beef self-sufficiency rate is only 4.6%, yet in 2024 the nation's first privately bred and officially certified cattle breed was born. The story of Yuan Xing cattle is an industry breakthrough scripted by a 94-year-old man, 19 wild black cattle, and a bowl of freshly slaughtered beef soup served before dawn.
Su Beng: How a Dumpling Shop Sustained Four Decades of Taiwan's Revolution
Su Beng, whose birth name was Shih Chao-hui, once worked as an underground intelligence agent for the Chinese Communist Party in China. After witnessing the massacres of land‑reform campaigns, he became disillusioned, returned to Taiwan to plot the assassination of Chiang Kai-shek, and fled to Japan when the plot failed. In Tokyo’s Ikebukuro he opened a noodle shop called “Shin Chinmi,” selling dumplings by day and writing Taiwanese history by night. The shop’s income funded the Taiwan independence movement for forty years and produced the nation‑awakening work *Four Hundred Years of Taiwan History*.
The Sino-French War in Taiwan: Eight Months at Keelung and Tamsui
In the autumn of 1884, the French fleet shelled Keelung harbor and 2,000 marines landed, seizing the port. But they spent the next seven months unable to fight their way out of the hills surrounding Keelung. That same week, 600 French sailors landed at Tamsui — and were driven back to sea within two hours. When the war ended, France took Vietnam and relinquished Taiwan. The Qing dynasty nearly lost everything, yet as a result Taiwan went from a dependency to a province.
Chou Tien-chen: Taiwan’s Badminton Pioneer and World No. 2 Veteran
Overcoming a 10-match losing streak, appendicitis, and cancer, Chou Tien-chen reached world No. 2, elevating Taiwanese badminton through unmatched rally discipline.
When the Earthquake Hits, Who's on Duty? The Institutional Code Behind Taiwan's Disaster Medicine System
From the 921 Earthquake to the Hualien tremor, how Taiwan built a disaster medicine network centered on emergency medicine departments. The system's ingenuity lies not in equipment but in the clever design of 'who is on duty.'
Chen San-huo: Handing Broken Vases to Fate, Keeping the Temple Roof's Jian-nian Alive
After the 921 Earthquake, Tainan artist Chen San-huo picked up a shattered vase in Fengyuan, transforming from a temple restoration apprentice into a "rooftop artist" who creates with broken ceramics. Instead of making Jian-nian look like the original, he let fragmentation, chance, and recycled materials redefine its shape.
Taiwan High Speed Rail: From BOT Financial Experiment to Daily Life in the Western Corridor
The Taiwan High Speed Rail is not just about shortening the journey from Taipei to Kaohsiung to an hour and a half; it is also a systemic experiment transitioning from private Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) models, technological shifts, to public responsibility. How it changed the western corridor still depends on finance, last-mile connectivity, and station area development.
Taiwanese Market Culture: A Marketplace That Sells Not Just Vegetables, But Also Preserves Urban Memory
From colonial public markets and post-war population shifts to the electronic payments of Taipei City, this article explores how traditional Taiwanese markets simultaneously provide food supply, popular economy, community ties, and urban memory while searching for their next place between safety, convenience, and human connection.
André Chiang: He Never Waited for a Definition to Settle Before Turning Away
In 1997, a young French restaurant chef at The Sherwood Taipei invited two French three-star chefs to Taiwan for a ten-day collaboration, then bought a ticket to follow them to France. From peeling potatoes in southern France for two years, to pushing his Singapore restaurant to the 14th spot on the world rankings before voluntarily closing it the following year, to opening Taipei’s most difficult-to-book RAW and turning away again in its tenth year—André Chiang’s most irreplaceable move is to turn off the lights and ask the next question whenever he is about to be defined by a title: What exactly is the taste of Taiwan?
Chi-Huey Wong
World authority in glycoscience, 2014 Wolf Prize in Chemistry recipient, former president of Academia Sinica who was close to the Nobel Prize before the OBI Pharma controversy
Taiwan's 16 Indigenous Peoples: A Cultural Map
"16" is not a naturally occurring number—it is the result of negotiation. From 210,000 Amis to 441 Kanakanavu, Taiwan's indigenous peoples possess a cultural depth far exceeding any official roster.
Ethan Tu
Founder of PTT with a 486 computer, led Cortana AI at Microsoft, then returned to Taiwan to build nonprofit AI research—a thirty-year digital journey
Taiwan's Education System: From Exam Hell to the Maze of Diversity
Taiwan spent 30 years trying to abolish its brutal university entrance exam system, only to see cram school enrollments double in 2022. How an island repeatedly experiments with balancing exam pressure and educational equity.
Du Congming
Taiwan's first medical doctorate holder who developed the gradual smoking cessation method helping 11,498 people quit opium in 17 years; founder of Kaohsiung Medical University
Environmental Awakening and Net-Zero Transition
From Polluting Island to Sustainability Pioneer: How Taiwan Transformed Through 40 Years of Environmental Activism
Chi Po-lin
How a government clerk who could not afford helicopters on his salary mortgaged his house to create Taiwan's most successful documentary
Hot Spring Culture
From Military Recuperation to World-Class Mud Springs: How Taiwan Unexpectedly Became a Hot Spring Empire
Contemporary Taiwanese Literature: Wu Ming-yi, Lin Yi-han, and a Quiet Reading Crisis
In 2018, Wu Ming-yi was longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize with _The Stolen Bicycle_ — the nationality field clearly read 'Taiwan.' Yet in that same era, first-print runs for serious Taiwanese literary fiction had already dropped below 3,000 copies. From Shih Shu-ching's epic trilogy spanning the Qing dynasty to the Japanese colonial period, to Lin Yi-han using a single book to drive legislative change — contemporary Taiwanese literature is touching the most universal questions in the most local voices. The audience, however, keeps shrinking.
Chang Yu-sheng: From Idol to Prophet, a Musical Experiment That Crossed Generations
In 1989, the son of an army entertainment troupe leader debuted with 'Miss You Every Day' selling 350,000 copies and became an idol; in 1994, he responded to the market with a 73-minute live band recording that sold dismally but was later called prophetic. Chang Yu-sheng spent nine years grinding between his idol identity and his creative conscience — four days after 'Mouth Says No, Heart Says Yes' went on sale, he crashed his car in the Tamsui pre-dawn hours and never woke up.
Jam Hsiao (蕭敬騰)
From challenger contestant to Golden Melody King, the Taiwanese voice behind the "Rain God" legend
Chen Yu-hsun
Taiwanese comedy film director, creator of Tropical Fish, The Chef, the Actor, the Scoundrel, and My Missing Valentine
Mark Liu: The Berkeley PhD Who Succeeded Morris Chang — Six Years of Decision-Making in the US-China Chip Crossfire
In June 2018, Morris Chang retired, and Mark Liu and C.C. Wei jointly took the helm of TSMC. This UC Berkeley electrical engineering doctorate steered the world's most important chipmaker with an engineer's precision, announcing the Arizona fab, navigating geopolitical crosscurrents amid six years of US-China tech competition, and handing the reins to C.C. Wei upon his retirement in June 2024 — leaving behind a final line: 'Buy TSMC.'
Taiwan Railway History: The "Lung Disease" Railway, the "Black-Headed Ones," and the Line That Lost Its Foreign Names
A road the Japanese called "lung disease" that became a high-speed artery carrying 200,000 people daily over a century. Engineer Becker was scrapped by the Japanese; Hasegawa’s trunk line was renamed post-war; every generation pushed the previous records to footnotes. Foreign names faded, leaving Taiwanese slang like "black-headed ones" and political slogans like "Juguang" and "Ziqiang," until the Puyuma and Taroko era finally laid indigenous place names back onto the tracks.
Taiwan's Provincial Tensions
Provincial tensions are not the story of two groups of people disliking each other — they are a power struggle over who has the right to define a 'Taiwanese.' They die and come back to life in the ballot box, quietly evaporate in the demolition of military dependents' villages, and yet have never truly ended.
Fire EX — The Name They Found by the Pool, Twenty-Five Years of Singing
In the summer of 2000, three high school students from Kaohsiung's Sanmin MXHC spotted a red fire extinguisher and turned it into a band name. Twenty-five years later, their Taiwanese-language punk became the generational sound of the Sunflower Movement, they moved their label back south, and on the Takao Festival stage, they spent seven minutes telling ten thousand people: you can be disappointed, but don't become the kind of person you despise.
Thirty Years of Taiwan’s Online Communities: Recovering URLs, Losing Photos, and the History of Displacement
From the Beauty Island BBS to Threads, Taiwanese people have collectively moved every few years, leaving the previous generation’s memories behind the power switch that was turned off. The thirty-year migration history appears to be a clean line of platform evolution, but at its core, it is a history of displacement over 'whose land this is'—the places with the highest stickiness have the lowest data sovereignty.
Shen Sheng-Po
Trained in computer science, Shen Sheng-Po brought code into Taiwan’s contemporary art scene. In just 34 years, he left behind not only digital artworks, but also a way of treating programming as lived experience and free software as an artistic ethic.
Yin Hai-Guang: The Philosopher Who Planted Liberalism in Taiwan from a House on Wenzhou Street Lane 18
In 1949, a young man from Hubei named Yin Fu-Sheng arrived in Taipei from Nanjing, took the pen name Yin Hai-Guang, and became the sharpest editorial voice at Free China magazine and a philosophy professor at National Taiwan University. He used logical positivism to give students intellectual immunity, and used editorials to challenge Chiang Kai-shek's third-term bid. After being placed under house arrest on Wenzhou Street, he died of stomach cancer at 49 in 1969 — leaving behind the most complete spiritual prototype of Taiwanese liberalism.
Taiwanese Hakka Music: From Mountain Songs to Lin Sheng-xiang's Award Refusal and the Politics of Language
Hakka mountain songs originated in labor life, while Hakka eight-tone ensembles accompanied weddings and funerals. In 1999, the Labor Exchange Band won the Golden Melody Awards for Best Composer and Best Producer with *We Are Going to Sing Mountain Songs*, ushering in the era of Hakka rock. The 14th Golden Melody Awards in 2003 established the Best Hakka Vocalist category; in 2004, Hsieh Yu-wei became its first recipient. In 2007, Lin Sheng-xiang won with *Planting Trees* but refused the award on stage, calling for classification by musical genre rather than language, igniting a debate over the existence of language-based categories that led to the creation of the Golden Indie Music Awards three years later. Hakka TV, founded in 2003, has continued to expand the visibility of Hakka-language music. The threat of language loss persists, but the tension between preservation and innovation continues to drive Hakka musicians forward.
Taiwan's 5G Network Construction and Digital Transformation
Tracing Taiwan's journey from leading in 4G to deploying 5G, exploring the national strategy for digital transformation and smart application development.
Jay Chou
In 1997, a shy 18-year-old boy rewrote the history of Mandopop
Sun, September 27
28 articlesTaiwan Hot Springs Landscape
From "Witch's Hot Spring" to the top 15 global hot spring destination—how tectonic collision cooks this island's healing remedy
Taiwan Biodiversity Hotspots
A 36,000 km² island harbors 59,000 known species—a biodiversity density 100 times the global average
Taiwan Indigenous Peoples' History and Naming Rights Movement
In 1987, a 19-year-old Tsou youth faced execution at a Taipei execution ground. His death ignited the first spark of the naming rights movement.
Taiwan's Long-Term Care System Development
The world's most advanced long-term care system, yet shadowed by an even larger invisible caregiving ecosystem
Taiwan's Animation Outsourcing Industry
Taiwan was once a global animation outsourcing powerhouse where companies like Cuckoos' Nest Studio handled classic Hollywood animations, producing one-third of global animation output at its peak.
‘Ho Fei-peng’
‘A media entrepreneur who led by eight years and suffered seven years of losses, ultimately building Taiwan’’s largest publishing group.’
Penghu International Art Island: An art museum without a gallery that borrows the entire island as an exhibition space
Works are displayed in chicken farms, grocery stores, restaurants that require reservations to enter, and even on boats traveling to Southern Penghu. The Penghu International Art Island, co-organized by the County Government and the Chinese Culture Association, spans four townships and five islands over ten years and five editions. Instead of building its own gallery, it borrows battle tunnels, military cinemas, shops, and ferry services as exhibition spaces, with opening hours dictated by the businesses. This is the most concrete example of what the county magistrate calls an 'island museum,' and people have already begun to speak within those borrowed spaces.
Li Chih-kai
From 'Market Kai' in the documentary Tumbling Boys to an Olympic silver medal — sixteen years of tumbling through life for Taiwan's Pommel Horse Prince.
Ya Hsien: Ceasing Poetry After "The Abyss," Spending His Latter Life as a Pillar of Literary History in the United Daily News Supplement
In 1968, at age 36, Ya Hsien stopped writing after compiling ninety poems into his collection *The Abyss*. From 1977 to 1998, he served as editor-in-chief of the *United Daily News* (UDN) Supplement for 21 years, transforming the editorial desk into Taiwan's most important post-war literary public space. He passed away in Vancouver, Canada, on October 11, 2024, at age 92—his 56-year silence after ceasing publication proved longer than a thousand volumes of poetry; his refrain "Hallelujah, I am still alive" became an obscure, poetic symbol that evaded censorship during the Martial Law era.
I Am a Person from [City]: The 'Local' Fan Pages with an AI Prompt Left in the Back-end
In February 2026, a local fan page claiming to be 'a person from Taipei' left behind an unedited AI prompt: 'Remove sensitive terms, enhance Taiwan local dialect.' Following this trail leads to a corporate entity in Neihu, Taipei, which uses AI to rewrite news from CTi News and CTWANT into the vernacular of locals, distributing them across fan pages disguised as residents of various cities. It doesn't fabricate news; it reposts real news. The problem lies in the untraceable origin and funding—while those best at identifying cognitive warfare in Taiwan are urging: 'Don't rush to label things.'
Taiwan Design Institute: The Organization That Secretly Puts Design into Clinics and Ballots
In 2022, after the renovation of the ticket area at Taipei Metro Zhongshan Station, someone commented, "It was done well; don't do it again." An organization that survives on Gold Point Awards, million-visitor design exhibitions, and international rankings places its biggest bets in areas you might not feel—the waiting areas of clinics in Xizhi, or the typeface on your ballot. The Taiwan Design Institute aims to prove that this manufacturing island can decide what things look like for itself, including how the government interacts with the people, moving from "Made in Taiwan is a synonym for imitation" to "design power is national strength."
Post Offices: Opened in 1888, Regimes Changed Names, Counters Remained
In 1888, Liu Ming-chuan established the Taiwan Postal Bureau in Taipei Prefecture; the post office subsequently navigated Qing rule, Japanese colonial administration, and post-war state-owned enterprise systems, evolving from a letter-sending counter into a public network for savings, insurance, and local care; it is the most ordinary institution, yet the one that best reveals how Taiwan transformed state systems into daily life.
The Echo of Golden Times: From the Mengchen Pot to Plastic Cups, Taiwan's Tea Has Changed Its Vessels Over a Century
In the Qing Dynasty, wealthy merchants in Taiwan insisted on 'the pot must be Mengchen.' Today, office workers reflexively order 'less sugar, less ice' at bubble tea shops. Over the past century, Taiwan's tea has switched from gongfu tea small pots to competition tea tin cans, and now to plastic cups for hand-shaken drinks. In 1869, Zealong changed the Fujian tea surname to 'Formosa' and sent it to New York; in 1976, a jin of Lugu champion tea was priced at NT$5,000; in 2025, there are 16,000 hand-shaken drink shops across Taiwan. What has changed is the vessel; what has not is this island's knack for brewing foreign opportunities into its own flavor.
VH (Vast & Hazy): Fifteen Years of Directional Calibration for an 'Exit-System Band'
Formed at the Tamkang University Jin Shao Award in 2011, went on hiatus in 2014, returned as a duo in 2017, and was nominated three times for Golden Melody Best Vocal Group. In an era when the Taiwan indie scene favored noise, Vast & Hazy chose to be a shelter for nameless anxiety — and fans spontaneously named them an 'exit-system band.' In April 2026, after Yi-chi announced his move to behind-the-scenes work, Ka-ka carries the name forward.
Kaohsiung: In 1979, the Year It Became a Special Municipality, Eight Kaohsiung Natives Were Locked Up in Taipei
On July 1, 1979, Kaohsiung became Taiwan's second special municipality. On December 10, International Human Rights Day, a Formosa Magazine rally at Dagangpu Roundabout turned into a clash under tear gas. Eight people were sentenced, and on February 28, 1980, a bloody attack struck Lin Yi-hsiung's home on Xinyi Road in Taipei. In that same year, 1979, Kaohsiung won administrative glory and absorbed postwar Taiwan's heaviest political repression. 2.71 million people are spread across 38 districts — the Qijin sandbar, the Bunun villages of Namasia, China Steel's smokestacks, and Weiwuying's aluminum-alloy roof all sharing one city — and it took this city 45 years to stitch that wound into its own shape.
The Penglou Peoples: From "Administrative Formatting" to the Siraya's Century-Long Rebirth as the 17th Tribe
On July 30, 2026, the Executive Yuan officially recognized the Siraya as the 17th statutory indigenous people, ending the Penglou community's century-long "administrative disappearance." From 40,000 people in Dutch-era household registers to collective invisibility caused by omissions in the 1950s Nationalist government records, and now with 8 tribes still waiting for recognition, this naming movement opens a new chapter in Taiwan's multicultural historical narrative.
Taiwan's Fuel Pricing Mechanism and CPC: The NT$36 Saved, Booked First Under the Name of a Company Standing at the Front
On March 22, 2026, a woman in Yunlin saved NT$36 by filling up before a price hike — the same day the Premier said people should thank CPC at the pump. From the 2008 freeze to this year’s war-driven surge, Taiwan lets this state company, at a 93% debt ratio, absorb spikes first and recoup them via supplementary budgets. Savings split evenly per liter; who benefits most has never been tallied.
Chia-Yi Agricultural and Forestry High School: How a Runner-Up Team Opened the Door to Koshien for Taiwan
In August 1931, the Chia-Yi Agricultural and Forestry (Kano) baseball team traveled from Keelung to Japan’s Koshien Stadium. Composed of Han, Indigenous, and Japanese students, the team reached the finals and took second place. What it left behind was not just the slogan “The Greatest Kano,” but a record of how a colony was seen on another nation’s field, and how that field became part of Taiwan’s own memory.
Alishan Forest Railway: A 71.6-Kilometer Line Built to Bring Timber Down, and Culture Up
Opened in 1906 and completed in 1912, the Alishan Forest Railway once transported cypress logs down to Chiayi and was interrupted for 15 years after the Morakot and Dujuan typhoons. Fully restored in 2024, it has transformed from a logging transport line into a cultural landscape. With trains running again, the real question is no longer how to conquer the forest, but how to keep operating amidst disasters, tourism, and preservation.
Taiwan Hotpot: An Island Palate's Evolution History, One Pot at a Time
From a symbol of civilization in the colonial era to today's national comfort food, Taiwan hotpot is not only a story of evolving taste buds — it is a reflection of social change and ethnic fusion.
The Li Poetry Society: A Group Forced to Forget Japanese Sustained Taiwan’s Longest-Running Chinese Poetry Journal
In 1958, a 36-year-old Taiwanese former Japanese soldier published his first post-war Chinese poem under the pen name 'Huan Fu,' eleven years after he stopped writing in Japanese. Six years later, he and eleven others met in a living room in central Taiwan to transform this generation's experience of linguistic loss into a poetry society called 'Li'—a journal that has never ceased publication for 60 years, bringing local poetics from the margins into junior high school textbooks.
Taiwan Orchids: How a Flower Became an Export Agriculture for the Global Supply Chain
In the 1990s, a single phalaenopsis orchid left Taiwan’s greenhouses as a plantlet rather than a cut flower. Its success stemmed not just from climate, but from breeding research by Li Nian and others, standardization by Taiwan Sugar Corporation, the division-of-labor network among Tainan’s small orchid nurseries, and the negotiation of quarantine, transport, and variety rights; what was truly exported was a replicable, verifiable, and cross-border production system.
The Zhongli Incident: How a Tampered Ballot Ignited the Path to Local Democracy
On November 19, 1977, Hsu Hsin-liang contested the Taoyuan County Magistrate election against the KMT nominee. Starting from a disputed ballot at Zhongli Elementary School, crowds surrounded the police substation. This night spiraled out of control, later changing how ballots are witnessed and leaving behind archives and deaths still awaiting rectification. The article traces the origins of authoritarian order’s loss of persuasiveness through campaign songs, local factions, and the spatial dynamics of polling stations.
Taiwan's New Idol Generation
In 2020, someone bet NT$130 million on manufacturing idols in Taiwan. Four shows won four Golden Bell Awards, more than fifty people debuted — then the champion group's popularity plummeted. The hardest thing about Taiwan's idol industry has always been: what happens after you debut?
The Tatara Is Not Just a Boat: Lanyu’s Technology of Writing Forest and Sea Together
The Lanyu outrigger canoe is not a craft artifact that can be isolated from tribal culture. It integrates tree species identification, plank joining, fishing group organization, the flying fish season, rituals, kinship identity, and maritime navigation into a single system of knowledge. This article traces the materials and structure of the Tatara, the training of canoe builders, launch rituals, and the protection of traditional intellectual property, extending to the 2026 "Lanyu–Batan 300-Year First Voyage," to explain how the outrigger canoe continues to be used and reinterpreted amidst tourism, cultural heritage, rights claims, and cross-national Austronesian exchange.
Taiwan Enterprise: Acer — The Man Who Drew the Smiling Curve, Yet Struggled to Stand at Its Ends
In 1992, Stan Shih drew an upward-opening curve inside Acer, telling Taiwan’s manufacturing sector: don’t get stuck in the low-value-added assembly middle; move toward R&D and branding at both ends. This phrase influenced Taiwan for thirty years. But the man who drew the line himself fell three times on the path to the branding end—forced into a split in 2000, facing inventory collapse after reaching second place globally in 2011, and losing NT$20.5 billion in 2013, forcing the 68-year-old founder to return. Meanwhile, Wistron, the contract manufacturer he spun off and least expected to succeed, climbed to the top of the smile in the AI era.
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.
Lo Ta-yu: The Man Who Sang Taiwan's Rootlessness, Moved Nineteen Times, and Is Still Looking for the Road
In the 1970s, inside the gross anatomy room of a medical college in Taichung, a radiology student hid away to practice singing, because “the echo there was very good, and no one would know I was singing.” Later he wrote “Lukang, the Little Town,” “Orphan of Asia,” and “Pearl of the Orient,” asking “Who am I?” on behalf of an entire generation. Yet this man who sang so much rootlessness moved from Taipei to New York, Hong Kong, and Beijing, relocating nineteen times in twenty-nine years. At seventy, he said he was only a “remarkable survivor.”
Sat, September 26
8 articlesTai Tzu-ying
Record holder for 214 weeks as world number one, Taiwan's badminton queen — from Kaohsiung's Qianzhen District to an Olympic silver medal
Blue-and-White Slippers: How a Military Rubber Sandal Became Part of Daily Life in Taiwan
In the 1950s, the Joint Logistics General Department Rubber Factory converted military technology into civilian slippers; later, the private sector popularized them through low-cost materials and mechanized production. The blue-and-white slipper is not just a symbol of Taiwanese flavor; it also wears the post-war material scarcity, industrial transformation, and cultural reinterpretation on a single pair of shoes.
Academia Sinica: An Institution Born to Study China, How It Took Root on This Island
In the winter of 1948, the nation's highest academic institution landed in Taiwan, with only about fifty people making the journey. The artifacts and boxes from the Institute of History and Philology were stacked in a warehouse beside Yangmei Railway Station. Seventy-some years later, it has twenty-four research institutes and nine research centers, gaining a rare kind of longevity: excavating one archaeological site every ten years, establishing one institute every eleven years. The design that enables this—no teaching, no student enrollment, reporting directly to the Presidential Office—simultaneously subjects its leadership to presidential appointment, its budget to annual scrutiny, and even the question of whether to change its name becomes a matter of national positioning.
Invoices: The Paper from 1951 That Turned All Citizens into Tax Inspectors
On New Year's Day, 1951, Finance Director Ren Hsien-ch'un printed lottery numbers onto receipts, allowing consumers' greed to monitor businesses for tax reporting, which increased business tax revenue by seventy-five percent in one year. More than seven decades later, this system has outlived its inventor and the authoritarian rule of its birth—until a code controversy in 2024 forced people to ask: why is this system still trustworthy?
The Expansion and Withdrawal of Higher Education in Taiwan: From 58 to 148 Universities, Then the Closings Began
In 1994, the April 10 March called for the widespread establishment of colleges and universities. In less than twenty years, the number of institutions ballooned from 58 to 148, with net enrollment rates soaring past 70%. Then came the wall of a declining birthrate: student numbers peaked in 2012, yet withdrawal regulations were not enacted until 2022. As Gaofeng, Yongda, and Toko closed their doors one by one, nearly one-third of students placed at Yongda failed to graduate, and the success rate for transitioned teachers was only 14%. This was an experiment designed only for opening; the rules for closing arrived ten years late, while the dividends were real but diluted, and the bill fell upon those with the fewest options.
The 8 O'Clock Drama: A Matchstick Ignites the Cult and Nostalgia of Taiwan's Living Rooms
From the melodramatic suffering of 1990s Qiong Yao to the "Pili Fire" memes of the 2000s, 8 o'clock dramas are not just background noise for Taiwanese people, but an industrial miracle of "filming and broadcasting simultaneously" that syncs with reality.
Yang Chuan-kwang: Indigenous Hero from Taitung, Rome Silver Medalist, and the Asian Ironman Who Set a 9121-Point World Record
Born July 10, 1933, in Taitung's Maran Amis village, Yang Chuan-kwang was Taiwan's first Olympic medalist. He won silver in the 1960 Rome decathlon with 8334 points and in 1963 broke the world record with 9121 points, his 4.83-meter pole vault performance forcing the IAAF to revise its scoring system. He died of a stroke in California on January 27, 2007, aged 73. In April 2025, the Ministry of Culture designated him a national treasure.
Penglai Rice: How a Grain Rewrote Taiwan's Century of Agriculture and Dining Landscape
From the 1918 Japanese rice unrest, the breeding efforts of Iso Nagichi and Suei Nagito, to No. 65 from Taichung, post-war high yields, and modern precision breeding—Penglai Rice has not only changed the texture of rice but also Taiwan's agricultural system, local landscape, and historical memory.
Tue, September 22
102 articlesThe Great Recall: The Largest Recall Wave in Taiwan’s History, Measuring Every Tick of Democracy
On the night of July 26, 2025, one-third of Taiwan’s electoral districts held simultaneous vote counts. All 25 recall cases failed. From the Bluebird Movement to claims of over 1.3 million signature supporters, and three waves of voting resulting in zero recalls, this largest recall wave in Taiwan’s history did not remove a single official, yet for the first time, it measured the mobilization energy, the height of the threshold, and the cost of polarization simultaneously.
Taiwan's Soundscape: Classical Music from Garbage Trucks, Birdsong on the Metro, and an Island Heard But Rarely Listened To
In the same year, Taipei Metro turned station music into art while removing the alarm sound melody in favor of bird calls. Sounds were simultaneously aestheticized and functionalized. These sounds that Taiwan's Noise Control Act seeks to eliminate are, in fact, landmarks by which we identify "this is home." A question from a Master of Soundscape Studies: understanding Taiwan can begin by asking, "What sounds do we habitually ignore?"
Taiwan's Hand-Shaken Beverage Culture
From bubble milk tea to premium teas, the rise and global expansion of Taiwan's hand-shaken beverage culture
Taiwan Night Market Culture
164 regulated night markets; Tainan averages 38,000 people per market, from temple fairs to international tourist attractions
Taiwanese Bread and Baking
From Wu Bao-chun's World Championship to 85°C's international expansion, exploring the unique charm of Taiwanese bread
Taiwanese Breakfast Culture: Twenty Thousand Shops Sell the Same Breakfast, Yet No One Owns It
In 1955, three soy milk shops lined up at Yonghe Zhongzheng Bridge; the one with the 'Yonghe Soy Milk' sign never left a trace. Seventy years later, concentrated soy milk and factory-made pastry skins tore down the barriers to opening a shop. The Judicial Yuan reclassified 'MexiMi' as a weak trademark, and an entire street sprouted Mii-Miii, Hongyi, and Morning Beautiful Rice Cake. This meal could not hold its recipe, could not hold its name, and could not hold the body standing in front of the griddle—so it became the shared dawn of twenty thousand shops.
Taiwan's Fermented Foods and Pickling Culture
From stinky tofu to fermented soybean curds, exploring Taiwan's unique fermentation techniques and pickling traditions
Taiwan Indigenous Food Culture
From AKAME's Flames to the Amis Wild Vegetable Universe—How Taiwan Indigenous Cuisine Reignited the World's Gaze After Three Thousand Years
Taiwan's Rice Food Culture
From 85 kg to 42 kg of rice consumed annually: A food revolution and cultural persistence in a rice island nation
Taiwan's Seafood Culture
Fresh seafood delivered directly from fishing ports, seafood restaurant culture, and seafood dishes like oyster omelet showcase Taiwan's island characteristics surrounded by the sea and its rich seafood culinary traditions.
Taiwanese "Handy Dishes": The Meaning, Origin, and Signature Cuisine of Banquet Culture
_Tshiú-lōo-tshài_ (handy dishes) means "signature cuisine." In Neimen, Kaohsiung—where loamy soil cannot grow crops but instead raised the densest group of caterers in Taiwan—a single company hosted 25,000 banquets a year during its golden age. The final broth from one pot could take four to eight hours to perfect, and the entire village knew if it was good or not the next day.
Taiwan's Vegetarian Culture
Taiwan ranks among the top three globally for vegetarian population ratio, from Buddhist vegetarian traditions to modern plant-based protein innovation
Taiwanese Dessert Culture
From Yujing Mango Ice to the Snow Ice Revolution: Exploring Taiwan's Unique Culture of Eating Ice Even in Winter
The Culinary Fusion of New Residents in Taiwan
As Thai spiciness meets Taiwanese sweet and savory, Vietnamese pho encounters Taiwanese cured meats, and Indonesian spices embrace local ingredients—a cross-border flavor revolution is quietly unfolding in Taiwan. The cuisine brought by new residents offers not just flavors from their homeland, but entirely new possibilities for enriching Taiwanese food culture.
Taiwanese Noodle Culture: A Seventy-Year Saga from US Aid Flour to National Delicacy
From post-war military family villages to the international stage, Taiwanese noodles have written an epic of migration and homeland memory, starting with US aid flour and fusing regional memories with local innovation.
Taiwanese Street Food
A 1987 mishap at Spring Water Restaurant sent bubble tea into 60 markets worldwide. From a survival tool for Qing-era immigrants to a 400-billion-yuan industry supported by 233,000 stalls today, its success formula isn't refinement—it's the grassroots courage of "screw it, let's just try."
The Taiwanese Film: The Speaker Beside the Screen and a Film History That Died and Came Back to Life
In 1930, a辩士 (benshi) stood beside the screen in a theater, improvising Mandarin and Taiwanese commentary for silent films; ninety years later, Cape No. 7 brought five languages back to the screen together. The Taiwanese-language film industry was once the world's third-largest producer of feature films, yet it was strangled to death. In the years when the New Taiwanese Cinema won the Golden Lion in Venice, the box office share of local films in theaters dropped to just 0.36%. Local cinema is not a straight line from bad to good; it is a history repeatedly declared dead, only to come back to life.
Sodagreen: It Took Them Twenty Years to Realize They Had to Litigate for Their Own Name
Formed by four students on the stage of the 2001 National Chengchi University Golden Melody Awards; discovered by Lin Weizhe at the 2003 Keelung Sea Music Festival; after completing the Vivaldi Project's fourth installment and touring Beijing and Berlin, they were sued in 2019 and only reclaimed their name at the Taipei Arena in 2023—Sodagreen spent twenty years learning that the first step for a Taiwanese indie band to debut is to register their band name.
Sunset Rollercoaster: 14 Years From a Photo Booth Background to Coachella, Singing Taipei Sun in English
In 2010, a 19-year-old student randomly chose the "Sunset Rollercoaster" preset from Mac Photo Booth as their MySpace profile picture. Fourteen years later, this band became the first Taiwanese group invited to Coachella in over twenty years. With all-English, subtropical City Pop that doesn't rely on the industrial system, they created the most globally heard version of Taiwan using a casual photo silhouette of a roller coaster.
Taiwan Hip-Hop and Rap Development: Chinese Can Rap, Taiwanese Dialects Take the Stage, and It’s Not a Ghetto—They Turned Three Disadvantages into a Sovereign Voiceprint
In 2004, Song Yueh-ting had been dead for two years when his mother and brother took the stage to accept the Golden Melody Award for Best Lyrics. The double rhymes in 'Life's a Struggle' pushed the prejudice that 'Chinese isn't suitable for rap' one step forward. From the underground era of self-teaching through imported albums, to Leo Wang and MC HotDog successively winning the Rap King title, Taiwan spent twenty years to walk this path. But what makes this island most moving is not how much it resembles the US, but how it turned the three innate disadvantages of Chinese tones, Taiwanese dialect accents, and non-ghetto weakness into a diverse sovereign voiceprint that only this island can sing.
Taiwan Science Parks: A Bet on a Rice Field That Became the World’s Lifeline, and Its Chokepoint
In 1979, in Jinshanmian, Hsinchu, Irving Ho, an engineer who had returned to Taiwan from IBM, built Asia’s first science park on a rice field. Forty-five years later, the Hsinchu, Southern Taiwan, and Central Taiwan science parks have surpassed NT$5.8 trillion in annual revenue, and the world’s most advanced chips are mass-produced in these three parks. Yet this island’s strongest talisman is also its most fragile chokepoint: one drought, one power outage, or one geopolitical card can make the global supply chain hold its breath.
AI Enters the Classroom: 300 Agents to Catch Teachers Left Alone After Training
In 2026, Hsiao Bi-khim placed 300 AI agents designed by approximately 80 teachers into a shared marketplace. Two different surveys in Taiwan show that while 90% of teachers have been exposed to AI, 95.6% still have learning needs. From the three-hour workshop at Dajia Elementary School, the 'ouke' (picky customer) test at Neihu High School, to the Ministry of Education's Talent Ark Project, this article asks: The tools have entered the classroom; who will catch the teachers when they return? This is a more difficult educational project after the popularization of tools.
Chen Chih-chung: Elected to Kaohsiung City Council Three Times, Two Terms Ended in Legal Proceedings
On August 18, 2008, orientation for the University of Virginia School of Law began, but Chen Chih-chung, who was preparing to pursue his J.D., never showed up and lost his admission eligibility on the very day. Later, he was elected to the Kaohsiung City Council three times from Xiaogang in Qianzhen District, with two of his terms ending at the moment a judgment became final. In between, he served 272 days in prison. The verdict rendered in April 2023 did not include a forfeiture of civil rights. A month later, the three-reading revision of the election and recall law added a blacklist clause, preventing him from registering as a candidate.
Hsu Cho-yun: Ninety-Five Years of History, Written with Two Fingers—and Wang Leehom’s Maternal Granduncle
Born in Xiamen in 1930, Hsu Cho-yun came to Taiwan with the Nationalist government in 1949 and moved to Pittsburgh in 1970. Born with limb disabilities and a lifelong wheelchair user, the historian nevertheless typed nearly forty books with the only two fingers through which he could exert force. Winner of the sixth Tang Prize in Sinology in 2024, he donated the entire NT$50 million award to establish the Hsu-Sun Scholarship. He was Wang Leehom’s seventh maternal granduncle and Li Chien-fu’s uncle. Before his death in August 2025, he left one final declaration: “At the moment I draw my last breath, I will still be learning.”
Huang Shan-liao: No One Looked at the World Champion’s Clothes, So He Started Selling 'One-Line Comfort'
In 2014, the son of a Kinmen snack shop owner walked the London Graduate Fashion Week runway in a military-inspired design called 'Kinmen 1969,' winning the international grand prize. Upon returning to Taiwan to seek employment, however, HR treated his resume as fake because 'there were no reports about it.' He angrily started his own media outlet, then pivoted to writing healing short sentences of no more than 28 characters, cumulatively selling over 300,000 copies. No one looked at the cabinet of clothes telling the history of the battlefields; he changed to selling 'one-line comfort.' Taiwan's attention economy buys sentences you can read in a glance, not things that are made.
The 1935 Hsinchu-Taichung Earthquake: How Streets Learned to Remember After Qingshui Was Wiped Out
At 6:02 a.m. on April 21, 1935, a magnitude 6.9 earthquake tore through Hsinchu and Taichung Prefectures near Guandao Mountain, killing 3,279 people, injuring 11,976, and destroying 17,927 households. Local figure Yang Zhaojia wrote "Qingshui Wiped Out" on a business card, while Huang Wangcheng recorded in his diary that his family fled to the side of a deep well. Post-disaster reconstruction committees, railway repairs, urban planning reforms, and seismic monitoring transformed a disaster into a new governance order, leaving behind questions about who has the authority to define safety.
The August 7 Flood: How Floodwaters Rewrote Taiwan’s Homes and State
The August 7 Flood of 1959 devastated central and southern Taiwan, killing 667, leaving 408 missing, and displacing over 300,000 people. Looking back from the torrential rains in Douliu, broken bridges, US military helicopter aerial photos, post-disaster reports, and a female migrant worker’s memory of returning home, the August 7 Flood was not merely a weather-induced disaster, but a turning point in how the state counted, rescued, rebuilt, and reorganized local life.
Taichung Port: How a Single Truckload of Stones Pushed Wūqí Toward the Sea and Rewrote the Coastline
On October 31, 1973, Chen Shu-hsi dropped the first truckload of stones at the Wūqí North Breakwater. Three years later, Taichung Port opened with merchant vessels, warships, and 300,000 visitors, becoming an artificial international gateway for central Taiwan. Yet port completion did not equal the city’s dream. Sand drift, the outward shift of the old town, and controversies over white dolphin habitats mean this "Ten Major Construction Projects" site still answers the same question: How do we turn the sea into a door without losing the sea itself?
Shimen Reservoir: How a Dam Built to Solve Water Scarcity Resettled Immigrants and Water Culture
In 1954, Chen Cheng chaired the Shimen Reservoir Design Committee, where Taoyuan’s water scarcity, post-war fiscal constraints, and US aid technology converged to place a major dam on the national agenda. Completed in 1964, it provided irrigation, power generation, flood control, and public water, while displacing residents from the submerged zone. The history of Shimen Reservoir is not merely an engineering triumph, but a long-term negotiation over who receives water, who bears the cost, and how the state mapped engineering benefits onto local lives.
Taichung Prefectural Office: How an Administrative Building Ordered the City, and How Citizens Reclaimed It
Built in phases from 1913 to 1934, the Taichung Prefectural Office served as the permanent seat of colonial administration and later as the site of postwar municipal government. Viewed through its street corner, arcades, annexes, and restoration site, it is not merely a neoclassical monument, but a public building that layers power, engineering, labor, and civic memory onto a single address.
No. 1 Girls' High School: How a Women's Campus Preserves Academic, Bodily, and Public Memory
From colonial screening in 1904 to the anti-aircraft green uniforms of 1952, No. 1 Girls' High School is not only the cradle of women's leadership in Taiwan but also a miniature museum of spatial politics.
Agricultural Cooperatives Do More Than Sell Fertilizer: How Taiwan's Rural Public Organizations Evolved from Colonial Institutions to Credit Department Reforms
Tracing the evolution of agricultural cooperatives from the 1900 Sanxia Cooperative, the 1943 Agricultural Associations, the post-war merger and division of cooperatives, to the credit departments and the 2003 Agricultural Finance Act, this article explores how cooperatives serve as a public interface for agricultural technology, local finance, and rural power. It also examines how cooperative archives, membership qualifications, local elites, and credit department reforms have collectively shaped the institutional memory of Taiwan's rural areas.
Taiwan's Fisheries Modernization: How a Fishing Net Connects Qianzhen, the Three Oceans, and the Island's Table
Tracing Taiwan's fisheries from coastal livelihoods to a transoceanic industry: from colonial fisheries administration and postwar Qianzhen Port's cold chain, to the 1979 distant-water development plan, the 1982 EEZ regime, and 2005 international sanctions. The article examines fisheries schools, aquaculture exports, fishing village households, port diversification, and flag-state responsibility, revealing the resource, labor, local governance, and international regulatory realities behind production growth.
Beyond Setting Sail: How Taiwan’s Fisheries Were Rebuilt by Research Vessels, Fish Markets, and a Community of Technical Experts
Tracing how Taiwan’s fisheries transformed across ports, cold chains, education, capital, and local life—from Japanese-era hydrographic research and the Rinkai Maru, to the Batousi and Kaohsiung fish markets, postwar technical personnel, US aid for distant-water fishing, and the Dongshi fishing village.
Eradicating Malaria in Taiwan: Lien Ri-ching and a Public Health Engineering Project that Integrated Mosquitoes into Governance
Established in 1946, the Chaozhou Malaria Research Center marked Lien Ri-ching’s transition from studying mosquitoes under a microscope to leading Taiwan’s disease prevention efforts. The 1965 WHO certification of Taiwan’s malaria-free status reveals a history involving foreign aid, local research, household spraying, local public health, and state mobilization, while leaving behind public health challenges such as monitoring vectors and imported cases post-eradication, illuminating how post-war governance penetrated daily life.
Pirate Kingdom: The Reverse Engineering of the Counterfeit Era Woven into TSMC’s Trust Gene
From the 1970s to the 1990s, Taiwan was dubbed the "Pirate Kingdom" by international media. This article traces the rise and fall of the counterfeit industry, how the June 12 deadline and the Special 301 clause forced institutional transformation, and explains why TSMC’s "do not compete with customers" trust model is the reversal of this history.
Sound Has No Address: How Taiwan’s Radio Evolved from a State Megaphone to a Local Public Space
Tracing the receiver’s journey from the 1925 experimental broadcasts and colonial broadcasting bureaus to the post-war "Voice of Taiwan," martial-law private stations, and underground radio, this article follows how the radio transmitted not only government decrees and songs, but also the local experiences that were difficult to silence.
US Aid: How a Sack of Flour Became a Development System
From 1951 to 1965, US aid delivered not only dollars, military supplies, and food, but also capital, technology, education, and Cold War security into Taiwan's postwar economy. From the Seventh Fleet's entry into the Taiwan Strait after the Korean War to Yin Zhongrong's industrial selection, the distribution of Public Law 480 materials, scientific education, and administrative institutions, how was US aid re-translated by local and bureaucratic actors? It supported postwar reconstruction while leaving behind controversies over dependency, oversight, and autonomy.
Xiluo Bridge: Fifteen Years at a Standstill, Seven Months to Connect North and South
In 1937, the bridge over the Zhuoshui River completed 32 piers first, but the superstructure was stalled by wartime steel shortages. Fifteen years later, U.S. aid steel, local petitions, and a multinational engineering crew finished it in seven months in 1952. The Xiluo Bridge thus became not only the longest bridge in the Far East at the time, but also a history where postwar Taiwan layered transportation, the Cold War, Taiwan Sugar Railway transport, and local memory onto a single steel truss. Today it remains in use, while continuing to face choices between preservation and safety.
The Bannan Line: Stitching Two Cities Together Underground Over 26.5 Kilometers
On December 24, 1999, the Bannan Line first connected Ximending, Longshan Temple, and Taipei City Hall, later extending to Dingpu and the Nangang Exhibition Center. This 23-station, 26.5-kilometer underground line rewrote the commuting time, commercial flow, walking paths, and land imagination between Banqiao, Taipei, and Nangang, leaving behind questions of who absorbs the foot traffic, who bears the impact of change, and how the final 500 meters are traversed.
Lin An-Tai Old House: You Can Dismantle a House, but Not a Piece of Taipei
In 1977, the widening of Dunhua South Road forced the Lin An-Tai Old House on Siwei Road in Da’an District to be dismantled. The straight-line distance was only ten kilometers, yet the move took ten years. This Qing-dynasty Anxi immigrant residence was finally reassembled in Binjiang Park, leaving behind not only a Minnan courtyard but also a question Taiwan still has to face today: after a building leaves its original site, how much of its original self can it still preserve. The article starts from the Lin family’s migration, the road controversy, three relocations, and the fengshui landscape, and asks what was actually lost behind the story of a preservation success.
Losheng Sanatorium: How an Isolated Home Became the Site of Taiwan’s Medical Human Rights
Established in 1930, Losheng Sanatorium was once Taiwan’s only public leprosy isolation hospital. From forced quarantine and residents’ self-directed living to the preservation movement sparked by the MRT depot development, this hillside settlement bears witness to the intertwining of public health, disease stigma, housing rights, and cultural heritage. The article traces medical policies from the Japanese colonial period to the post-war era, how residents domesticated the isolated space, and why the preservation movement is more than a debate over the demolition of old buildings.
Taichung MRT: A Green Line 30 Years in the Making, Learning How to Earn Trust
In November 2020, Lu Siu-yan announced the trial operation of Taichung’s first MRT line. The 16.7-km Green Line connects Beitun, Taichung HSR Station, and 18 stations, but was halted on its sixth day due to a coupler failure, followed by a construction crane collapse. The story of the Taichung MRT is not just about how a track was completed, but how a city long reliant on cars and scooters is regaining passenger trust through safety, transfers, and repeated corrections.
Taoyuan Ponds: How a Plateau Turned Rainwater into Life
From severed rivers and red-soil plateaus to the Taoyuan Grand Canal and Shimen Reservoir, this article explores how Taoyuan ponds became a decentralized water storage system, continuously transforming between modern irrigation, land readjustment, urban development, ecological conservation, and local memory. The article compiles the natural conditions of the Taoyuan plateau, the spatial relationship between ponds and canals, historical changes in quantity, and the practical choices facing preservation and reuse today.
Ah Gui Animation: How a Flash Character Entered Taiwan’s Computer Classes, Records, and Public Health Campaigns
In 1999, Chang Jung-kuei and Chunshuitang created Ah Gui, a round-faced character with a distinctive voice, using Flash. From forwarded short videos, Ah Gui expanded into records, films, Japanese websites, and SARS public health campaigns. The question Ah Gui leaves us is: when a website stops updating, what keeps an online character alive in Taiwan’s memory?
Eslite Bookstore: A 24-Hour Reading Landmark and the Evolution of Taiwan’s Cultural Subjectivity
Eslite Bookstore is not only Taiwan’s most representative chain bookstore but also a significant symbol of contemporary Taiwanese lifestyle aesthetics and cultural subjectivity. Since Mr. Wu Ching-yau founded the first humanistic and artistic bookstore in 1989, Eslite has successfully transformed physical bookstores from mere commercial spaces into urban landmarks that nurture the soul, through its "24-hour non-stop" operating model. This article explores Eslite’s founding philosophy, the social impact of 24-hour reading culture, its composite business model, and how this cultural coordinate is redefining the future of reading through omnichannel transformation amidst digital waves and closure challenges. It details the era shifts from the Dun Nan store to the Xinyi and Songshan stores, analyzing its unique position in cultural diplomacy and the creative industry.
Taiwan Indigenous Weaving Culture: Weaving Family Memory Back onto the Body
From Atayal ramie and Saisiyat century-old garments to Paiwan interlocking-weave techniques, this article explores how Taiwan Indigenous weaving connects women’s lives, family patterns, ethnic identity, ritual order, and contemporary cultural revitalization, while also examining the responsibilities and limitations of museum collections, tribal transmission, and cultural heritage systems in preserving traditional crafts.
National Central Library: How a Library Preserves an Island’s Publications as National Memory
The National Central Library is more than a quiet reading room; it is a public infrastructure for Taiwan’s publications, covering issuance, legal deposit, cataloging, preservation, and digital reuse. This article explains how a national library transforms seemingly ephemeral daily publishing acts into verifiable collective memory, addressing the tensions between preservation, access, copyright, and digital formats.
Kaohsiung Port: How a Harbor Connected Dagou, Hamaxing, and an Industrial City
The Dagou harbor construction project, which began in 1908, was not a linear engineering effort simply to bring ships in. It simultaneously drove the cross-Strait railway, the export of sugar and bananas, customs and port authorities, the reclaimed Hamaxing district, and post-war plans to rewrite the city's scale with containers and heavy industry. As the banana sheds and port history museum of the old port area are viewed anew today, the questions left by Kaohsiung Port become clear: How does a port that expanded to send goods to the world allow those living on the shore to truly see their own city?
Taiwan's Independent Bookstore Culture: How a Book Becomes a Neighborhood's Living Room
From the history of Chongqing South Road, Wenluotin, and Tangshan Bookstore to the micro-bookstores of Guanshan, Pinglin, Changbin, and Penghu, this article explores how Taiwan's independent bookstores have reorganized curation, local memory, migrant reading, gender issues, Indigenous culture, and community relations into public spaces amidst discount wars, digital reading, and rent pressures, while examining the real costs of subsidies, logistics, labor, and local revitalization.
Taiwanese Iron Window Grilles: How a Security Grill Wields a Household's Autobiography
From the 1950s to the 1970s, iron window grilles spread alongside Taiwan's residential and steel supply. Originally for theft prevention, they later left the owner's profession, faith, travels, and family memories on the street facade. From the 1958 Legislative Yuan's 48-panel grille, to the residential grids of Beitun, Taichung, and the neighborhood contexts of Lukang and Anping, these iron pieces reveal how old houses simultaneously protect life and display it to the street and subsequent readers, illuminating the tension between preservation and use.
Taiwan Lacquerware: Polishing the Everyday, Layer by Layer
Lacquerware was once a staple in Taiwanese households as tea trays, cake stands, and gift items, and served as an export industry to Japan in the 1970s. After plastics replaced it, what truly disappeared was not just the objects, but an entire body of life knowledge connecting lacquer trees, lacquer refining, application, and repair. From Penglai lacquer to Puli natural lacquer, this craft, once close to daily life, is now re-engaging with material autonomy and the transmission of skills.
The Taiwan Lantern Festival: A National-Level Festival Stage That Moves
Starting from Taipei's Lantern Festival on the Lantern Festival in 1990, the Taiwan Lantern Festival has evolved through rotating host cities, local creativity, and the integration of digital technology into a national-level festival combining folklore, art, tourism, and public governance. It does more than light up a main lantern in the night; it brings the landscapes, industries, transportation, and collective imagination of each city to the entire island, leaving behind governance challenges on how large-scale cultural events negotiate with daily life.
Taiwan's Letterpress Culture: How Movable Type Pressed Public Language onto Paper
Tracing Taiwan's letterpress history—from the Church News, Japanese-era newspapers, the Wanhua printing cluster, post-war Shanghai typefaces, and Ri Xing Type Foundry—to understand how movable type enabled the stable reproduction of vernacular Taiwanese, news, textbooks, government documents, and commercial information. It explores how lead type, fonts, artisan labor, and digital archives constitute a production technology for public language, and considers how preserving old machinery must also preserve the craft process and embodied knowledge.
Pinball: From Sausage Stalls to Mechanical Memory
Starting from the wooden bead tables next to sausage stalls in the 1960s, this article traces how Taiwan’s night markets combined food, probability, and tactile feel into a single slanted board, while contrasting the Western pinball’s evolution from gambling suspicions and mechanical innovation to museum preservation.
The Taiwan Rice Cooker: How a Single Switch Cooked Up Half a Century of Daily Life
Introduced by Crown in 1958 and the Tatung TAC-6 in 1960, the rice cooker evolved from Japanese technology into a distinct Taiwanese artifact shaped by limited power, local rice varieties, and steaming habits. From 5–10 amp household meters and 230°C heating settings to the red pots of dowries, it became a versatile tool for cooking rice and steaming dishes, redistributing family time and following Taiwanese people overseas.
Dan Dan Burger: A Bowl of Mian Xian Geng and a Fast-Food Brand That Never Went North
Founded in 1984 in the Qianjin District of Kaohsiung, Dan Dan Burger places burgers, fried chicken, fries, mian xian geng, and lean pork porridge on the same menu. The brand’s long-term concentration in Kaohsiung, Tainan, and Pingtung means that its “southern-only” status has become the primary lens through which readers understand it. Public records explain its origins and menu, but no single official answer exists for why it never expanded north.
Daxi Tofu: After the River Port Declined, How Black Tofu Carries the Nostalgia of Daxi People Outward
After the decline of Dahan River transport in the late Qing and early Republic of China eras, Daxi residents took tofu to mines, cities, and workplaces. From the sugar-darkening coloring process and well-water legends to the 2025 Tofu Festival’s design transformation, the black tofu preserves not just a color, but a local memory that continues to flow after the river port left its waterways. When it becomes a city brand, can this life of leaving home still be slowly tasted bite by bite, allowing the craft to be seen?
Tea Eggs: How a Cracked Egg Became the Scent of Taiwan’s Convenience Stores
In 1987, Hsu Chung-jen introduced cracked tea eggs to Taiwan’s 7-ELEVEN. While coffee failed to catch on, the tea egg endured. From braising liquid and shell cracks to food safety, this unassuming egg records how Taiwan domesticated foreign retail formats into daily life, bringing the cost and care of affordable food back into view.
Tofu Pudding: From Tricycle Hawking to a Bowl of Local Soybean Choices
Founded in 1965, Douhua Zhuang began as a street-side pushcart vendor in Xinzhuang before establishing a fixed storefront in Ningxia Night Market. While tofu pudding appears to rely solely on soybeans, water, and coagulants, it condenses the choices of Chaoshan immigrants, local terroir, domestic soybeans, campus food-agriculture education, and the evolution of street commerce into a dessert where every Taiwanese person has their own answer. This article traces the journey from vendor carts and coagulation technology to local shops, asking how a soft food bears the weight of choices regarding origin, price, and heritage.
The Lifting of the Newspaper Ban: How an Island of 31 Newspapers Was Handed to the Market Overnight
From 1951 onward, Taiwan’s newspaper count was long capped at 31. On January 1, 1988, the ban was lifted, shifting the industry from a licensing system to a registration-based one, freeing up page counts, printing locations, and pricing from a single restrictive framework. This is not a simple story of freedom; as political control receded, market concentration, promotional wars, news labor conditions, and media responsibility immediately took over. The issues left by this transition continue to echo in the internet age.
Taiwan's Tech Storytelling: 100-Point Chips, 60-Point Microphones
Taiwan makes 100-point chips but tends to describe them in the voice of a supplier briefing. For the same chip, Qualcomm tells a myth and MediaTek reads out a spec sheet; NVIDIA makes none of its chips with its own hands, yet its net profit is double that of its foundry. The market worked out this 40-point gap long ago, and the bill is printed right in the net margin.
Ceylan: Famous for Being Seen, Yet Leaving Taiwan Because of It
The story of Belgian YouTuber Ceylan living in, commenting on, and leaving Taiwan reflects how internet celebrities navigate public scrutiny versus personal freedom, highlighting the tension between foreign criticism, social response, and personal boundaries.
Chang Chung-jen and Chang Chung-yi: Life Begins After the Body Is Separated
Born in Kaohsiung in 1976, Chang Chung-jen and Chang Chung-yi spent their first three years at Chung Shan Medical Hospital. In 1979, a 36-person team from National Taiwan University Hospital completed a 12-hour separation surgery. The true, long story began only after they left the operating table: pain, prosthetics, work, family, and media scrutiny transformed two names into distinct lives over 40 years, prompting Taiwan to reconsider the distance between medical breakthroughs and individual autonomy.
Cheap: The Storyteller Who Used *Age of Empires* to Teach History, Now Standing on the Crosswalk
In 2021, Cheap used war footage from *Age of Empires* to narrate the history of various nations, with his channel already boasting 810,000 subscribers. In 2023, he took to the streets of Kaohsiung to call for "returning the road to the people," and later responded to controversies surrounding alleged plagiarism and his support for Joeman. From historical storyteller to public advocate, he must face the same question: Can visibility open the door, but not replace verification, consistent responsibility, and the nuance required when others are drawn in?
JiuJiu Shoe: Deleting the Most Popular Translation Videos Marked the Start of Becoming an Independent Knowledge Creator
In 2013, Hsieh Jen-chieh, then in a National Central University dorm, translated foreign memes before deleting his most viral old works to rebuild his channel from scratch. He gradually synthesized his chemistry training, literature review skills, script design, and Taichung lifestyle into a sustainable method for Taiwanese knowledge creation.
Hong Ching-fu: The Early Fallen Literary Giant of Local Color Literature
Hong Ching-fu (1949–1982), who came from a poor farming family in Erlin, Changhua, taught at Danan Elementary School and Shekou Elementary School in Taichung during the day, while at night he documented the disintegration of traditional Taiwanese villages amidst industrial transformation and the spirit of ordinary people. His works, such as *Black-Faced Qingzai* and *Sanxi*, shook the post-war literary scene, and his writings were selected for high school textbooks, yet he passed away suddenly in a car accident on a typhoon night at age thirty-two, leaving behind one of Taiwan's most sincere and profound rural portraits.
Jiong Xing Ren: A Fake Beard Hides Braces, But It Made Taiwan Start Paying for Knowledge
Yu Yue evolved from a long-time film review blogger into one of Taiwan's early knowledge-based YouTubers. Through fake beards, book reviews, and a storytelling stance that refuses to position herself as an authority, she explored the value of content creation, while the success of subscription crowdfunding simultaneously challenged creator autonomy. This article examines how early Taiwanese knowledge influencers established their working methods and boundaries at the intersection of blogging, film criticism, reading, crowdfunding, and content commitments.
Science Popularizer Tai-tai: When Science Becomes Traffic, Professionalism Becomes a Public Responsibility
Science Popularizer Tai-tai rose to fame with her background in biomedical engineering and videos on life science, later venturing into health products, online courses, and the commercialization of self-media. Her story is not just about viral success, but about why audiences trust someone who appears scientific, and how that trust must be verified, regulated, and returned to public discourse. This article traces the trajectory of Taiwan's knowledge-based creators as they navigate the tension between traffic, professionalism, and public responsibility, from channel origins and knowledge translation to medical device and food advertising controversies, and the shift from paid content to free podcasts.
Lin Jia-chen: From Writing Songs for Earth Group to Meme Dances at Breakfast Shops, Turning Idols' Perfection into Personal Ease
In 2022, Lin Jia-chen gained public attention as a member of the "Earth" group in *Atom Youth* and contributed lyrics to the finale song. In 2026, he released the 〈Love Me Again〉 Demo from his room, transitioning from rock shouts to breakfast shop dances in Taipei's back alleys. The most interesting part of this journey is that he did not leave the idol framework but wrote a sense of life back onto the stage within it, making group experience the foundation for personal creation.
Mona Lodo: The Anti-Japanese Hero Minted on a 20 Dollar Coin, and the World Without China or Japan
In 2001, the Central Bank of Taiwan put the face of the anti-Japanese hero Mona Rudao on a 20 dollar coin. However, the mint could not find any photos in domestic historical records, so they eventually found one in a Japanese magazine. From the Wushe Athletic Meet in 1930 to a skeleton that served as an anthropological specimen for nearly forty years, three regimes needed him. The world he truly defended—the one with Rainbow Bridge, Wenmian, and Gaya—never had China or Japan.
Nick Star: Turning the Live Stream into a Ring and Bringing Stances to the Camera
Since 2024, Nick Star has blended boxing, gaming, video dating, and live interaction into a high-density online performance. In 2025, he used "I Am Bisexual" and cross-border live streams to push private identity and Taiwan's stance into the same frame. This article does not reduce him to a traffic-driven influencer, but traces how a creator places the ring, chat rooms, music, and controversy into a single real-time scene, explaining what public materials can and cannot prove.
Ruby Lin: From the Face of Ziwei to the Calculator of a Producer
In 1998, *My Fair Princess* made Ruby Lin the face of Ziwei; in 2009, she established her own studio; in 2015, she won the Golden Bell Award for Drama Program with *16 Summer Days*; and in 2021, she brought the Tiaotong of Lin Sen North Road to Netflix with a NT$250 million budget. Her journey from New York acting classes and a Shih Hsin University master’s degree back to the set reveals that her true transformation was not leaving the camera, but beginning to bear responsibility for every frame and every person in a production.
Master Sheng-Kai: From Steamed Egg Short Videos to Frozen New Year’s Meals, the Trust Cost of a Culinary Influencer
Huang Sheng-kai went from clearing tables at sixteen and borrowing money to open a restaurant at twenty-four, to entering millions of followers’ phones with a single steamed egg video. Master Sheng-Kai’s story is not just about how culinary entrepreneurship is amplified by content, but also about how, when cooking transforms from kitchen craft into frozen goods, audience trust becomes a brand’s mandatory quality responsibility.
Liu Zhiyuan: Turning the Fully English After Effects Interface into an Entry Point for Taiwanese Creators
In 2011, Lu Ziyuan began self-teaching from the fully English After Effects interface, later bringing a often-invisible behind-the-scenes technology into Taiwan’s YouTube sphere through special effects videos, a tutorial website, and Infinite Design Academy. From 100,000 subscribers in 2019 to one million in 2024, he placed creation, teaching, freelance work, team building, and entrepreneurship on the same desk, allowing viewers to see how a Taiwanese digital creator transforms software barriers into public entry points.
This Group: The Seven Who Became Famous Together, and How They Reached the Day They Had to Part
In 2011, Zhanrong, Zhanrui, and five partners brought their performance chemistry to YouTube. From "Super Blind Covers" to 3.57 million subscribers, they turned daily life into shared memories, transforming their channel into a small company requiring division of labor, profit-sharing, and management. After announcing a hiatus in 2023, issues of money, exhaustion, platform shifts, and personal development finally surfaced. This is a Taiwanese internet history story about how collaborative creation grows into a profession, and why it often requires re-partitioning.
Iron Bull: The "Brother Jie" from an Anti-Sexual Assault PSA Became His Ten-Year Life
Wu Chia-wei, who played "Brother Jie" in the Ministry of Education's anti-sexual assault PSA *If I Had Known Boys Could Be Sexually Assaulted Too* in 2012 as an amateur, unexpectedly went viral. He initially rejected the role and even considered becoming an excavator operator; now, the meme has become his livelihood, propelling "Brother Jie" onto the stage of Taiwan's first meme musical. A lesson the PSA failed to teach in full was taught by the meme for ten years.
Ding Richang: An Unfinished Blueprint for Taiwan's Coastal Defense Behind a Single Telegraph Line
In 1876, Ding Richang crossed the strait to govern Taiwan, integrating telegraphs, railways, coal mines, land reclamation, Indigenous pacification, and coastal defense into a single blueprint. While the telegraph line was completed in 1877, the railways and ironclad warships were stalled by funding, institutional constraints, and time. This article cross-references memorials, official archives, academic research, and local relics to explain how this late Qing official identified Taiwan's systemic issues, and why a comprehensive blueprint could only see a small fraction realized.
Tsai Pei-huo: The Man Who Made Taiwanese a Public Issue
Tsai Pei-huo was more than a Japanese-era figure who left behind a few books and songs. Starting from positions as teacher, student abroad, journalist, and social movement participant, he connected education, Taiwanese written language, cultural enlightenment, and self-governance demands into a single question: how can the people of Taiwan gain the ability to read, write, organize, and speak. This article uses verifiable archival materials, work databases, cultural associations, and the Taiwan Parliament Establishment Petition context to trace how a public intellectual found pathways to language and politics within and beyond the colonial system.
Wei Tsung-cheng: Bringing Sanxia’s Yokai to Ximending, Guiding Mazu Out of the Comic Panels
In 2009, *Emperor Ma Descends* propelled Wei Tsung-cheng from the doujinshi circle into professional manga. His 2010 serialized work, *Ming Zhan Lu* (Record of the Netherworld), brought Sanxia, Ximending, Taoism, and Mazu into a shonen adventure. Counterintuitively, he did not design “Taiwaneseness” first and then fill in the story; instead, he drew markets, buses, and local legends, allowing the locale to grow from daily details into a world capable of appearing on lantern festivals and gezaixi stages. This gave his manga characters life beyond the page, becoming an entry point for understanding the Taiwanese manga industry and the representation of faith.
The Delivery-Specific Law: The Legal Floor Is Laid, But Above It Still Rules the Algorithm
At 12:00 AM on July 21, 2026, Taiwan's first delivery-specific law took effect: a minimum of NT$45 per order. On that day, one rider received two orders—one 4.4 km and another 8.6 km—both paying only NT$90. From the deaths of two riders during the National Day holiday in 2019 to these 28 articles took six years. The law deliberately avoids answering whether they are employees and does not touch the dispatch algorithm that truly determines income; even a week after implementation, there was no answer on how many local inspectors were deployed or if fines would be issued.
The Founding of the Democratic Progressive Party: How the Non-Partisan Movement Turned a Taboo into an Organization at the Grand Hotel
On September 28, 1986, non-partisan figures announced the founding of the Democratic Progressive Party at Taipei’s Grand Hotel. This was not merely a press conference for a new party name, but an organizational gamble resulting from the accumulation of local elections, political journals, service offices, street movements, and legislative inquiries. The article revisits the association restrictions of the late martial law era, reconstructing the connections between the Public Policy Research Conference, the Compilation and Liaison Committee, secret founding groups, and the Grand Hotel meeting, explaining how party founding opened the door to party competition without completing democratization on that day.
Air Conditioning Is Not a Luxury: Taiwan's Energy Poverty and Residential Heat Safety in Public Governance
Energy poverty in Taiwan means more than inability to pay electricity bills; it includes living in poorly insulated old homes, using energy-intensive appliances, fear of turning on air conditioning, and being forced to trade health for affordable bills in extreme heat. This article reconstructs Taiwan's energy poverty problem at the intersection of energy expenditure, housing conditions, and heat injury, and proposes policy directions centered on residential heat safety, on-site diagnosis, community retrofits, and data governance, explaining how energy transition can safeguard the dignity and health safety of vulnerable households.
More Than Just Building Houses: How Taiwan’s Social Housing Transforms Housing Justice into a Long-Term Public Institution
Housing justice in Taiwan is not merely about housing prices; it also encompasses whether renters can access stable, affordable, accessible, and non-discriminatory housing. This article reviews the institutional evolution of social housing from the Housing Act and the "8 Years, 200,000 Units" goal to the "Million Rental Household Support Plan," analyzing how the three policy tracks—direct construction, leasing management, and rental subsidies—complement each other, and examining governance challenges in tiered rent, vulnerable quotas, local implementation, vacancy activation, community services, and information transparency.
South Koreans in Taiwan: From the Kaohsiung Korean International School to the Daily Network of Mobile Screens
South Koreans in Taiwan are not merely a group of visible influencers, but a daily fabric woven from Kaohsiung’s old communities, bilingual education, youth exchanges, international students, and families.
Public Television: From the NT$900 Million Golden Headband to Expulsion from the Legislative Chamber, Twenty-Eight Years of Independence Still Unfinished
When PTS went on air in 1998, the Public Television Act required government-donated funding to decrease year by year and eventually froze it at NT$900 million annually. That provision bound PTS for 23 years. In the meantime, it nurtured five flagship Taiwanese dramas that shook society: The World Between Us, Gold Leaf, The Teenage Psychic, Wake Up, and A Touch of Green. In May 2023, legal amendments lifted the golden headband, and the budget more than doubled to NT$2.3 billion. But 19 months later, 1% of the budget was cut and 25% frozen; another year later, in May 2026, Chairperson Hu Yuan-hui was asked to leave the Legislative Yuan chamber. What PTS has proved over 28 years is this: removing the golden headband does not mean independence has been built.
Not Being Able to Hear Doesn't Mean You Can't Make Phone Calls: Taiwan's Sign Language Video Relay Service and the Institutional Test for Information Equity
Taiwan launched a nationwide sign language video relay service in 2024, enabling deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals to connect with interpreters via sign language or text, who then facilitate telephone communication with hearing parties. This service is more than a new app; it is an institutional experiment linking the CRPD, public information accessibility, digital governance, and local services. This article reviews the legal context of Taiwan's information equity, analyzes how VRS lowers the barriers traditionally imposed by telephony, and examines unresolved issues regarding service hours, inter-agency continuity, subtitle and sign language quality, emergency scenarios, and data governance.
Grid Resilience: Who Restores the City First After a Power Outage?
The August 15, 2017, and March 3, 2022, major power outages in Taiwan revealed that grid vulnerability is not just about generation capacity, but also centralized nodes, operating procedures, transmission/distribution equipment, and local recovery capabilities. When electricity becomes the common foundation for healthcare, transportation, communication, and industry, resilience is not merely a Taipower engineering problem; it is how an entire city restarts after losing power.
Taiwan's Pigeon Racing: Letting Young Birds Fly Into a Wind Without Referees, So Everyone Has a Chance
Taiwan's pigeon racing merges young-bird sea racing, loft technology, private pigeon clubs, industry chains, and betting into a single rule set. This system creates an imagination of fairness where everyone has a chance by manufacturing high risk, yet it offloads the costs of disorientation, loss of contact, and post-race abandonment onto the young birds making their debut, leaving behind dilemmas in animal welfare, public governance, local society, and accountability.
The Independence-Unification Spectrum: Four Stances Plus One Status Quo, An Identity Map Quietly Redrawn Over Thirty Years
In May 2026, within seven days after the Trump-Xi meeting, Lai Ching-te publicly reaffirmed Taiwan's sovereignty twice, using three different names: "Republic of China," "Republic of China Taiwan," and "Taiwan." For a president to compress these three names into a single statement of "sovereign independence" is the very epitome of contemporary independence-unification debates. From 9.8% in 1994 to 33.2% in 2023, the "maintain status quo" stance has grown significantly; over thirty years, the binary framework no longer describes Taiwan.
Taiwan's Matchmaker Gods: A Map of Deities for Every Dating Need
Many people don't realize that Taiwan's matchmaker deity Yue Lao isn't just one god. In Tainan, the Four Great Yue Lao divide responsibilities: seeking love, seeking stability, cutting romantic entanglements, and seeking reconciliation. Taichung's Le Cheng Gong, established in 1753, is famous for its effectiveness in reconciliation. New Taipei's Weiming Tang's Rabbit God specializes in same-sex matchmaking, while Xi'an, Longshan Temple, and Lukang Tianhou Gong each have their own specialties. The more detailed your matchmaking criteria, the better — because leaving things blank gives Yue Lao room to exploit loopholes.
Taiwan Goat Milk: From Morning Delivery Boxes to the Path of GGM-Certified Pure Goat Milk
In 1979, Li Ming-hsing planted the seeds of Taiwan's goat milk industry in Guanmiao. From morning delivery boxes in the early mist to Jianan Goat Milk's 70% market share, this bottle of goat milk carries a collective childhood memory for Taiwanese people. Recently, through "Goat Admin's" social media patrols, this legacy subscription industry has gone viral on Threads, showcasing the unique tension between traditional agriculture and digital contexts, while reflecting the real pressures of industrial transformation under a declining birthrate.
Taiwan Beer: How the State Monopoly System Brewed a Daily Staple
A bottle of Taiwan Beer was once more than a mere commodity. From the 1919 Formosa Brewery, through the post-war Tobacco and Alcohol Monopoly Bureau, to the yeast preserved at the Jianguo Brewery and the market liberalization of 2002, it has traveled a long way. Today, the golden bottle in convenience store coolers still holds state finance, urban labor, logistics technology, and consumer memory. Only by looking back along the bottle, the fermentation tank, the recycled glass, the delivery vehicle, and the table of a stir-fry restaurant can we understand how a brand transformed from institutional privilege into everyday trust within a competitive market.
Taiwan Sugar Industry: The Narrow-Gauge Rail Carried More Than Just Sugarcane
Tracing how the sugar industry linked sugarcane, railways, ports, rural life, and post-war foreign exchange, starting from the first modernized sugar mill at Qiaozaitou and the contract farming system. The article returns to the sugar mill, sugarcane farmers, workers, and local transport to explain why, even after production ceased, the industry remains embedded in Taiwan's rural landscape through its railways, architecture, labor, and local memory.
Zhongli: Another City Within Taoyuan City — Why Some Say Zhongli Is Not Taoyuan
Administratively a district of Taoyuan City, Zhongli is often treated in daily life as the core of a separate southern Taoyuan city. From Jianzaili and the former Zhongli City of Taoyuan County to the current Zhongli District of a special municipality, fully understanding its history, transportation, campuses, industries, ethnic groups, Laojie Creek, cuisine, and local identity reveals that "Zhongli is different from Taoyuan" is not merely banter, but the result of long-term intersections between administrative names, urban living circles, and the north-south regionalization of Taoyuan.
Beyblade: A Toy Manufacturer’s Promotional Campaign That Evolved Over 27 Years into a National Sport with 600 Annual Tournaments
On the early morning of May 23, 2026, a long queue had already formed outside the New Taipei City Hongwei Plaza. These were not people rushing to buy limited-edition sneakers, but fans waiting for the start of the Beyblade National Championship, where the top three finishers would win gold, silver, and bronze launchers. In 1999, Japanese toy company Takara released an anime of the same name to promote the toy. The elementary school students who watched the Taiwanese-dubbed version back then are now the adults lining up at dawn. The toy didn’t grow up; it grew into a competitive sport with referees, scoring systems, and prize money.
Taiwan Customs Declaration and EZ WAY: When You Tap 'Declaration Matches', Who Do You Entrust?
Your phone vibrates with a push notification containing an incomprehensible product name. You tap 'Declaration Matches', legally completing a customs declaration entrustment. 7.59 million people in Taiwan have registered for this app. After a post went viral in August 2026, many people first checked who operates it: Customs and Immigration Bureau, where the Ministry of Finance holds 36.11% and state shares are less than half. At the same time, the government proposed for the second time to lower the NT$2,000 tax-free threshold. Who pays the bill for this convenient shortcut, and who has been unable to speak up from beginning to end?
Leofoo Village: A Theme Park Where Animals Came First, Then Roller Coasters Grew
In 1979, Chuang Fu opened a free-range wildlife park on 73 hectares in Guansi, Hsinchu. Fifteen years later, four exotic-themed villages and thrill rides were added, combining animal viewing with the pursuit of weightlessness in a single itinerary, and placing entertainment, education, animal welfare, and public safety within the same management framework. The park’s paradox lies in this: the more successfully it turns life into a journey, the less it can be managed solely by theme-park standards.
Bus Route 307: Carrying Many People’s Childhood Without Taking the Highway
The Da-You Bus Route 12, established in 1969, later became the Route 307 shuttling between Songshan, Taipei Main Station, Ximending, Zhonghe, and Banqiao. It never takes the highway, yet it connects office buildings, schools, wet markets, and the way home after school. From three-zone to two-zone fares, from Da-You Bus to today’s joint-operation fleet, in 2024 it still carried 16.39 million passengers, leaving the city memories of different generations on the ground streets. This article traces the route’s evolution, operational data, and vehicle updates.
Taiwan Passport: How a Small Blue Book Carries the Nation and Its Identity
The Taiwan passport is more than a travel document. From the enlarged "TAIWAN" text introduced in 2021 and the formal state name surrounding the national emblem, to chip verification, application regulations, visa-free privileges, and the 2025 supply controversy, it compresses nationality, administrative systems, international recognition, border technology, and daily travel into a single cover. It turns a small booklet into the interface through which the world reads Taiwan, embedding identity politics into every pre-departure check and wait.
Voting from Absence in Taiwan: The Visible Cost of Traveling Home, the Harder-to-Calculate Cost of Trust
Most voters in Taiwan still must return to their registered household location to vote, but election officials already have limited absentee voting options for work locations, and a new voting system for Indigenous peoples will be implemented in the 2026 local elections. From the estimated 8,896 types of ballots in the Nine-In-One elections to the different risks of mail, transfer, and early voting, this article breaks down how absentee voting lowers the barrier to returning home, why trust in ballot custody, secret voting, and public vote counting must be rebuilt, and compares a progressively verifiable path forward.
The Indigenous Name Rectification Movement: From "Mountain Natives" to a Collective Subject in the Constitution
The 1990s Indigenous name rectification movement was ostensibly about changing a label, but in reality, it demanded state recognition of who has the right to name, who can serve as a political subject, and whose land and autonomy must be institutionalized. From the founding of the Taiwan Indigenous Rights Promotion Association in 1984 to the constitutional amendment struggles of 1991 and 1992, and finally to the inscription of "Indigenous" (1994) and "Indigenous Peoples" (1997) in the Constitution, this history was driven by tribal organizations, churches, delegates to the National Convention, legislators, and extra-institutional protests, with institutional traces preserving the process of mutual tension.
Sat, September 19
2 articlesTaiwan's "Dashcam" Society: The Aesthetics of Mass Surveillance, Technological Evolution, and Whistleblower Justice
Why are dashcams almost a "standard feature" in Taiwan's cars and scooters? This is not just for legal defense; it has evolved into a unique digital landscape. From the dominance of the supply chain, regulatory loopholes, social friction among whistleblowers, to the reliance of news media on the "Three Tools," Taiwan is undergoing an experiment in citizen-participatory digital surveillance.
Life Market: From Curated Goods of Ten to Twenty Thousand Items to an E-commerce Platform Where Everything Can Be Bought
Established in 2013, Life Market began as a vertical e-commerce platform for daily necessities, initially focusing on curation and pricing. It later expanded into food, 3C, and overseas direct shipping. Its real challenge is how to maintain the feeling of "curation" after becoming a large platform.
Fri, September 18
3 articlesMorris Chang (Zhang Zhongmou)
Semiconductor patriarch, founder of TSMC, legendary entrepreneur who changed the global tech industry with the wafer foundry model
Ma Ying-jeou: Harvard Law PhD worked as an English interpreter in Chiang Ching-kuo's office for eight years, becoming a president known for 'integrity,' leaving behind cross-strait relations, Sunflower Festival, and 22K
On November 7, 2015, at the Shangri-La in Singapore, he shook hands with Xi Jinping for 1 minute and 20 seconds, marking the first meeting between top leaders of both sides since 1949. The same photo is remembered by Taiwanese society today in two completely different ways: one seeing a historical breakthrough, the other seeing a concession of sovereignty. His 'integrity' image from his eight years as president, cross-strait relations, 22K, and the Sunflower Festival, along with his second visit to China after leaving office and his family's statement in 2026, still have no definitive conclusion today.
Where Chou: The Female Voice Behind 25 Years of "The Promise," A Long Run from Cartoon Doll to Taipei Arena
In 1999, Fu-ma Music released *Where Chou's Favorites*, using a cartoon doll named Hui-er instead of her face. "The Promise" entered every KTV and spanned 25 years, yet her own identity remained one step behind the song. From five albums at Fu-ma to being shelved by BMG, from Qunshi and Hanyan to producing her 2025 Disco album *Where X Walk*, her 12 albums span 26 years. On April 25, 2026, she stood on the Taipei Arena stage for the first time, only to announce vocal cord atrophy at the concert's end: "I don't know if this will be the last time I sing for everyone."
Thu, September 10
5 articlesResolution on Taiwan's Future: The Two Words “Currently” Sustained for Twenty‑Seven Years
In 1999, Lin Cho-shui added the two characters “currently” before the “Republic of China” state name, displeasing the Chen Shui‑bian faction. Those two words simultaneously appeased pro‑independence supporters and centrist voters, opening the door to the first party‑rotation in 2000. Twenty‑seven years later, Taiwan’s youth consider “Taiwan has always been independent” common sense, yet they do not know that this common sense stems from a deliberately ambiguous document.
Dadaocheng: 800 Meters, Three Centuries, from Formosa Tea to the First Shot of February 28
Dihua Street is quiet at 5:30 in the morning. The Western-style building of Chen Tian-lai's Jinji Tea Company, opened on Guide Street in 1891, still stands in its original place, and the incense burner at Xia-Hai City God Temple has burned for 167 years. In 1851, several households opened shops here; in 1853, Tong'an people fled here for refuge; in 1869, the first 120,000 catties of Formosa Tea were shipped from Tamsui to New York; in 1885, Liu Mingchuan established Taiwan's first Western-style school here; in 1921, Chiang Wei-shui opened Da'an Hospital in Taipingcho, making it the political starting point of the Taiwan Cultural Association; and at dusk on February 27, 1947, a packet of contraband cigarettes outside Tianma Tea House ignited the February 28 Incident. A place that traded in tea, hosted a Western-style school, and became the site of postwar Taiwan's deepest wound: 800 meters hold three centuries.
Chen Chien-nien: The Golden Melody King in the Police Station, the Grandfather’s Songs the Grandson Turned into Ocean
Born on August 1, 1967, in the Nanwang community of the Puyuma people in Taitung. After graduating from the police academy in 1986, he was assigned to Guanshan, Taitung, and served in the police force for 30 years and 10 months. In 1999, at age 33, he released his first album of original songs, Ocean. At the 11th Golden Melody Awards in 2000, he defeated Jacky Cheung, Wang Leehom, David Tao, and Harlem Yu to win Best Mandarin Male Vocalist; at the same ceremony, “Myth” also won Best Composer. On the awards stage, he was still a police officer. In September that year, he requested a transfer to Lanyu to avoid the turmoil, and stayed there for 17 years until retirement. His maternal grandfather, Baliwakes Lu Sen-bao, wrote “Beautiful Rice Ears”; it took the grandson thirty years to take hold of that musical line.
Bánh Mì Dan Zai: How a Noodle Dish Created to Survive the Off-Season Became a Tainan Daily Staple
In 1895, Hong Yutou balanced the livelihood of the fishing off-season on a shoulder pole; over a century later, Dan Zai noodles still preserve the rhythm of Tainan’s port, immigrant, and street food stall life through a small bowl of alkaline noodles, shrimp broth, and minced pork.
Radish Cake: From Ming Zheng Rituals to Breakfast Memories Under the Big Tree
How a radish cake evolved from a New Year offering to a daily breakfast: the taste of Taiwan where paddy rice, local cake shops, and three centuries of heritage intersect.
Wed, September 9
6 articlesTaiwan's Women's Movement: From a Magazine Published During Martial Law to Laws That Reshaped Families and Schools
In 1971, Hsiu-lien Lü proposed "New Feminism"; in 1982, Yuan-chen Lee and others founded *Women's New Knowledge*; and after the 1996 murder of Wan-jui Peng, a night march was launched. All these milestones culminated in the Gender Equality Education Act, the Domestic Violence Prevention Act, and the Employment Equality Act. The history of Taiwan's women's movement is not merely about securing quotas for women, but about transforming harms, caregiving, and labor—originally dismissed as mere "household chores"—into public issues, thereby equipping women with institutional language for recourse in the workplace, family, and schools.
Hsinchu City: The Bamboo Fortress Planted in 1733, the Cradle That Grew TSMC in 1980
In 1733, the 11th year of the Yongzheng reign, Magistrate Xu Zhimin of the Tamsui Subprefecture planted thorny bamboo all around the settlement, enclosing a circular earthen wall 1,408 meters in circumference. In 1829, the brick-and-stone city was completed; the East Gate, Yingximen (Gate of Greeting the Dawn), still stands beside its moat today. 247 years later, on December 15, 1980, Chiang Ching-kuo cut the red ribbon for Taiwan's first science park, just 5 kilometers from Yingximen. Between 1953 and 1974, 148 members of the Black Bat Squadron took off from this Wind City to conduct reconnaissance over mainland China and never came back. A provincial city of 450,000 people that held the Cold War front line, the earliest Han-built city in northern Taiwan, two top universities, and the starting point of 90% of the world's advanced semiconductor chips. The nickname 'Wind City' sounds literary, but every industry in this city is connected to the wind.
Yushan Weather Station: The Solitary Watcher at 3,858 Meters
Located on the summit of Yushan North Peak at an altitude of 3,858 meters, this weather station is one of the highest meteorological and administrative agencies in Northeast Asia. How generations of observers have guarded Taiwan's first-hand meteorological pulse with solitude and dedication amidst extreme weather and lightning threats.
Threads in Taiwan: From 'I Eat a Little' to an Egyptian Student ID, How a Feed Became a Digital Night Market
At the end of 2025, a National Taiwan University student ID found near the Sphinx in Egypt was turned into a cross-border search on Threads; in the same feed, food photos from Japanese and Korean travelers attracted the 'Hello, I eat a little' cat. Taiwan's 'crispy' nature squeezes spam, mutual aid, memes, and public discussion together, allowing strangers to briefly sit at the same table and relay stories further.
Wei Te-sheng: Yongkang 1969, the Taiwanese Epic Filmmaker from Cape No. 7's Record-Breaking Box Office to the Venice Main Competition
Born August 16, 1969, in Yongkang Township, Tainan County (now Yongkang District, Tainan City). Graduated from the Department of Electrical Engineering at Far East Junior College (now Far East University of Science and Technology). In 2008, Cape No. 7 grossed approximately NT$530 million (a Taiwanese box office record). In 2011, Seediq Bala was selected for the main competition of the 68th Venice International Film Festival, competing for the Golden Lion, and won Best Feature Film at the 48th Golden Horse Awards. Currently preparing the Taiwan Trilogy epic project.
Xiao Qing-Yang
Grammy Award winner for Best Recording Package, nominated seven times before finally winning with a father-daughter collaboration, a representative figure of Taiwan design on the world stage
Mon, September 7
3 articlesThe Golden Horse Hotel Contemporary Art Museum: From Farewell Station to Artistic Paradise
A Cold War military station that witnessed farewells and reunions, awakened after twenty years of slumber by a father and daughter, and is now a top recommendation from Lonely Planet in Kaohsiung.
Taiwan Folk Music and Songs: From Cultural Theft to Global Recognition
In 1996, the Atlanta Olympics opening ceremony carried the ancient chant of an Amis elder from Taiwan — but Kuo Ying-nan only learned he had been heard by 65 million people two years later, through a lawsuit. This absurd story mirrors the fate of Taiwan's folk music: silenced repeatedly under colonialism, yet always finding its way back to the world's ears.
Taiwan Hot Springs and Geothermal Energy
From a failed geothermal plant to the world's only Hokutolite mineral: How one island turned underground fire into healing and green electricity
Sat, September 5
3 articlesTaiwan Baseball Culture
From the legend of Hongye Minor League to the tears and sweat of CPBL—how baseball became Taiwan's "national sport"
Wang Chi-lin and Lee Yang (The Lin-Yang Duo)
From middle school classmates to Olympic gold: The Lin-Yang Duo defeated China in straight sets within 34 minutes, winning Taiwan's first-ever Olympic gold medal in badminton
Bowling: From US Military Clubs to Six Gold Medals at the Bangkok Asian Games—The Rise, Fall, and Afterglow of Taiwan's UFO Ball
In the 1990s, bowling was Taiwan's most craze-inducing national sport. Using the self-invented "UFO Ball" technique, Taiwan swept six gold medals at the 1998 Bangkok Asian Games, with bowling alleys across Taiwan once exceeding 600 locations and daily revenues reaching 300,000 TWD.
Mon, August 31
3 articlesAudrey Tang: Every Famous Decision She Made Was a Refusal of the 'Genius' Label
Knocked unconscious by a classmate at age 8, declined guaranteed admission to Jianguo High School at 14, came out as transgender at 24 but refused to be a spokesperson, and at 35, her first condition for joining the cabinet was 'no office.' On December 2, 2025, in Stockholm accepting the Right Livelihood Award, what she said on stage wasn't 'I,' but 'we.'
Charles Le Gendre: The Treaty-Maker and the Traitor Were the Same Man
In 1867, the American merchant ship Rover wrecked off the Hengchun Peninsula, and 14 crew members were killed by the Paiwan people. U.S. Consul Le Gendre made eight trips to Taiwan, signing an agreement with indigenous chief Tauketok without the participation of the Qing government. He then took his encyclopedic knowledge of Formosa and defected to the Japanese government. Five years later, Japan used his intelligence to launch a military expedition against Taiwan.
Bi-khim Hsiao
Born in Japan, schooled in Tainan, raised in New Jersey, and educated at Oberlin — how did this “Cat Warrior” become the most successful Representative to the United States in the history of Taiwan, and then take the vice president’s seat?
Tue, August 25
4 articlesTaiwan’s Drone Industry: Thunder Tiger and the Pentagon Blue UAS List
How a 46-year-old Taichung model plane maker became Taiwan’s sole supplier on the Pentagon Blue UAS list, anchoring Taiwan in the non-red defense supply chain.
C. C. Wei: From Texas Instruments Engineer to TSMC Chairman and CEO
From Texas Instruments engineer to Morris Chang’s successor, C. C. Wei steered TSMC into 2nm and global expansion, becoming Taiwan’s foremost semiconductor leader.
Takeshi Kaneshiro: The Pan-Asian Screen Icon Who Mastered the Art of Disappearing
From a Taipei commercial actor at seventeen to Wong Kar-wai’s muse and Asia’s heartthrob, Takeshi Kaneshiro spent his career perfecting the art of disappearing.
ASUS (ASUSTeK): How a Taiwanese Motherboard Pioneer Built a Global PC Giant
Founded in Taipei in 1989 by four engineers, ASUS evolved from a local motherboard maker into Taiwan’s premier global PC and gaming brand with NT$600B revenue.
Thu, July 30
8 articlesNational Human Rights Museum: The Names Not Written on the Tearful Monument
On International Human Rights Day in 1999, Lee Teng-hui personally unveiled the Tearful Monument on Green Island. Bo Yang wrote 28 characters that captured all mothers' long nights of weeping, yet did not write a single perpetrator's name. Six years of preparation, an unveiling in 2018, and a frozen budget in 2025. A museum built by the state itself to commemorate what the state itself had done. In the 39 years since martial law was lifted, not one perpetrator has faced judicial trial.
Bangka: Qing-Era Taipei’s Busiest Place, Now the District with Taipei’s Oldest Average Age
Bangka Longshan Temple was jointly built in 1738 by migrants from the three Quanzhou counties; by 2026 it is 288 years old, 137 years older than the Qing court’s Taipei Prefecture. The 1853 Ding-Xia Jiao Conflict pushed the Tong’an people into Dadaocheng, planting the divergence that would shape northern Taiwan for two centuries. Renamed Wanhua under Japanese rule, made a district in 1990, and turned into the setting of Doze Niu’s 2010 film Monga, it now has an aging index of 320.78%, the highest in the city. On Taipei’s earliest street, the first incense stick in the temple forecourt is still burning at six in the morning.
Shilin: Ketagalan Land, a Temple from the Zhangzhou-Quanzhou Feuds, and Now Taipei's Most Crowded Night Market Every Night
At 7:30 p.m., Korean tourists at the entrance to Shilin Night Market hold up giant fried chicken cutlets for selfies, while beside them Cixian Temple at No. 84 Danan Road has stood from 1796, the first year of the Jiaqing reign, to 2026, when it turns 230. In 1859, the ninth year of the Xianfeng reign, Zhangzhou people were burned out of this street by Quanzhou people. In 1860, the gengshen year, Pan Yongqing laid out four squared-off streets in Xiashulin: Dadong Road, Danan Road, Daxi Road, and Dabei Road, placing the temple at the exact center. In 1909, the Japanese built a market opposite the temple; in 1955, Yangming Theater was completed on Wenlin Road; in 1992, Hot-Star Large Fried Chicken was invented in Taichung and entered Shilin in 1999. The postwar-added sheds were demolished in 2002; the new market opened in 2011; the underground food court has two shifts of people from morning to night. The temple is still in its original place, but at its feet two cities take turns every day.
Taiwan Travelogue: A Book 'Translated by Her Younger Sister,' from SpringHill to the London Prize Stage
On the day her younger sister Yang Jo-hui died in June 2015, Yang Jo-tzu opened the account books she had left behind and began keeping records, taking three days to decipher the code of check marks and circles. Five years later, SpringHill Publishing released Taiwan Travelogue under the byline 'written by Chizuko Aoyama, translated by Yang Shuang-zi' - the translator's name was that of her deceased sister. From the 2024 National Book Awards in New York to the 2026 Booker Prize in London, she translated a nonexistent book in her sister's name.
The Daan River Heaven Sword: East Asia's Tallest Tree Hid for Seven Hundred Years in a Place We Could Not Reach
During the 2023 Lunar New Year, the Tree Finder team spent seven days tracing the Daan River upstream. In a deep valley near its headwaters, a place almost no one can reach, they lowered a tape measure from the crown of a Taiwania tree: 84.1 meters, the tallest tree in East Asia. It was 4.6 meters taller than LiDAR had predicted. On a country swept by typhoons every year, where slopes collapse and floods surge, life of this height should not, in theory, still exist. Yet precisely because it grew in a valley humans could not reach, it escaped the era of large-scale logging and survived for seven hundred years. The same inaccessibility that kept it alive also meant that only after scanning all of Taiwan with lasers did we see it for the first time that year.
Tawny Fish Owl: One Pair per Six Kilometers of Stream, a Nocturnal Raptor in a 1,800-Meter Michelia Tree
In April 2026, National Pingtung University of Science and Technology assistant professor Hung Hsiao-yu located Taiwan's highest known Tawny Fish Owl nest in a tree hollow of a Michelia compressa with a diameter at breast height of about 1.5 meters beside Qijiawan Creek, at roughly 1,800 meters above sea level. Taiwan's largest owl was first recorded only in 1916 by the Japanese scholar Nagamichi Kuroda. Sun Yuan-hsun's laboratory at National Pingtung University of Science and Technology has followed it for thirty years; across 91 territories, each pair needs an average of 6.2 kilometers of stream. A stretch of stream not yet poured in concrete, a giant tree not yet fallen: the Tawny Fish Owl lives in the narrow space where two things in Taiwan's mountain forests have not yet disappeared.
National Housing and Housing Justice: The Cheap Homes Built by the Government, and Whose Asset Escalator They Ultimately Created
In 1985, Chenggong National Housing cost NT$67,000 per ping and still had no buyers; an old borough chief scraped together a NT$400,000 down payment and bought a unit. Forty years later, the same address is nearing NT$1 million per ping. National Housing was supposed to be a tool to help people afford homes, but it was never fitted with a gate to recapture appreciation. Public subsidy ultimately became private assets for early buyers. In 2026, Taoyuan put that gate back in, effectively admitting National Housing’s mistake.
Taiwan's Sports Development and the Olympics: A Team Called “Chinese Taipei”
In Montreal in 1976, Canada demanded a name change to “Taiwan,” and Chiang Ching-kuo treated it as a national humiliation and withdrew the team. In Paris in 2024, on the night the “Lee-Yang” pair defended their men’s doubles title, the whole arena sang the National Flag Anthem lyrics beneath the plum blossom flag. From the “Taiwan” that could not enter to a world beginning to call the team Taiwan, every generation of gold medalists has carried the weight of this cap called “Chinese Taipei.”
