Taiwan’s ubiquitous night markets are cleaning up their act, becoming more environmentally friendly, providing better entertainment options, and exploring new markets to accommodate the island’s changing demographics. It’s twilight and drizzling, and the backlit signs in the Tonghua Night Market flicker as they come to life. Vendors set up their stalls as a motorbike with…
Taiwan is uniquely placed to benefit from the application of information technology to agriculture, enabling it to help provide food for an expanding global population. After becoming a world leader in semiconductors and other electronic products, Taiwan is now looking to smart agriculture as its next vine to climb. The island aims to supply much…
Local companies are betting that e-scooters and the sharing economy represent the future of mobility. Imagine pedestrians walking down spacious sidewalks in Taipei, free of motorbikes. The only sounds heard are from their conversations, the whir of electric vehicles, and the chirping of birds. Cars and public transport are self-driving, but for the “last mile”…
Taiwan’s status as a just and equitable country has been burnished by its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the reasons Taiwan has done so well in halting the spread of COVID-19 is the nation’s relative wealth equality. Experts say this factor contributed to the establishment of a universal healthcare system and has led…
Taiwan’s top 12 domestic tourist areas were unintentionally revealed by the decline in travel abroad due to COVID-19 and a precipitous flood of visitors to the nation’s hot spots. Back in early April when the battle against COVID-19 was at a particularly acute stage, the Tomb Sweeping holiday provided a bit of respite from the…
What does it mean for a food to be described as “Q” and what is the derivation? A decade or so ago, the restaurant reviews by local writers in the Taiwan newspaper where I was features editor often dwelt at great length on the chewy nature of certain dishes. To vary the wording, the reviewers…
Odd, unusual, or just different, the country’s cuisine is perfectly capable of delighting and surprising in equal measure. Photos courtesy of Chopstick Travel Visitors to Taiwan may well have experienced locals gleefully offering them unaccustomed foods, in order to impress and perhaps enjoy a good-natured joke at the guests’ expense. For example, stinky tofu is…
The Taiwan Precision Medicine Initiative offers the opportunity to dramatically improve the nation’s medical landscape and advance the lucrative biomedical sector with an ambitious DNA mapping project. “The best doctor cures the illness that is still obscure, the good doctor cures the illness that is about to break out, and the ordinary doctor treats the…
Taiwan and other regional players are finding it difficult to compete on the same scale as China when it comes to hosting clinical trials. Over the years, Taiwan has developed a strong reputation in the field of healthcare. It is now looking to leverage its advantages to position itself as a regional biomedical hub and…
Given the right government policy and smart marketing by local manufacturers, Taiwan’s love affair with scooters could help the environment. It’s a daily commute for tens of thousands of people, but it has also become an annual pilgrimage for electric motorcycle owners. In what is known as the “motorcycle waterfall,” scooters jostle for position like…
