Engrossed by the scenery, the lively streets, and the delicious food in front of them, visitors to Taiwan are unlikely to notice that the calendars hanging on restaurant and shop walls bear two sets of dates. Taiwan’s companies, schools, and government offices follow the Western (Gregorian) calendar, but what is called the farmer’s or lunar…
More than 70 years after the Japanese occupation of Taiwan ended, Japan’s legacy endures in the Taiwanese capital. At first blush, little remains of Japan’s colonial legacy in Taipei. The traditional Japanese wooden homes that lined the Taiwanese capital’s streets in the mid-20th century were long ago razed to make way for contemporary mid-…
The opening of the National Palace Museum branch in nearby Taibao is bringing more tourists to the area. Until recently, when tourists made their way to Chiayi City it was usually as a stopover on the way to or from the mountains of the scenic Alishan region nearby. But as of this year there is…
Camping is the ideal way to rest and relax in nature and has become an extremely popular leisure activity in Taiwan over the past decade. For good reason. One night while camping in Pingtung County’s Kenting beach area, my family and I were awakened by a whooshing sound – like flames spreading quickly –…
In this Year of the Monkey, a reminder of the sometimes strained relations between humans and Taiwan’s other primates. The scene playing out on Kaohsiung’s Shoushan could be an illustration from a visitor’s guide on how not to engage with the Formosan rock macaque, a primate species endemic to the mountains of Taiwan. Most of…
Industrialist Shi Wen-long shares his eclectic and fascinating collection of art and artifacts through his private museum. If an exhibition center wants to be taken seriously – yet displays a stuffed polar bear across the corridor from medieval Indian weaponry, while oil paintings by the likes of Anthony van Dyck share the upper floor with…
From a ridge overlooking western Miaoli County, densely wooded hills roll off into the distant sea, the green canopy broken only occasionally by rice fields or rooftops. This is prime leopard cat territory, according to Chen Mei-ting, Taiwan’s foremost leopard cat researcher who has dedicated much of her life to the study of these shy,…
Beneath Taiwan’s modern façade is a body of beliefs that stretch back for millennia. For an insight into how people really think, you need to know about folk religion. In Taiwan, temples seem to be everywhere, ancestral shrines take pride of place in many homes, and altars can be found in numerous offices and restaurants….
Taiwan’s southernmost county is famous for its beaches and deserves more attention as the country’s “fruit basket.” Residents of northern Taiwan are undoubtedly most familiar with the island’s southernmost county of Pingtung as a sunny vacationland whose Hengchun Peninsula is home to the sprawling (333 square-kilometer) Kenting National Park. The adjacent beach resort of Kenting…
Like Asia’s other “tiger economies,” Taiwan’s post-war history has been characterized by rapid modernization. Where oxcarts and bicycles once trundled along, cars and motorcycles now zip by. Concrete has replaced wood. Instead of traditional clothing, 21st-century Taiwanese dress much like their counterparts in Tokyo or New York. That said, glimpses of pre-1945 Taiwan are not…
