A contest sponsored by Ford Motor is seeking ideas for expediting travel between Taipei and Yilan. In the latest initiative in its Innovate Mobility Challenge to help solve knotty transportation problems in markets around the world, the Ford Motor Co. has launched a public competition to stimulate ideas for moving people more efficiently between Taipei…
Premier Mao Chi-kuo expressed his disappointment September 21 over China’s unilateral move to change the passport-sized paper documents it issues to Taiwanese traveling to China to plastic cards with embedded chips that can be computer scanned. Mao was quoted as saying he was “extremely dissatisfied” with China’s move, noting that China made the change without…
In North America, Japan, and much of Europe, October is when the tourist season begins to wind down. Jackets and scarves come out of storage, crowds thin, and souvenir vendors begin to disappear. If anything, the opposite is true in Taiwan. The island’s climate is a major reason; the final quarter of each year is…
Tainan (the place name simply means “south Taiwan”) is already well known to tourists because of its fabulous temples, fascinating fortresses, and delicious street food. When the summer rains cease and daytime temperatures sink from the 30-plus degrees Celsius (86-plus degrees Fahrenheit) that characterize its hot season, Taiwan enters what many consider to be the…
A festival of one kind or another is going on every day of the year in Taiwan. Some are meticulously organized and heavily promoted. Others – for instance, the raucous rites accompanying the birthdays of minor deities – are entirely local and receive little publicity. To spread the word about Taiwan’s rich and diverse festival…
The story of Taroko Gorge begins hundreds of millions of years ago with the accumulation of sediment and volcanic lava beneath what is now the Pacific Ocean. These materials blended with calcium carbonate from the bones of sea organisms and hardened into limestone. In due course, tectonic pressure compressed the limestone until it metamorphosed into…
Fushan Botanical Garden isn’t easy to get to, but it’s well worth the trip. Fushan Botanical Garden (福山植物園) is located in New Taipei City’s Wulai District, 10 kilometers as the crow flies from the Atayal village of Fushan. There is no road – and no legal access for hikers – from Greater Taipei, so visitors…
Pingtung County’s Donggang Township will be the scene of the King Boat Festival, held every three years, from October 4 to 11 this autumn. For most of its history, Taiwan was a thoroughly pestilential place. In the 1700s, it was said that of every 10 Chinese migrants who reached the island, “Just three remain. Six…
Now that Taiwan is on the map for more visitors, its hotel sector is enjoying an unprecedented boom. Taiwan’s hotel sector is thriving, buoyed by the island’s transformation into an up-and-coming destination for Asian travelers. Since 2008, when the Taiwanese government eased restrictions on Chinese visitors, foreign tourist numbers have jumped from 3.8 million to…
In search of the simple life, I found in Hualien an environment more complex – and fragile – than I had ever imagined. One day in the midsummer of 2011, I found myself directing a 15-ton truck full of the junk of a partial lifetime through narrow and unmarked roads amid the rice fields of…
