What would a fashion mashup of images from traditional Taiwanese banquets, general stores, Taoist spirit-journey rituals, free-diving fisherwomen and the Yanshui Beehive Fireworks Festival, as well as Japanese kabuki theater, look like?
Constantly surprising and delighting, Kuo Wei of the Taiwanese fashion brand INF revels in drawing creative inspiration from a diverse range of cultural phenomena.
In the past, transitional justice in Taiwan focused mainly on victims of the February 28 Incident and the White Terror. But in recent years, following declassification of government documents and the completion of oral histories, a forgotten piece of history has been rediscovered: the restrictions that the authoritarian regime imposed on overseas dissidents, known as the “blacklist.”
The Trustworthy AI Dialog Engine (TAIDE), a chatbot under development by the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC), is being trained on uniquely Taiwanese corpora, so that its information pertaining to Taiwan is correct and comprehensive. Industry, government, and academia have used the TAIDE model to develop applications in such fields as agriculture, healthcare, and smart manufacturing. In the process, they have made great strides toward the development of sovereign AI.
Waiting Room B5 at Taoyuan International Airport is adorned with painted bas-reliefs of iconic Taiwanese images such as the black-faced spoonbill and the Taiwan blue magpie. In Taichung International Airport’s arrivals concourse there is a wall painted with a vibrant street scene representing one of Taiwan’s popular Mazu pilgrimages. Taipei’s Songshan Cultural and Creative Park features a mural called Time in Wisps of Smoke, which commemorates the site’s former life as a tobacco plant. These pu
Visiting the hometown of “Jam Queen” Ke Ya in Shengang, Changhua County, you’re immediately greeted by powerful winds—a local specialty. In 2019, those winds reached international shores as this daughter of Shengang took the jam world by storm, sweeping competitions in the UK and Japan. This triumph was Ke Ya’s way of translating Taiwan’s terroir, its fruits, and its artisan spirit into something the world could taste—making jam a microcosm of the island’s essence.
As we hike with a group of scientists along the banks of the Hapen River in Yilan’s Fushan Botanical Garden, suddenly a clearing in the valley comes into view. Standing upright on a platform are over 200 neatly laid out metallic antennas, shaped rather like two-dimensional Christmas trees. At first glance they look like an array of magical artifices in some sort of fantasy novel.
The Earth is sometimes hit by intense radio signals that last for perhaps a mere millisecond, and yet the events that generate such signals may release as much energy as the Sun puts out in several weeks. What are these events? Some have described them as “cosmic fireworks” that flash briefly and disappear.
This is one of the hottest topics in astronomy today, and Taiwan is an active participant in the research.
At the 2025 World Games in Chengdu, powerlifter Yang Sen, competing in the super heavyweight equipped squat event, lifted 453.5 kilograms, setting a new world record. When added to his lifts in the bench press and deadlift, he had held aloft a total of 1118.5 kg for a total score of 108.9 points, setting a new World Games record and earning him the gold medal.
The 453.5 kg lift was equivalent to picking up one heavy motorcycle in each hand and was nearly four times his body weight of 116 kil
At the World Games held in Chengdu, China in August of 2025, Taiwan’s women’s tug-of-war team found their footing in the mud and won the gold medal in the 500-kilogram weight class, marking Taiwan’s sixth consecutive triumph in this event.
In recent years, the rise of Taiwan’s chocolate industry has seen Queenie Wu’s emergence as a game changer in the field. Between 2020 and 2024, she won six Golds at the International Chocolate Awards, becoming the first Asian chocolatier to accomplish this feat.
