The late veteran journalist Norman Fu, who was assigned to the Washington DC beat for 31 years, mentioned in his Deep Throat and Whistleblower, a book about English slang, that the owners of a Chinese restaurant in the States used word-for-word translations of the Chinese names of the dishes on their menu, so that minced pork vermicelli, stewed pork meatballs, minced pork with Chinese chives, and sliced beef and beef offal in chili sauce came out respectively as “ants climb up a tree,”
In 1983, Taiwan Panorama went to Saudi Arabia to visit Taiwan’s technical missions there, working in fields such as agriculture, fisheries, industry, and healthcare. Our reports bore witness to the collaboration between Taiwan and Saudi Arabia at that time, which laid a firm foundation for sincere friendship.
The highlight of Donggang’s Wangye Festival is the burning of the Kings’ Boat. The boat serves as a means of transportation for the Wangye deities to return to Heaven and as a ritual tool to dispel disease. In modern times, it has become an important embodiment of cultural heritage.
Taiwanese society began to move towards modern consumerism in the 1930s, when department stores of unprecedented size opened their doors, offering access to a dazzling variety of merchandise. The shifting tides of time have since swept away these commercial giants. But with the repurposing of the buildings they once occupied, what visions are the new business ventures likely to conjure up in our imaginations?
Divers plunge into the water to plant pieces of coral into the triangular recesses of a concrete artificial reef. Meanwhile, back on land, local residents plant trees in seedling pots. One might say: “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and render unto God what is God’s,” thinking that the land and the sea belong apart. But in fact land and sea are not separate realms. Rather, their fates are bound together.
Based on the sister city relationship between Taipei City and Prague, the Taipei Zoo presented the Prague Zoo with a pair of pangolins, and in 2023 they gave birth to a baby pangolin, marking the first ever successful case of pangolin breeding in Europe.
In 2024, researchers at the Biodiversity Research Center of the Academia Sinica discovered traces of wild brewer’s yeast in a forest. Remarkably, although Taiwan is small, it has the highest genetic diversity of brewer’s yeasts anywhere in the world. Moreover, it is easiest to find these yeasts on trees of the beech family, Fagaceae.
In March, not long after the Lunar New Year festivities in Taiwan, India also welcomed the spring with the celebration of Holi, one of the country’s major festivals. The India–Taipei Association, India’s representative office in Taiwan, marked the day by holding a Holi celebration in Green River Park in Yonghe, New Taipei City.
Anjanette Kattil, ambassador of the Republic of the Marshall Islands to the Republic of China (Taiwan), is fond of the xiaolongbao soup dumplings served at the Din Tai Fung restaurant as well as Taiwan’s hotpot and boba tea. When she talks about the links between the Marshall Islands and Taiwan, she mentions not only Austronesian culture and shared concerns about climate change, but also seafood culture and stinky tofu.
Slightly different from the Portuguese and Dutch, who once referred to Taiwan as “Ilha Formosa,” the Spaniards in the 16th century called Taiwan “Isla Hermosa.” These two monikers were alike in that they both had the same meaning: “Beautiful Island.”
Centuries later, the beauty and welcoming atmosphere of Taiwan have cast a spell on a Spanish diplomat, who without hesitation listed “Taiwán” as his top preference for an overseas posting.
