Rivaling Willy Wonka’s legendary chocolate bars, and laden with even more stories than Marcel Proust’s madeleine cakes, Taiwanese pastries continue to satisfy our sweet tooth. With their origins in traditional Chinese confectionery, they are made with local ingredients rich in cultural meanings, and are constantly undergoing innovation. Baked into each of these sweet treats are distinctively Taiwanese memories.
In centuries past, the Philippines played a significant role in sparking the outside world’s first awareness of Taiwan. When the Spanish occupied the Philippine archipelago in 1571 and set up Manila as a trading base, they launched new trade routes that brought them close to Taiwan.
Lukas Engström is a Swedish national based in Taiwan. Shortly after he started to learn Mandarin Chinese here, he visited a soft drinks bar to buy a cup of pearl milk tea. While in the queue, he kept repeating to himself the Chinese phrases he had to say to the staff. When at last he gave the order in impeccable Mandarin, he thought all was well, but he was completely nonplussed when the smiling staff shot out these questions in truncated Chinese: “How sweet would you like it? How much ice?”
In Nantou County’s Jiji Township, you will see not only many signs for a famous local product, “banana egg rolls,” but just as many statues of leopard cats. This adorable creature that lives in mountain foothills has become consummately integrated into the lives of the area’s residents, so that even locals who have never seen one in the flesh know what it looks like. A street vendor says with a laugh: “It’s thanks to the leopard cat that people come here to visit!”
Hospitals in Taiwan possess high-end medical technology and equipment, and Taiwan is a world leader in certain specialties, including liver transplantation and reproductive medicine. Institutions here provide very cost-effective healthcare services and have a competitive advantage against the rest of the world in terms of the level of medical science and the quality of care.
“We might say that a man could not move even ten feet without seeing some kind of beauty, provided he has the eyes to see it. Even if this world had been but a barren desert, there still would have been beauty.”
—Andrew Loomis, The Eye of the Painter (1961)
Many foreigners who have lived in Taiwan for a long time have come to love the mountains here. What is so special about Taiwan’s mountains that captivates their hearts?
Have you recently glimpsed a baby in a stroller? Nowadays, it’s as likely to be a shiba inu, corgi, or some other canine “fur baby” as a child. People regularly post cute pictures of their pets on social media, and many animals are Internet stars in their own right. There’s no doubt that pets are cute, but did you know they are also therapeutic? It’s wonderful that we can now enjoy the companionship of fur babies, both online and off!
For people from Europe, North America, Japan, and Korea, where winters are cold, it’s a real luxury to be able to surf in warmer climes. People can come to Taiwan and surf year-round, with warm seas, diverse and delicious food, and the friendliness of the Taiwanese people all being normal parts of the itinerary. In particular, the waves whipped up by northeasterly monsoon winds in winter make Taiwan a very inviting place for savvy surfers to visit.
Strolling through urban streets, one can occasionally see a traditional Chinese pharmacy that has gone out of business, for they are closing at a rate of 200 a year. However, the culture, knowledge, and customs of Traditional Chinese Medicine are deeply embedded in the daily lives of Taiwanese. Let’s take a look back at the history and evolution of these shops.
