In 1930, Kuo Hsueh-hu painted Festival on South Street, which depicts the vitality and clamor of a street scene—including countless shop signs—in Taipei’s Dadaocheng area, and makes viewers feel as if they are right there rubbing shoulders in the crowd. In 2017, the Japanese magazine Brutus put out a special issue on Taiwan, with a picture of Tainan’s Guohua Street as its cover.
In Taiwan people eat candy at the Lunar New Year and at weddings, while in Taiwanese Hokkien the phrase “eat sweet things” is an auspicious saying used to wish others well. It is precisely because candy has a sweet taste that it symbolizes felicity and good fortune.
Fermented foods such as cheese, miso, and wine are common parts of modern people’s daily diets, and fermented tofu and soy sauce in particular are essential to East Asian cuisines. Taiwan’s Yilan County offers an excellent environment for fermentation, and the Erhu area of its Yuanshan Township is the most northerly location in Taiwan where ‘Smooth Cayenne’ pineapples are grown.
As countries around the world have reopened their borders, inter-national travel has been revitalized, and Taiwan is also opening wide its doors to welcome visitors. For this report, we went to the Siraya National Scenic Area to explore a number of scenic spots that embody the concept of sustainability.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs recently held the first New Southbound Policy Elite Study Program, in cooperation with Taipei Medical University, National Taipei University of Technology, and National Quemoy University. The one-semester curriculums provided students with a rich variety of content. Besides informative specialist courses, they also used time outside of class to explore Taiwan and try out Taiwanese cuisine.
In the course of more than 60 years as a sculptor, Pu Tian-sheng (1912–1996) experienced a series of stylistic transformations, moving from the traditional to the contemporary. While some of his statues evoke a Greek spirit, such as his group of Three Graces—Sunshine, Reminiscence, and Slim and Graceful—the busts he made of influential politicians and businesspeople are realist works that chronicle an important chapter of Taiwan’s modern history.
The phrase “first Tainan, second Lugang, third Bangka” describes the movement from south to north of Taiwan’s political and economic center of gravity under Qing-Dynasty rule. But did you know that Chiayi, located in the heart of Taiwan’s western plain, had wooden city walls even earlier than Tainan, and experienced industrial development before Kaohsiung?
Small churches look out over the whale-gray waves striking the shore. Colorful Aboriginal villages that feel more distant than foreign lands to urban Taiwan nestle against the coastal mountains. While the townships of Fengbin and Changbin offer no obvious tourist attractions, visitors come again and again to enjoy a tranquility and easy-going atmosphere that is rare in the modern world.
In Art as Therapy, Alain de Botton and John Armstrong suggest that art can illuminate human dignity in the midst of sorrow, arouse hope, and draw out our potential. Formosa Evergreen, an epoch-making project set in motion by the National Museum of History, performs exactly this vital role.
Pickling transforms the flavor of vegetables, sealing in the flavor of time. By exploring the pickled vegetables of a place, you can not only understand the local terroir, you can hear the stories of the people and their foods. From harvesting to cleaning to seasoning to pickling to sun-drying, there is no room for carelessness in any step of the process, which has become a major part of local people’s lives.
