“When did Taiwan first appear on a world map?” “How do the details of Taiwan as depicted on old maps, such as its name, location, and shape, relate to Taiwan’s situation at the time?” Former Walkers Cultural Enterprise publisher Abel Wang asked himself such questions countless times during the 20 years it took him to write Taiwan on Old Maps from Around the World. He searched for answers in old maps held in major libraries and museums worldwide.
A sight that one would have thought could only be seen via time travel reappeared for all in the spring of 2021. The Forestry Bureau’s Alishan Forest Railway and Cultural Heritage Office worked with the bureau’s Chiayi Forest District Office to put the 105-year-old SL-31 steam locomotive onto the mountaintop branch line between Alishan and Shuishan, to haul wood cut during forest thinning. The scene recalled images of a century previous.
Founded 35 years ago, the National Symphony Orchestra has become famous around the world as the “Taiwan Philharmonic.” It has provided countless music lovers with timeless melodic feasts, and has become a platform for elite musicians to make their dreams come true. As the Covid-19 pandemic has raged for nearly two years, the musicians of the NSO have held to their ideals and pursued the beauty of music, using sublime sounds to bring people peace of mind and the light of a brighter dawn.
The great gorge of Taroko National Park is made of limestone that was deposited on the sea floor. Tens of millions of years ago it was squeezed by plate tectonics into metamorphic rock (marble). Six million years ago it was uplifted by movements of the earth’s crust, and has been carved by the Liwu River into the towering, multifaceted landscape that it is today.
In the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, Taiwan assembled a “Team Taiwan” to manufacture and distribute surgical masks, and provided assistance to countries around the world that were severely impacted by the disease
After Taiwan’s ports were opened to foreign trade in the middle of the 19th century, the area encompassed by today’s Shoushan National Nature Park attracted successive Western naturalists and explorers, including the British consul and ornithologist Robert Swinhoe (1836-1877), the explorer William Alexander Pickering (1840-1907), and the travel photographer John Thomson (1837-1921).
When the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor released its National Entrepreneurship Context Index for 2020, comparing the environment for business startups in 45 economies, Taiwan was ranked third, behind only Indonesia and the Netherlands. In terms of entrepreneurship, two Taiwanese “unicorn” startups, Appier and Gogoro, have attracted particular attention internationally.
Kenting National Park, Taiwan’s first national park and its most visited, covers some 32,000 hectares equally split between land and sea. South Penghu Marine National Park is Taiwan’s newest national park. Covering an even larger 35,000 hectares, 99% of which is at sea, it features rare columnar basalt islets as well as rich, pristine coral reef ecosystems.
In 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic spread across the world, many countries imposed lockdowns, and schools, businesses and government offices were closed. But in Taiwan, thanks to successful disease control efforts, the public were able to live their lives almost normally. However, with the emergence of new variants of the coronavirus, in May 2021 a large-scale outbreak caused Taiwan to enter Level 3 of its epidemic alert system.
Mountains cover 70% of Taiwan’s land area, giving it the greatest concentration of high mountains of any island in the world. There are 268 peaks above 3000 meters, 26 times more than in Japan and 13 times more than in New Zealand. Of these, the tallest—Yushan (Mt. Jade), at 3952 meters—is located in Yushan National Park. The second highest peak, the 5-million-year-old, 3886-meter-high Xueshan (Mt. Snow) lies within Shei-Pa National Park.
