Taiwan’s Civil Code provides: “If a period be fixed by days, weeks, months, or years, the first day shall be excluded from the calculation thereof, and said period shall expire at the end of the last day of the period.”
Whaaat? Convoluted enough for you?
—Daily Cold, Plain Law Movement
In the 1920s, a group of Taiwanese intellectuals and local gentry baptized in the waters of modern education formed something called the Central Club. This cultural organization, whose membership included prominent figures such as Lin Hsien-tang, Lin Zixiu, Chang Shen-chieh, and Loa Ho, went on to found the Central Bookstore.
Our first meeting with the Jesuit priest Father Aloisius “Luis” Gutheinz was at the Faculty of Theology of St. Robert Bellarmine on the campus of Fu Jen Catholic University. In contrast to the noisy streets outside, the faculty’s grounds are a tranquil place of dignified beauty, featuring low grey buildings surrounded by grass and trees. This is where the octogenarian Father Gutheinz has lived and worked for most of his life.
In 2017, a group of wildlife workers frustrated by the lack of resources to treat injured wildlife in the eastern part of Taiwan founded their own group, the WildOne Wildlife Conservation Association. They then traveled Taiwan promoting their cause, and in 2020 established Eastern Taiwan’s first non-profit wildlife rescue and recovery center in Chishang Township, Taitung County, to rehabilitate injured animals and return them to the wild.
When he was 17, Pascal van der Graaf sported a multicolored Mohawk hairstyle and wandered the streets of Apeldoorn to make graffiti. At 28, he won the Netherlands’ prestigious Royal Award for Modern Painting. Van der Graaf moved to Taiwan five years ago with his Taiwanese wife, Arwen Yang. This year, the bearded 42-year-old decided to apply for Taiwanese citizenship.
The world’s first ever table lamp to use “candlelight organic light-emitting diodes,” which eliminate harmful blue light, has been developed in Taiwan and is being produced here. When the lamp is used at night, because its light includes no blue wavelengths, the body can secrete normal amounts of melatonin, helping to block the development of cancer cells.
The fabulous global success of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry has depended in no small part on a comprehensive and well-balanced industrial supply chain whose members cooperate closely on everything from devices to technologies. Hitoshi Mizunuma is associate general manager of the Discrete Marketing Department in the Sales Management & Semiconductor Division of Toshiba Electronic Components Taiwan. A native of Japan, Mizunuma found his life’s mission in Taiwan.
Since the launch of Taiwan’s New Southbound Policy, immigrants from Southeast Asia have been enjoying greater job and financial security. However, their quality of life and psychological wellbeing still leave much room for improvement. “This is because we have not been making enough effort to understand the ethnic cultures of Southeast-Asian countries, nor are we all that willing to do so.”
Fate intervened when their gazes met. They crossed the world to seize their happiness.
Internationally renowned particle physicist Stathes Paganis went from his native Greece to pursue studies in America, where he fell in love with a woman from Taiwan. They lived for many years in North America and Europe, but after being blessed with a child, in 2014 they chose to move to his wife’s homeland.
As I set foot onto Huaxin Street in New Taipei City’s Zhonghe District, it is like finding myself transported to another world. The street is lined with stores and signs adorned not only with Chinese, but also with unfamiliar Burmese script. The sidewalks are full of people, and under the storefront verandas people sit around, watching the world go by.
