In recent years, mothers in Taiwan have enthused about Su Mei’s Giving Birth to a Child: The Magical Cure for My Over-Sentimental Personality. The author describes trenchantly how motherhood transformed her from a tender-hearted young culture vulture into a woman whose daily life requires her to take the bull by the horns.
Taiwan Panorama, the Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation, and National Chengchi University’s Center for Southeast Asian Studies recently co-sponsored the second New Southbound Cultural Salon.
Rachel Huang and Chris Li at Kuai Shan Fang started to exhibit their product abroad as soon as they had successfully distilled an essential oil from the endemic Taiwan hinoki, or Taiwan yellow cypress. Few can rival their enthusiasm.
The Yanagawa burdock root grown in the Guilai Community of Pingtung City has a rich flavor and fresh, tender texture highly favored by epicures. Guilai burdock can be wonderfully incorporated into many dishes, including Japanese-style tempura, French-style lobster, and Italian-style chocolate.
The Chung Tai Museum opened in Puli, Nantou County in 2009, and in 2016 the Chung Tai World Museum was completed, with the original building serving as its Wood Sculpture Gallery. The museum’s collections are the result of more than 30 years of collecting and restoring religious art, based on the vision of the “Five Directions of Spreading Buddhism” of Venerable Master Wei Chueh, founder of the Chung Tai Chan Monastery.
Whether converting an 83-year-old bathhouse into a library or renovating a Japanese-style home in downtown Taipei, architect Johnny Chiu consistently aims to make room for the sky in the crowded urban jungle. The founder of J.C. Architecture, Chiu always pushes to make spaces a little more interesting, and to bring new possibilities to old buildings.
Your house is your larger body. It grows in the sun and sleeps in the stillness of the night; and it is not dreamless. Does not your house dream? And dreaming, leave the city for a grove or hill-top?
—“On Houses,” from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
Completed in 1960, the Chapel Building of St. Joseph Technical Senior High School in Taitung City is a work of the late Swiss architect Justus Dahinden.
Human beings share a nostalgic yearning for nature, but for city dwellers, the bounties of nature can appear out of reach.
On an afternoon that alternated between brilliant sun and cracking thunder, Taiwan Panorama joined forces with the Taiwan‑Asia Exchange Foundation at Thinkers’ Studio for “Southeast Asia in Transition: Immigrant Perspectives on Taiwan’s New Southbound Policy.” Through its participants, this forum was a showcase not only for how immigrants from Southeast Asia have enriched Taiwan’s cultural diversity, but also for the unbridled vitality they bring with them.
