With each major archaeological discovery, it is always surprising to learn that clues about different periods are stacked within the ground beneath our feet. Scholars dig up large shells and study them to construct a grand narrative of the times, but in the same stratum, there are less impressive fish and shrimp fossils that also offer a slice of contemporary life.
Few citizens understand what life is like for foreign migrant workers in Taiwan. It is as if they are invisible in society.
In 2021 the National Human Rights Museum has invited 15 domestic NGOs to jointly curate a Special Exhibition on the Human Rights of Migrants, depicting the situation of migrant workers in Taiwan. Only by raising overall awareness of human rights in society can the rights and interests of migrant workers be protected.
As a liberal and open-minded modern democracy, Taiwan encourages public exchanges of ideas and is home to a prosperous publishing industry. Our flourishing and highly competitive cultural sectors have been attracting professionals of Chinese origin from different parts of the world. In this article we interview editors Chu Anmin and Woo Kamloon. Brought up in Korea and Malaysia respectively, why did they choose to settle in Taiwan?
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.
