Water is the cradle of life. Rivers were the lifeblood of ancient civilizations across the world. We feel a deep-seated urge to connect with water. We tame rivers and create aquatic environments around us. From Taipei’s historic Dadaocheng Wharf and Tainan’s new public park, The Spring, to the Annong and Dongshan Rivers in Yilan, where locals live in harmony with nature, each of the watery spaces across Taiwan has its distinctive charm.
Flying into or out of Taoyuan International Airport, if you look out the window during takeoff or landing you will see numerous large ponds interspersed among the green fields. This is the liquid landscape of the Taoyuan Plateau, and the reason why Taoyuan is known as “the land of a thousand ponds.”
On a map, the Gaoping River and its tributaries look like blue veins on a leaf.
From its source on Yushan, the Gaoping River crosses 23 townships before finally emptying into the Taiwan Strait. Together with its five main tributaries—the Laonong, Qishan, Zhuokou, Ailiao, and Meinong rivers—it is 171 kilometers long and its basin covers an area of 3,257 square kilometers, the largest in Taiwan.
In his book Shuicheng Taipei (“The Water City of Taipei”), author Shu Guozhi describes the dense concentration of waterways and ubiquity of wet rice paddies in 1970s Taipei. “Women did laundry at the sides of streams that could be found everywhere. When out and about, people walked alongside rivers or water-filled channels and often had to cross bridges. Indeed, some people could simply open their doors and see the bridges that they had to stride across every day.”
The Han Chinese were originally a continental farming people, but a few centuries ago pioneers among them ventured across the “Black Ditch” of the Taiwan Strait to live on a mountainous island surrounded by ocean, with fast-flowing rivers that were prone to flooding. All across Taiwan, a unique water culture developed with water-related rituals that survive to the present day.
Eastern gouache painting—jiaocaihua—was first introduced into Taiwan during the Japanese colonial era. This type of painting, which uses polychrome Asian gouache, has been variously referred to as nihonga (“Japanese-style painting”), toyoga (“oriental painting”), guohua (“Chinese painting”), and jiaocaihua (literally “glue-color painting”). These names are often politically charged, reflecting the specific social and cultural contexts in which they were used.
Proprietors cart load after load of goods into their shops, while out-of-towners stroll about at their leisure, tracing out a timeless scene in the oldest urban neighborhoods throughout Taiwan. The shophouses that remind us so much of the olden days when these neighborhoods were first built are certainly simple and unadorned in comparison with modern architecture, yet their historical significance is remarkable nonetheless.
In Taiwan, watermelon is a fruit that one can eat year-round.
Lovers of watermelon may be very envious of Kung Chien-chen, head of the watermelon breeding team at Known-You Seed Company. During the variety testing sessions that last for two weeks each summer and three weeks each spring and autumn, he must taste more than 1,500 varieties of watermelon, taking more than 300 mouthfuls per day on average.
When the name of Hsinchu County’s Zhudong Township is mentioned, the first thing many people think of is the delicious Hakka rice-based foods sold in its Zhongyang Market. However, Zhudong is not just some unsophisticated agricultural settlement, but was the starting point of Taiwan’s high-tech industry. More than 90 years ago, a huge fire that broke out during oil exploration operations sparked this town’s industrial development.
Everyone knows the historic mining town of Jiufen in New Taipei City, but do you know what place the name “the Jiufen of Hualien” refers to?
Xincheng Township was once a goldrush town that attracted many prospectors, but it was sidelined by the decline of the mining industry and the rerouting of the main highway.
