If you come at Lantern Festival to Bei­gan, an island in the Ma­tsu chain, you will be there at just the right time for the “Bai­ming Carnival.” In Fu­zhou dialect, bai­ming refers to the ritual whereby, in the period around Lantern Festival, each village sets a specific night on which to worship the deities, laying out all kinds of foods as offerings. (Read More)

The 2018 Bangkok International Book Fair opened on 29 March, on the eve of Songkran, the Thai new year festival, and coinciding with the annual two-month holiday for Thai students. It is Asia’s largest book fair, about three times larger than the annual Tai­pei International Book Exhibition. Held in the splendid Queen Si­ri­kit National Convention Center, this year’s event attracted some 1.8 million visitors. For the second time in 11 years, Taiwan has been invited to the book fair as its (Read More)

Sir Winston Churchill, the late British prime minister, who enjoyed repeated successes in foreign policy, believed it was easier to reach mutual understanding in diplomacy when meeting face to face. In that spirit, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Culture have organized a series of exhibitions of contemporary Taiwanese art for Taiwan’s representative offices in New York, Washington and Singapore. These shows are giving foreigners and overseas Chinese alike a chance to gain a d (Read More)

Publishing industries are windows onto cultures. Since the lifting of martial law in Taiwan, the highly democratic society and the respect for press freedom here have provided outstanding conditions for the development of the publishing industry. In recent years, with numerous exchanges and growing closeness between Taiwan and Southeast Asia, people from Southeast Asia of different backgrounds have seized opportunities to come to Taiwan to earn a living. Consequently the island has become fertil (Read More)

He revolutionized graphic novels by introducing freehand brushstrokes from traditional Chinese painting into his work. He was described in the pages of Japan’s ­Asahi Shim­bun newspaper as a talent so rare and unconventional that he will remain peerless for decades. He has influenced a new generation of graphic novelists in Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong and China. This is the Taiwanese manga master Chen Uen. (Read More)

Taiwanese have a habit of overlooking Southeast Asia, even though it is a culturally rich region with a great many ties to our island. Most of us also fail to recognize how closely Taiwan’s development has been connected to Southeast Asia. Somehow, we in Taiwan are much more familiar with Japan than with the Philip­pines, even though the Philippines are much closer. (Read More)

Locals may not recognize the name, but An­ton­ius Su­narto is a king in the eyes of Indonesian migrant workers in Taiwan. Endowed with a lively and witty tongue, he earned the loyalty of many among them via radio broadcasts in which he brought clarity to the uncertainties they encounter in daily life and on the job. Thanks to more recent live video appearances, with his friendly and handsome looks, and the occasionally playful behavior that enlivens his shows, Su­narto is no longer simply a reig (Read More)

Students in Taitung have started their own “Southeast-Asian Mobile Library,” collecting books in Southeast-Asian languages and lending them out for free to migrant workers in an effort to help them ease their homesickness through reading. As time has passed, the two sides have come to know one another better, singing, dancing, and eating together as well as exchanging language study. What started as simply a way to improve life for these workers far from home has blossomed into friendship. (Read More)

My memories of summer vacations up through middle school are mainly of me lying in bed crying in pain. That’s because I would play at Rui­bin Beach for a whole day, and despite the cool ocean breezes, the next day I would find that my back was sunburned from being in the sun all day long. But after I graduated from middle school and came to Tai­pei, I never again returned to that beach. With the building of the coastal highway, that stretch of beach that lives in my memories completely disappear (Read More)

This is a story about weaving. It begins with Sumi ­Dongi, who was working to restore terraced coastal paddy fields and revive the umbrella sedge. She got to know Ti­pus Ha­fay, who was mentoring businesses in Hua­lien and Tai­tung; later, they joined forces with designers Shane Liu and ­Chang Yun-fann. All these elements were woven together to create the simple, modernistic “Ri­yar Light,” and tell the story of the Ka­ma­ro’an brand. (Read More)