Shaped by various governments including the Dutch, the Ming loyalist Koxinga and his heirs, Qing-Dynasty China, Japan, and the ROC, Tainan boasts a rich cultural heritage. Its historic street foods continue to cast a spell on tourists from far and near.
The global pandemic has made international travel difficult, but Taiwanese remain as hospitable as ever. The Global Muslim Travel Index 2021, put out by Mastercard and CrescentRating, ranks Taiwan joint second with the UK for travel destinations that are not members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), trailing only Singapore.
At the 2021 Edison Best New Product Awards, Taiwan’s Industrial Technology Research Institute was a gold winner with its “artificial-intelligence-based high-density shuttle rack service system,” which can upgrade the efficiency of warehousing, and a silver winner with its “MetabColor microbial dyes,” which can reduce environmental pollution in the textile industry. These innovations are major breakthroughs in moving toward the green economy.
As the Covid-19 pandemic has wreaked havoc on the global economy and the lives of people everywhere, nations have gone in and out of lockdown and case numbers have hit unprecedented highs. However, the light of humanity shines brightest in the darkest times, and the blossoming friendship between Taiwan and Lithuania has been one example.
Acrucial part of the Taiwanese government’s efforts to support intellectual-property-related industries is to facilitate the publication of Taiwanese books abroad. In 1990 the Council for Cultural Affairs (now the Ministry of Culture) launched a scheme to encourage the translation and publication of books originally written in Chinese.
Dig a hole, then gently push the tree sapling down into it, cover the roots with soil, and water it well. Planting trees is simple, and is the most basic, effective and lowest-cost solution to the greenhouse effect and extreme weather.
It’s not too far-fetched to say that Stephanie Ho, founder of Green & Safe and CEO of Yuen Foong Yu Biotech, would “keep her own cow to be sure of drinking good milk.” An old Chinese adage tells us that nouveau-riche families do not acquire good taste until the third generation. As a granddaughter of one of the founders of the Yuen Foong Yu Group, Ho is very particular about taste: not just aesthetic, but culinary as well.
As chief investment officer of Cathay Holdings, Sophia Cheng has a reputation as an astute investor, but she is much more than that. A winner several times over of the title Best Analyst in Taiwan, she has also been named Asia’s Top Sustainability Superwoman and chairs the Asia Investment Group on Climate Change.
Lin I-i is a distinguished professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at National Taiwan University (NTU), whose multidisciplinary research across the fields of satellite remote sensing, atmospheric sciences and ocean sciences has advanced our understanding of supertyphoons and explored the impact of typhoons and volcanic eruptions on the carbon cycle.
Aiming to shatter long-held myths about menstruation, Lin Nien Tzu founded the environmentally friendly Dharti Mata Sustainable Workshop in Nepal. In 2017 Lin was named on the BBC’s “100 Women” list of influential women around the world. Vivi Lin, meanwhile, established the non-profit With Red, which focuses on issues such as period poverty, menstrual stigmatization, and period inequality. She is the first Taiwanese winner of the UK’s Diana Award.
