If you’re driving down Taiwan Boulevard (臺灣大道) in Taichung on Oct. 10, you just might see the words “I Love Taiwan” displayed across a 20m by 50m mosaic. And, the 2,012 people supporting this proclamation hope to make history by forming the world’s largest picture mosaic.
Shaun Bettinson, the organizer, hopes the event held at Taichung City Hall will shatter the current two-year-old Guinness World Record, when 1,458 people formed a picture mosaic in the US.
“I have a lot of passion for this,” Bettinson said.
Photo Courtesy of Shaun Bettinson
So, it seems, do others. He’s enlisted the aid of nearly 230 volunteers for the day to register participants and give out T-shirts, stickers and balloons adorned with the slogan, “I Love Taiwan.”
Bettinson, an affable 32-year-old native of England who has called Taichung home for the last eight years, garnered recent media attention with a Facebook campaign that gathered thousands of photos of people with their arms jutting into the air as a sign of their love for Taiwan.
Participants were not only asked to submit a picture, but also to explain why they love Taiwan and state how the country can be improved.
Photo Courtesy of Shaun Bettinson
Bigger picture
Showing your love for Taiwan is as simple as taking a picture, he said. “You can take a lot from Taiwan. But this is about giving something back that’s bigger than yourself.”
The Taichung City Government is throwing its weight behind the project. The city will provide tents, water, tables and chairs for the Oct. 10 event, which will coincide with festivities celebrating the Republic of China’s (ROC) Double Ten National Day.
Photo Courtesy of Shaun Bettinson
Double Ten (雙十節), as it’s commonly known in Mandarin, celebrates the start of the Wuchang Uprising on Oct. 10, 1911, which led to the collapse of the Qing Dynasty and the founding of the ROC in 1912.
“Shaun is really great and really sweet,” said Huang Shao-fu (黃少甫), the chief of the city’s Marketing and Planning Division. “He’s bringing people together to show that everyone loves Taiwan.”
Huang said that Taichung Mayor Jason Hu (胡志強) believes the outpouring of emotion for the country is amazing, especially since it’s spearheaded by a non-Taiwanese. Only during election day or national day do you usually hear people declaring their love for their country, Huang added.
Bettinson said that while he welcomes the government’s help, the “I Love Taiwan” campaign has no political agenda.
Giving back
“This is just a way to say thank you,” he said. To Bettinson’s joy, throngs of others have also been empowered with national pride.
One photo shows 2,500 high school students in Kaohsiung standing in the shape of Taiwan, while raising their arms declaring their love for the country. In another, a baby’s arms are thrust into the air forming a “V” sign. Photographic backdrops throughout the island have varied from skyscrapers to mountaintops.
“It’s amazing how the whole community has come together,” said Patrick Byrne, an 11-year resident of Taichung.
Like many expats living in Taiwan, Byrne has his own story to tell of Taiwanese generosity — which seems to have rubbed off on Bettinson.
Byrnes’ son, Fionn, was born prematurely and needed medical care totaling NT$1.2 million. Without health insurance the bills seemed insurmountable, but Bettinson organized several charity events that raised enough funds to cut the bills nearly in half.
“He’s an amazing friend. We couldn’t have done it without him,” Byrne said.
The original idea for the “I Love Taiwan” photo campaign came in April with a Facebook appeal for photos. Within a half hour, he had his first photo. Five months later he’s collected more than 35,000 photos and his initial YouTube video has been viewed upwards of 500,000 times.
At first, Bettinson planned to showcase a stockpile of 201,210 photos in a massive collage on the side of Taipei 101 for Double Ten, but the NT$10 million cost proved prohibitive.
Despite the setback, Bettinson continues to amass a collection of photos, and is considering other venues to display the collage. “I’m just going to keep going and get as many pictures as possible.”
Breaking a record
In the meantime, Bettinson is focused on gathering together as many people as possible for the Oct. 10 event so as to break the world record. While he doesn’t expect Guinness representatives to be present, he is hoping video, photos and witnesses will validate that the 2,012-person mosaic is indeed a world record.
One of those who will be helping out is Taichung resident Pay Liu (劉權霈), who saw Bettinson’s online photo appeal and was determined to get involved. Liu was able to help bring in sponsors who will be supplying promotional balloons and stickers.
“This is a meaningful event,” he said. “People should get involved.”
June 2 to June 8 Taiwan’s woodcutters believe that if they see even one speck of red in their cooked rice, no matter how small, an accident is going to happen. Peng Chin-tian (彭錦田) swears that this has proven to be true at every stop during his decades-long career in the logging industry. Along with mining, timber harvesting was once considered the most dangerous profession in Taiwan. Not only were mishaps common during all stages of processing, it was difficult to transport the injured to get medical treatment. Many died during the arduous journey. Peng recounts some of his accidents in
“Why does Taiwan identity decline?”a group of researchers lead by University of Nevada political scientist Austin Wang (王宏恩) asked in a recent paper. After all, it is not difficult to explain the rise in Taiwanese identity after the early 1990s. But no model predicted its decline during the 2016-2018 period, they say. After testing various alternative explanations, Wang et al argue that the fall-off in Taiwanese identity during that period is related to voter hedging based on the performance of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Since the DPP is perceived as the guardian of Taiwan identity, when it performs well,
The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on May 18 held a rally in Taichung to mark the anniversary of President William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20. The title of the rally could be loosely translated to “May 18 recall fraudulent goods” (518退貨ㄌㄨㄚˋ!). Unlike in English, where the terms are the same, “recall” (退貨) in this context refers to product recalls due to damaged, defective or fraudulent merchandise, not the political recalls (罷免) currently dominating the headlines. I attended the rally to determine if the impression was correct that the TPP under party Chairman Huang Kuo-Chang (黃國昌) had little of a
At Computex 2025, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) urged the government to subsidize AI. “All schools in Taiwan must integrate AI into their curricula,” he declared. A few months earlier, he said, “If I were a student today, I’d immediately start using tools like ChatGPT, Gemini Pro and Grok to learn, write and accelerate my thinking.” Huang sees the AI-bullet train leaving the station. And as one of its drivers, he’s worried about youth not getting on board — bad for their careers, and bad for his workforce. As a semiconductor supply-chain powerhouse and AI hub wannabe, Taiwan is seeing