Years ago, I was thrilled when I came across a map online showing a fun weekend excursion: a long motorcycle ride into the mountains of Pingtung County (屏東) going almost up to the border with Taitung County (台東), followed by a short hike up to a mountain lake with the mysterious name of “Small Ghost
If you haven’t heard, capybaras are having a bit of a moment. The hashtag #capybara has over 10 billion views on TikTok and counting. Viral videos circulate of these big fluffy rodents engaging in sometimes ridiculous, sometimes hilarious behavior — surfing down the river on a crocodiles’ back or ba
The “one country, two systems” principle has been Beijing’s paramount approach to Taiwan since 1982. Taiwanese and Chinese are described by Beijing as compatriots who come from the same “family” and shoulder the same responsibility to revive the “glory of the Chinese nation.” The words “home” and “f
Come Home, My Child (2023), by Taiwanese independent filmmaker Jasmine Ching-Hui Lee (李靖惠), will be making its Asia premiere next month at the Taiwan International Documentary Festival (TIDF). In this intimate documentary, Lee explores the life of Mama Yang, an elderly Chinese woman living in New Yo
It’s hard to know where to begin with Mark Tovell’s Taiwan: Roads Above the Clouds. Having published a travelogue myself, as well as having contributed to several guidebooks, at first glance Tovell’s book appears to inhabit a middle ground — the kind of hard-to-sell nowheresville publishers detest.
A women’s prison is the site of an immersive art show from the Vatican at the 60th Venice Biennale, an unlikely venue that its curator says is a “message in itself.”Away from the spotlight and the crowds of the prestigious international art fair, the former convent on the island of Giudecca in the V
Taiwan’s human population is trending downward, yet the greens and browns of its farmlands and forests are increasingly broken up by the black of asphalt and the gray of concrete. According to a reconstruction of changes in land cover between 1904 and 2015 by the Academia Sinica’s Center for Geograp
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefl
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese pol
April 22 to April 28The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (inc
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth.Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type
You might call it a cup of Joe, java, mud, brew, mocha or your morning jolt. Coffee undoubtedly is a big part of global culture, and the kind made from the Arabica bean is the most appreciated by coffee drinkers.Researchers now have unlocked the genome of the Arabica species and traced its origins t
In Paris’ outskirts, a bright-eyed young girl is eager for the Olympic and Paralympic Games to end.That’s because the swimming club where 10-year-old Lyla Kebbi trains will inherit an Olympic pool. It will be dismantled after the Games and trucked from the Olympic race venue in Paris’ high-rise busi
Alex Garland’s films have vividly conjured a virus-caused pandemic (2002’s 28 Days Later), an uncontrollable artificial intelligence (2014’s Ex Machina) and, in his latest, Civil War, a near-future America engaged in all-out warfare.Most filmmakers with such a record might claim some knack for tappi
Peter Brighton was amazed when he found the giant jackfruit. He had been watching it grow on his farm in far north Queensland, and when it came time to pick it from the tree, it was so heavy it needed two people to do the job.“I was surprised when we cut it off and felt how heavy it was,” he says. “
They compete for a trophy, a ring, the chance to be called a champion and, sometimes, a place in history. Most of the world’s best athletes in all sorts of sports compete for cold, hard cash, too.After more than 100 years of striving to earn Olympic gold — but nothing else from the folks organizing
Iris Tuan (段馨君) is a professor at Taiwan’s National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, with strong links to Harvard. Her previous work Pop with Gods, Shakespeare, and AI was full of a wide range of topics, such as feminism, post-structuralism and films of Shakespeare — Baz Luhrmann’s beautiful Romeo a
One of the traits that helped make the dinosaurs such an evolutionary success story — thriving for 165 million years — was their fast growth rate, from massive meat-eaters like Tyrannosaurus to immense plant-eaters like Argentinosaurus.But when did this characteristic first appear? A new study indic
Approaching her mid-30s, Xiong Yidan reckons that most of her friends are on to their second or even third babies. But Xiong has more than a dozen. There is Lucky, the street dog from Bangkok who jumped into a taxi with her and never left. There is Sophie and Ben, sibling geese, who honk from mornin