Wed, Mar 26, 2025 page8

• The secret to Taiwan’s happiness

  • By Y. Tony Yang
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  This month’s news that Taiwan ranks as Asia’s happiest place according to this year’s World Happiness Report deserves both celebration and reflection. Moving up from 31st to 27th globally and surpassing Singapore as Asia’s happiness leader is gratifying, but the true significance lies deeper than these statistics.

  As a society at the crossroads of Eastern tradition and Western influence, Taiwan embodies a distinctive approach to happiness worth examining more closely.

  The report highlights Taiwan’s exceptional habit of sharing meals — 10.1 shared meals out of 14 weekly opportunities, ranking eighth globally. This practice is not merely about food, but represents something more profound about our social fabric.

  Our night markets, where families congregate amid sizzling food stands, and our office culture, where colleagues rarely eat alone, both reflect an instinctive prioritization of connection. While the report notes that dining alone is increasing in Japan and South Korea due to demographic shifts, Taiwan faces similar challenges, yet maintains its communal eating traditions, suggesting something distinctive in our social psychology.

  Despite Taiwan’s transformation into a global technology powerhouse, our happiness does not primarily stem from material achievement. Research from Taiwanese academics reveals a more nuanced conception: happiness as a harmonious state balancing internal contentment with external relationships.

  This reflects our cultural heritage, where Confucian, Taoist and Buddhist wisdoms have blended pragmatically. We have learned that controlling desires can be as important as fulfilling them.

  Our economic development illustrates this balance. During Taiwan’s economic miracle, our society maintained remarkable frugality, despite growing prosperity. Even today, our spending often focuses on shared experiences rather than individual status symbols. Family trips to Taroko Gorge or Alishan typically hold more value than acquiring luxury items.

  Perhaps most distinctive is Taiwan’s dialectical understanding of happiness. Rather than viewing happiness as a permanent state to achieve, our cultural tradition recognizes the ever-changing relationship between happiness and unhappiness — seeing them as interdependent opposites in continuous flux.

  This perspective offers resilience when facing challenges. Taiwan’s history embodies this approach, transforming multiple periods of hardship into opportunity — from post-war poverty to democratization challenges, from economic restructuring to international isolation. Each challenge has been met not with despair, but with adaptation.

  Even our approach to cross-strait tensions reflects this thinking. Despite persistent threats, daily life proceeds with remarkable normalcy and optimism. This is not denial, but an ability to hold contradictory realities simultaneously — acknowledging threats while refusing to let them dominate our collective consciousness.

  An often overlooked dimension of Taiwan’s happiness is our remarkable social trust and civic participation. Our elections last year showcased not just political freedom, but a deep-rooted trust in democratic processes that transcends partisan divisions. The peaceful transitions of power, robust civil society and vibrant independent media all contribute to a sense of agency and collective ownership of our future.

  During natural disasters and the COVID-19 pandemic, Taiwan’s community resilience shone through citizens’ voluntary compliance with necessary measures and spontaneous mutual aid networks. This was not merely government efficiency, but reflected deep social bonds and reciprocal trust. When masks were scarce early in the pandemic, people formed orderly lines, showing a collective understanding that surpasses mere rule-following.

  These invisible social resources — what sociologists call “social capital” — create a buffer against life’s uncertainties. Knowing your community will rally during hardships provides psychological security that no insurance policy can match. This safety net of human relationships might be Taiwan’s most underrated happiness asset.

  Taiwan’s happiness formula finds unique expression in our integration of traditional values with modern aspirations. Unlike societies that have rejected tradition for modernity, or those rigidly adhering to tradition, Taiwan has developed a more organic synthesis.

  Our embrace of gender equality provides an example. Taiwan elected East Asia’s first female president and legalized same-sex marriage before any other Asian nation, yet these progressive achievements occurred without wholesale rejection of family values. Extended families still gather for festivals, maintaining intergenerational bonds while adapting to new social realities.

  Similarly, alongside our world-class national health insurance system, traditional Chinese medical practices maintain legitimate standing. Many Taiwanese move comfortably between both approaches, pragmatically selecting what works rather than adhering to ideological purity.

  Taiwan’s experience suggests that happiness emerges not from perfection, but from balance — between individual and community, tradition and innovation, material comfort and spiritual meaning. We have cultivated this balance not through grand theoretical frameworks, but through practical everyday wisdom.

  The global mental health crisis demonstrates the inadequacy of purely material or individualistic conceptions of happiness. Societies with greater wealth and individual freedoms sometimes report declining well-being. Taiwan’s approach, emphasizing relational harmony alongside individual achievement, offers an alternative model worth consideration.

  As Taiwan continues navigating between tradition and modernity, between East Asian heritage and global influence, perhaps our greatest contribution is not semiconductor chips or bubble tea, but this living laboratory of happiness — where ancient wisdom meets contemporary challenges, and where relationships still anchor our sense of well-being.

  Rankings will change yearly, but Taiwan’s approach to happiness offers enduring value in our increasingly complex world — not because we have discovered a perfect formula, but because we have maintained our humanity amid the disruptions, disconnections or challenges that arise from the complexities and rapid changes of contemporary society.

  Y. Tony Yang is an endowed professor and associate dean at George Washington University.
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