He waxes passionate about 7-Eleven lunchboxes, potstickers and Peking duck pizza from Costco and calls KFC in Taiwan “moderately awesome.” Junk food connoisseurs will appreciate My Inner Fatty (myinnerfatty.blogspot.com), a blog written by Taiwanese American college student “Nicholas.” He describes himself as a “former fat kid” who made it through high school on a diet of Pop Tarts.
Clicking on the “Taipei” label reveals an amusing, if long-winded, journal of Nicholas’ dining exploits during his stay in Taipei.
In an entry from October, he gawks at a Pizza Hut pizza that has hot dogs stuffed in the crust. Of course he has to try it: “It sounds disgusting right? Oh it is. The hot dogs were cool, it saved me the trouble of having to get hot dogs in Taiwan, and I love the Kewpie mayo, but I could do without eggs.”
Another entry offers a detailed comparison of 7-Eleven microwaved fried chicken vs the fried chicken lunchbox (the lunchbox won because the chicken cutlet was “not soggy”). He’s like a kid in a candy store at the Overseas Dragon (四海遊龍) fast food chain restaurant, polishing off 40 potstickers.
Nicholas’ sentiment on Peking duck pizza at Costco perhaps best sums up the spirit of his blog: “I don’t care if the crust tastes like cardboard, I will still eat it.” And we’ll still read about it.
In 2020, a labor attache from the Philippines in Taipei sent a letter to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs demanding that a Filipina worker accused of “cyber-libel” against then-president Rodrigo Duterte be deported. A press release from the Philippines office from the attache accused the woman of “using several social media accounts” to “discredit and malign the President and destabilize the government.” The attache also claimed that the woman had broken Taiwan’s laws. The government responded that she had broken no laws, and that all foreign workers were treated the same as Taiwan citizens and that “their rights are protected,
The recent decline in average room rates is undoubtedly bad news for Taiwan’s hoteliers and homestay operators, but this downturn shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. According to statistics published by the Tourism Administration (TA) on March 3, the average cost of a one-night stay in a hotel last year was NT$2,960, down 1.17 percent compared to 2023. (At more than three quarters of Taiwan’s hotels, the average room rate is even lower, because high-end properties charging NT$10,000-plus skew the data.) Homestay guests paid an average of NT$2,405, a 4.15-percent drop year on year. The countrywide hotel occupancy rate fell from
In late December 1959, Taiwan dispatched a technical mission to the Republic of Vietnam. Comprising agriculturalists and fisheries experts, the team represented Taiwan’s foray into official development assistance (ODA), marking its transition from recipient to donor nation. For more than a decade prior — and indeed, far longer during Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) rule on the “mainland” — the Republic of China (ROC) had received ODA from the US, through agencies such as the International Cooperation Administration, a predecessor to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). More than a third of domestic investment came via such sources between 1951
For the past century, Changhua has existed in Taichung’s shadow. These days, Changhua City has a population of 223,000, compared to well over two million for the urban core of Taichung. For most of the 1684-1895 period, when Taiwan belonged to the Qing Empire, the position was reversed. Changhua County covered much of what’s now Taichung and even part of modern-day Miaoli County. This prominence is why the county seat has one of Taiwan’s most impressive Confucius temples (founded in 1726) and appeals strongly to history enthusiasts. This article looks at a trio of shrines in Changhua City that few sightseers visit.
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