I thought I was aware of most Taiwanese folk taboos, but somehow I missed the memo about not pointing at the moon. I don’t know how many times I’ve done this and failed to pray immediately for forgiveness, but my ear hasn’t been cut off by the moon’s sharp knife yet.
However, this belief seems to have left a strong impression on visitors to the new Anatomy of a Rumor: Taiwan Urban Legends (流言解剖：台灣都市傳說文學展) exhibition at the Taiwan Literature Base (台灣文學基地), as evidenced by the messages on the wall where people share their personal favorites.
At least I know better than to pick up random objects lest they be possessed, though I wasn’t aware of the QR codes. After scanning one from a bookmark hanging from a passageway leading to the exhibition, I get a message from a ghost that haunts the Japanese-era complex. Fortunately she’s benevolent and just wants to help.
Photo: Han Cheung, Taipei Times
After popular shows featuring the paranormal in 2018 and 2019, the National Museum of Taiwan Literature revisits the theme, albeit on a much smaller scale, by looking at widely-circulated urban legends and how they’ve spread and evolved over the years through various media.
These stories started becoming an integral part of pop culture with the boom of occult books and television shows in the 1990s, and gained further traction through the Internet, especially on the popular Professional Technology Temple (PTT) bulletin board system. In the past decade, they’ve become even more prominent as the focus of numerous box-office topping movies, starting from The Tag-Along (紅衣小女孩) in 2015.
The compact but informative and interactive show takes an hour to finish, and fortunately almost all the material — including the riddle visitors can solve to open a safe at the end — is translated into legible, if somewhat clunky, English.
Photo: Han Cheung, Taipei Times
The Chinese text is colloquial and draws from pop elements such as numeronyms (where sequences of numbers sound like certain words), and not all of it makes sense in English. But it doesn’t affect the experience overall. Some of the QR codes take a bit of angling and adjusting to scan, so be patient.
The most enjoyable element is the hands-on displays, such as a push-button phone where you can dial “0” 13 times to connect to the netherworld. Countless schoolchildren have gathered around a phone and tried it at midnight to listen to the sounds of hell or to speak to dead relatives; how has this changed with the advent of cell phones?
There is also a ouija (碟仙) set to try, and a video game based on the legend of the haunted bridge at Taichung’s Tunghai University (東海大學).
Photo: Han Cheung, Taipei Times
School and military legends are also essential to Taiwan’s occult, and it’s interesting how each institution shares very similar tales.
Every school is said to be haunted by a female student who killed herself for love. Indeed, I recall a classmate — no joke — telling me that the bronze statue of Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙) in the main hall of our school cries tears of blood at night. I also remember male teachers taking time out of class to tell us some of these spooky tales that apparently happen in every army camp.
Of course, this is still a literature museum and there’s a selection of relevant books available to browse, including an English compendium on Western urban legends. The former Japanese dormitory that houses the exhibit is quite pleasant and cozy for sitting down and reading if you have the time.
Photo: Han Cheung, Taipei Times
Taiwan’s English education system is being pulled apart by three opposing forces. Bilingual Nation 2030 pulls students toward English and global communication. Artificial Intelligence (AI) readiness pulls them toward digital judgment, verification and AI-mediated work. But Taiwan’s old exam culture pulls them back toward memorization, grammar drills, timed reading and correct answers. If the education system keeps using old exams to define success, it risks producing graduates who are neither genuinely bilingual nor genuinely AI-ready, but trained for tasks machines can already perform. The first force is Bilingual Nation 2030. Launched in 2018, the policy aimed to “help Taiwan’s workforce connect
It seems every few days one bumps into one of those “real man” comments in which Taiwan is urged to “face reality” or similar, and “make a deal,” with the speaker implying that soon it will be too late. “Deal” advocates always present themselves as having a superior grip on reality, and the manly ability to make the “hard choice.” Their testosterone-laden language often echoes that of Taiwan sellout advocates. Note that such commentary always specifies a process (“make a deal, work with, make progress”), never the end state of what occupation by a violent authoritarian colonialist state will entail. In
There are shadowy cabals plotting to sell out Taiwan to be annexed by China, by invasion if necessary. Fortunately, they are buffoons. In 2019, former Bamboo Union gangster and founder of the China Unification Promotion Party (CUPP), Chang An-le (張安樂, colorfully known as “White Wolf”), led a protest at the Legislative Yuan against comments made by then-premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) that in the event of an attack by China, he would never surrender, but would protect the nation by fighting to the end, even if he only had a broom. Chang had party members bring a wooden casket that they
June 1 to June 7 "If all Taiwanese were as afraid of dying as you, then what would happen?” Physician Shih Chiang-nan (施江南) reportedly said this to his wife Chen Chiao-tung (陳焦桐) after she urged him to stop intervening on behalf of Taiwanese soldiers stranded overseas after serving in the Japanese Army during World War II. Shih had clashed with high-ranking officials over the issue, engaged in several heated arguments with Taiwan governor-general Chen Yi (陳儀) and allegedly shouted at general Ko Yuan-fen (柯遠芬), chief of staff of the Taiwan Garrison Command, over
RSS