Taiwan from a Creative Perspective

If you’ve read Yang Mu’s poem “Manuscript in a Bottle,” have you wondered how beautiful the coastline is on the other side of the ocean? This thought enabled Yang, then living on the US West Coast, to sense how every wave rolling onto that shore starts in Hualien. If you’ve seen the award-winning Taiwanese TV drama Someday or One Day, have you wanted to take a refreshing cool drink outside Kaitai Tianhou Temple in Tainan’s Anping District, like the leading characters in the show?

There are many memorable settings in novels and TV shows, and the resonances we feel when visiting them can heighten our emotional connection with such places. Being able to personally immerse ourselves in the scenes depicted by authors, painters, and directors offers a different kind of travel experience. Our Cover Story this month focuses on Taiwanese sites used in a TV drama, a painting, novels, and poetry, and reinterprets these classic locations from an artistic perspective.

Another impressive aspect of Taiwan is the variety and abundance of its breakfast foods. Besides supplying residents’ practical needs, they are culinary microcosms of our society in different eras. Meanwhile, the joss paper and incense that are such a prominent feature of religious rituals in Taiwan are evolving with the times. This is true not only in terms of improvements in the materials used and reductions in the quantities burned, but also in the promotion of eco-friendly alternatives, such as making charitable donations.

In recent years, cooperative relations have been established between hiking trails in Taiwan and overseas. For example, there are friendship agreements between Taiwan’s Mingfeng Historic Trail and South Korea’s Jeju Olle Trail; between Alishan’s Tefuye Historic Trail and Canada’s Bruce Trail; and between the Caoling Historic Trail and the Karakuwa Trail in Kesennuma, Japan. Interactions between trails in different countries promote their local tourism industries and spread the word about Taiwan’s ecologically rich and biodiverse trails.

Other reports in this issue bring you stories about the colorization of old photographs of Taiwan, the traceability and certification system for Taiwanese teas, and the life of mountaineers. As Yang Mu wrote in his poem “Bringing You Back to Hualien” (1975):

“Together, let us glide to the cultivated valley below, / To witness the creation myths, / To work, / To till the soft, gentle lands. / … / Let us glide down to the valley of harvest, / This is our homeland.”

Make Taiwan Panorama your point of access for getting to know Taiwan and learning about the richness of its natural environment, human culture, ethnic diversity, and industries!