The Many Faces of Taiwan

For our Cover Story this month we sought out scholars and experts such as Hsu Ju-lin, an expert on historic trails, architecture professor Kenji Horigome, who has researched the ceramic tiles used to decorate old buildings, Tsao Ming-chung, a writer on dietary culture, and Tsai Chia-chiu, a scholar of Taiwan’s art history. Drawing on their many years of research and practical experience, they guide us on our exploration of different aspects of the wonder and diversity of Taiwan.

One distinctive facet of Taiwanese culture is the tradition of catered banquets known as pān-toh. Tang Fulong, a pān-toh chef for more than 30 years, Huang Wanling, author of a book on banquet culture, and Tseng Pin-tsang, associate research fellow at the Academia Sinica’s Institute of Taiwan History, help us discover the elaborate preparation and culinary passion behind Taiwanese pān-toh.

This month we also take you to the little island of Xiaoliuqiu, off Taiwan’s southwest coast. Besides meeting sea turtles, we look at the issues of tourism and ecological sustainability from the perspectives of the ocean, geology, and fishing community culture, and drink in the vibrant atmosphere of this tropical island.

In March of 2023, a group of staff from South Korea’s Gyeongju National Park made a special visit to Taiwan to swap notes with personnel from Taiwan’s national parks. Our reporters tagged along to learn how our two countries, with their contrasting cultures and natural environments, compare in their approaches to managing national parks.

Every two years, the Agriculture and Food Agency of the Council of Agriculture selects, from among Taiwan’s more than 6,000 agricultural production and marketing groups (PMGs), ten outstanding groups that are trendsetters in the use of agricultural technology. We visit two of these: the Bamboo Shoot PMG of Nantou’s Jiji Township, and Aquaculture PMG No. 9 of Kaohsiung’s Yong’an District. The former uses special cultivation techniques and cold-chain technology to produce Oldham’s bamboo shoots all year round, while the latter raises a diverse range of seafood in seawater ponds, including four­finger threadfin and hybrid giant tiger grouper, and is developing domestic and foreign sales channels to discover new commercial opportunities for a traditional industry.

In April of 2022, the EU proposed the concept of “data altruism,” which has become a hot topic around the world. In Taiwan, since the establishment of the Ministry of Digital Affairs, the Social Innovation Lab has also embraced the idea. We speak with digital affairs minister Audrey Tang and visit relevant private-­sector organizations to find out what role Taiwan can play in this movement and look at some examples of how the concept is being put into action.