In recent years, baseball has been incredibly popular in Taiwan. A weeknight professional game can draw 20,000 fans, and pro league attendance now exceeds 3 million per season. The passion displayed on and off the field justifies Taiwan’s reputation as a “Baseball Island.” However, this Baseball Island did not take shape overnight. The robustness of Taiwan baseball has been built game by game.
Little League is the foundation of baseball culture. This month we visit Taipei’s Dong Yuan Elementary and Hualien’s Guangfu Elementary to see how school coaches instruct the kids not only in baseball, but in character building, self-discipline, and determination.
Another report, featuring the legendary Kao-Yuan Vocational High and the recently emerging National Lotung Vocational High, shows how adolescents who once played “just for fun” evolve into mature youth players. Youth baseball is not only a pathway to pro ball, but is a battlefield where young people learn about competition, responsibility, and planning for the future.
Fans also have their own ways of participating. Taiwanese go to venues not only to watch the game, but to engage in unique team support rituals, with singing, dancing, symbolic gesturing, theme days, and local culture. Relaxed, charming, friendly, and down-home, Taiwanese baseball has developed its own distinctive style.
More than 30 years ago, when rain interrupted a championship game, the fans who packed the stadium chanted: “We want a dome!” After a long wait, Taiwan’s first indoor baseball stadium—the Taipei Dome—finally opened in 2023. We take you behind the scenes of this new landmark, which has rewritten the history of Taiwan baseball and changed the sport’s ecosystem.
In May of 2026, the Baseball Island moved up another “base”: The Asia-Pacific International Baseball Stadiums and Training Centers were formally designated as the National Baseball Training Base—the official training venue for our national representative teams. They also welcome players from around the globe, turning baseball into a common language linking Taiwan with the world.
Besides baseball, this island has many other stories worth hearing about: Following last month’s focus on Taiwan’s road to democracy, we visit Green Island, off Taiwan’s southeast coast, where the Green Island White Terror Memorial Park—the site of a former detention facility for political prisoners—now preserves memories of the years of authoritarian rule.
Another article reports on an exhibition at the National Museum of Archeology in Tainan, on the work of Japanese anthropologist Ryuzo Torii (1870–1953). His handwritten notebooks about Taiwan’s Indigenous peoples, compiled more than a century ago, are now being deciphered through collaboration between Taiwanese and Japanese scholars and Indigenous communities.
From baseball stadiums to historical memories, we continue to search for stories from around Taiwan that deserve to be known by the world.
