The Story of Taiwanese Fruit

Taiwan, with its advanced agricultural technology, has developed new varieties of many kinds of fruit. Fruits from around the world, including temperate fruits like plums and peaches from China or apples and grapes from Central Asia, as well as tropical fruits like sugar apples, avocado and pineapple from Central America or jackfruit, abiu and rambutan from Southeast Asia, have set down roots in Taiwan.

Taiwan enjoys outstanding climatic and geographical conditions for growing fruit, and produces a wide variety of fruits year round. Thanks to the hard work of farmers, and advanced cultivation techniques, Taiwanese fruit is a watchword for quality. In this month’s Cover Story we visit farming ­areas to understand the breeding, cultivation, and uses of fruit in Taiwan, as well as the achievements of our agricultural technical missions overseas. Our reports will tickle your taste buds and enrich your spirit.

In this issue’s “Around Taiwan” section, we explore memories of Old Taipei, with nostalgic restaurants, elegant historic sites, back streets where time stands still, and downhome eateries. We also travel to Tainan to experience the vitality of two local lantern festivals: the Tainan Phoo Tse Lantern Fest­ival and the Yuejin Lantern Festival.

In addition, we visit the Ethnobotany, Food and Farming Education Center at the NTU Experimental Forest in Nantou’s Xinyi Township, to learn about the plants traditionally used by Taiwan’s indigenous peoples, and their connection with daily life and religious rituals.

Lee Yu-cheng, who recently retired from Academia Sinica, has returned to writing ­poetry as he did in his youth. His poem “Re­turn­ing to the Fishing Village at Night” describes his thoughts on revisiting his home village in Malaysia’s Kedah State, and seeing the changes time has wrought. Meanwhile Chang Kuei Hsing’s latest work is about Lin Wang, an elephant that lived for years in the Taipei Zoo after serving in military campaigns in Myanmar in WWII. These Malaysian-born writers express their own perspectives through the unique creative possibilities of Taiwan’s linguistic context. Similarly, in recent years Taiwanese comics, drawing on mater­ials from Taiwan’s history, native soil, and folk customs, have shown the advantages of our island’s creative environment.

Citizens’ efforts to reduce carbon emissions are unceasing. The law firm Winkler Partners achieved carbon neutrality in 2020, drawing interest from domestic and foreign groups, who come to see what measures the firm has adopted to turn “sustainability” from slogan to practical action. Each month we bring you in-depth reports about the best of Taiwan, to keep you company in the happy moments of your lives.