Dragon Boat Festival by the Sea:

Zhunan’s River Offering and Harbor-Cleansing Mazu Rite

When people think of Dragon Boat Festival, they usually picture dragon boat races, zongzi (rice dumplings with fillings normally wrapped in bamboo leaves), and the midday egg-balancing custom. But in Zhunan, Miaoli County, the festival also brings a major local observance with a history reachi......

Natural Is Best

Vitality Returns to Pinglin’s Organic Tea Farms

There are weeds in the tea farms and emerald green treefrogs in the water buckets, while pangolins and Swinhoe’s pheasants have become more frequent visitors. Over the years, Pinglin tea farmers have changed the way they cultivate their fields, and as pesticides and chemical fertilizers have b......

Tea Grown to Safeguard Water Sources

How Tse-Xin’s Work in Pinglin Brings People, Land, and Ecology into Balance

For many international visitors, bubble tea—with its rich tea-and-milk fragrance and chewy tapioca pearls—has become a shorthand for Taiwan. But bubble tea is only one facet of Taiwan’s tea culture. In the mountain district of Pinglin in northern Taiwan, a group of people is giving Taiwan tea ......

An Old Captain’s Seafood Restaurant

Xiao Shoufa, founder of the Jiazhen seafood restaurant (a.k.a. Toro Captain) in Donggang, spent the first half of his life at sea as a fisherman and then a fishing vessel captain, before becoming a restaurateur in middle age. This year he won the bidding for Donggang’s first landed bluefin tun......

Five Decades of Photos of Shopping Districts in Taiwan

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Cilantro, Love It or Hate It!

A Polarizing Herb Takes Creative New Directions

Such is the dislike that coriander inspires among some people that it has given rise to its own annual date of antipathy—International I Hate Coriander Day—on February 24th. Scientific research suggests that for haters, their dislike of coriander (the plant and seed) and cilantro (as its leaf ......

Featured Story

Prime Produce: Local Ingredients Reimagined

This month we visit farmers across Taiwan who are revitalizing traditional produce into brands that are taking the market by storm, in a movement that is a microcosm of the transformation and upgrading of industries islandwide.......

Featured Story

Sustainable Taiwan

Facing climate change and limited resources, progress toward “net-zero transition” has become a key indicator of national and corporate competitiveness. This month we take you across Taiwan to visit sites of “green resilience” and see our island’s astonishingly innovative solutions.......

Featured Story

Rural Renaissance: From Rustic Fare to Fine Local Dining

While everyone is pursuing exquisite dishes made by internationally famous chefs, have you ever stopped to try the delicious flavors of Taiwan’s rural cuisine? In this month’s Cover Story, we explore the revolution in “new local tastes” brought about by members of the “Tian Mama” certified eat......

Featured Story

Landscapes and Lifestyles

What is this “Taiwan” that we take for granted? We have long been used to viewing the ocean through car windows or exploring the mountains via artificially built trails. However, in this month’s Cover Story, we have tried to turn our attention in bolder directions. When one’s perspective chang......

Featured Story

Taiwanese Style Takes On the World

Reading the stories in this issue, I felt as if I was in a London market smelling the aromas of licorice and star anise wafting in the air, seeing that tree of uncertain identity—mandarin or pomelo?—in the backyard of an old house on Kinmen, and feeling the moist ceramic clay handled by four g......

Featured Story

The Making of Champions

What is the measure of a country? Is it territory or population, or is it the way its light shines in the inter­national community? In this month’s Taiwan Panorama, you will see an island that is small but resilient, using its astonishing capabilities in the fields of sports, artisanship, scie......