David on Formosa

On 25 December this year Taipei County will be upgraded to a special municipality. The Chinese-language name of the new municipality will be Xīnběi Shì (新北市). About a month ago I sent an e-mail to Taipei County Commissioner Chou Hsi-wei enquiring about the official English name of the new municipality but received no reply. A story [...]

Two articles recently published on culture.tw contain some useful information and advice for foreign students studying in Taiwanese universities. Jeana Jack, a student at NCCU, has written a survival guide for international students that is full of good advice. She discusses choosing a university, learning Mandarin, finding a place to live and other important things. [...]

Lonely Planet author Robert Kelly has written a great article about Taiwan’s tourism potential in the latest Taiwan Journal. He notes the increasing number of tourists to Taiwan, mainly from Asia. He also points out that niche tourism such as hiking and bird watching is attracting more visitors. Another interesting article, from Reuters correspondent Ralph [...]

I have mentioned on this blog a few times before that Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd speaks Mandarin and once studied in Taiwan. This interesting little anecdote comes from a Taiwan News article reporting on Lien Chan’s trip to the APEC Conference in Peru. On a side note, Lien mentioned that he noticed Australian Prime [...]

ChinesePod has just published an intermediate lesson about Taipei.  The conversation talks about Taipei 101, the National Palace Museum and night markets. John and Jenny then discuss some key points of the conversation and also point out some differences in usage between Taiwan and China. I don’t subscribe to ChinesePod but occasionally listen to their [...]

Today I went to check out some of the campaign activities for the 2008 Taiwan Presidential Election. My first stop was the tent which had recently been set up on a vacant block near Xindian City Hall to promote Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), the KMT candidate. I was told KMT Vice-Presidential candidate Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) will [...]

I saw the characters of 大中至正 taken down from the main gate of Taiwan Democracy Hall last night. Then tonight at 6:30pm the final one of the four characters 自由廣場  meaning "Freedom Square", was put in place. They seemed to spend a lot of time adjusting the right hand part of the 場 into position. [...]