David on Formosa

Yesterday I attended the first day of the 2011 Hohaiyan Music Festival (海洋音樂祭) at Fulong Beach. The festival, organised by the New Taipei City (formerly Taipei County) Government, has been running since 2000. The festival has two stages with the main stage on Fulong Beach. There are also food stalls and toilets set up on [...]

My parents have just spent the past week in Taiwan. This was their second visit to Taiwan following their first visit in 2008. The week long visit was just enough time to see a few of Taiwan’s highlights. The first day was spent relaxing and enjoying some of the good things in Taichung. We drank [...]

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 [...]

On Saturday the Amis community of Sanying (三鶯部落) in Sanxia held its end of year celebration. The event attracted a crowd of about 500 people which was more than last year’s event. The community had also undergone a lot rebuilding after its demolition in February 2008. The afternoon began with dancing by members of Sanying [...]

The streets of Taipei came alive this afternoon with the vibrant, noisy and colorful Hope Parade (世界夢想嘉年華). The parade is an annual event organised by the Dream Community (夢想社區) in Xizhi (汐止), Taipei County. The parade began at Freedom Square before a short march through the streets to Ketagalan Boulevard. After arriving on the boulevard [...]

When I got off the train in Fulong (福隆) yesterday afternoon there was a bit of cloud cover and a sea breeze making the temperature a little more bearable than in Taipei. While many people come to Fulong to cool off at the beach I headed to the area in front of the Dongxing Temple [...]