The Taiwan Gazette translates and publishes original reporting from Taiwan, Hong Kong and China. Our goal with the platform is simple: We want original reporting from the Sinosphere to have a wider impact on global civil society.
Taiwanese businessmen in China have enjoyed the spoils of China’s economic reform and political development after Tiananmen. Doing business in China could be risky, however. It is easily affected by the profound instability of business-political relationship in China, the shifting balance of global power, and other factors. As the Chinese Communist Party celebrated its centennial in 2021, what might be the fate of Taiwanese businessmen in China?
“Taiwan literature can be conceived of as every single mode of literary expression that has left an existential trace on Taiwan,” said Dr. Shuo-bin Su (蘇碩斌), director of the National Museum of Taiwan Literature. The research, preservation, and promotion of such modes of expression, however, either failed to receive organized institutional support or was subsumed under a China-centered historiographical perspective before the lifting of martial law in Taiwan. The establishment of Taiwan literature as a field of academic inquiry became possible thanks to the political liberalization of Taiwanese society and the emergence of a “Taiwan consciousness” since the 1980s. What might be the challenges and possibilities facing the field of Taiwan literature, then and now? What might be the new directions of the field? This interview features as part of our special issue: Encountering Everyday Life: Taiwan in Museums.
Before the lifting of martial law in 1987, the research, preservation, and promotion of Taiwan literature in Taiwan either failed to receive organized institutional support or was subsumed under a China-centered historiographical perspective. The establishment of Taiwan literature as a field of academic inquiry became possible thanks to the political liberalization of Taiwanese society and the emergence of a “Taiwan consciousness” since the 1980s. What might be the challenges and possibilities facing the field of Taiwan literature, then and now? What might be the new directions of the field? This interview features as part of our special issue: Encountering Everyday Life: Taiwan in Museums.
The field of Taiwan history has gained increasing visibility in academia, both in Taiwan and abroad. Yet the production and dissemination of Taiwan-related knowledge in Taiwan before the lifting of martial law in 1987 faced great difficulty. How did the founding of the National Museum of Taiwan History (NMTH) changed the way we approach Taiwan history? This interview features as part of our special issue: Encountering Everyday Life: Taiwan in Museums.
The field of Taiwan history has gained increasing visibility in academia, both in Taiwan and abroad. Yet the production and dissemination of Taiwan-related knowledge in Taiwan before the lifting of martial law in 1987 faced great difficulty. How did the institutionalization of Taiwan history as an academic field in and of itself changed the way we approach Taiwan history? This interview features as part of our special issue: Encountering Everyday Life: Taiwan in Museums.
2022年1月6日，香港民主派初選大搜捕屆滿一週年。面對身處港版《國安法》陰霾下的香港，臺灣的轉型正義經驗有什麼參考的價值？我們很榮幸能訪問黃丞儀教授，探討臺灣解嚴三十多年來轉型正義進程與中華民國憲政體制之間錯綜復雜的關係。在訪談中，黃教授將由法律與政治的辯證過程，討論當前臺灣轉型正義面臨的種種問題、對歷史真相的還原，以及對未來的展望。
Wheaten foods play an important role in the everyday life of Taiwanese people. However, the mass introduction of wheaten foods to Taiwan and even Taiwan’s own domestic production of flour are fairly recent phenomena. Why did Taiwanese begin integrating large quantities of wheaten foods into their diet? The answer to this question is intimately linked to U.S. aid. A story of food culture and U.S. Cold War cultural policy in Asia, this article features as part of our special issue: Encountering Everyday Life: Taiwan in Museums.
The practice of physical training is not only an issue of individual choice but has always been intertwined with the political economy of nation-building. A story of civilization, wartime mobilization, and nationalism, this article on physical training features as part of our special issue: Encountering Everyday Life: Taiwan in Museums.
In the early stage of Japanese colonial governance, the Government-General of Taiwan encouraged the straw hat business—the growth of which not only brought Taiwan to the stage of international fashion, but also consolidated Japan’s colonial imaginary of Taiwan as a southern island, a strategic site from which the southward advance policy could be launched. A story about colonial modernity and imaginaries, this article features as part of our special issue: Encountering Everyday Life: Taiwan in Museums.
Taiwan’s sugar industry flourished during the Japanese colonial era, giving birth to the widely known chocolate brand: The Meiji Chocolate. A story about Japanese colonial modernity and anti-colonial resistance in Taiwan, this article on sugar features as part of our new special issue: Encountering Everyday Life: Taiwan in Museums.
In Taiwan, using a steam rice cooker is an everyday experience. However, up until the 1960s, the big stoves, briquette stoves, and kerosene stoves still enjoyed widespread popularity. How did the steam cooker eventually step into Taiwanese homes and become one of its essential kitchen appliances? This article will present a few facts about the steam rice cooker, examining the history of its growing popularity in Taiwan.
July 1, 2019 is the 2nd anniversary of the occupation of the Legislative Council in Hong Kong’s Anti-Extradition Bill movement and the 1st anniversary of Taiwan’s investment of national resources in providing humanitarian aid to Hongkongers in exile. Two years after Taiwan’s assistance of Hong Kong, official relations between the two have seemingly ceased as the political situation in Hong Kong continues to deteriorate. Amid geopolitical uncertainties, how can Taiwan continue to help Hongkongers?
Huaxin Street, also known as Little Burma, is home to a large overseas Burmese-Chinese community in Taiwan. How did this community come to be? How did the overseas Chinese policies of “Free China”’ contribute to this rise of this community? What can we learn from this community’s relationship with its “homeland”?
Before Taiwan entered the COVID-19 Level 3 Alert this year, The Reporter visited a social worker who also works as a boxing coach in Sanxia, New Taipei City. How has he turned boxing into a tool to empower indigenous youths from disadvantaged backgrounds?
During WWII, the Japanese empire mobilized its colonial populations for its imperial expansionist efforts. In 1944, Tân Í-bûn from colonial Taiwan joined the Japanese Imperial Army and served in Manchuria. When war concluded, he was captured as a POW and interned in Siberia. 70 years later, his grandson Chen Li-hang reflected upon the historical knowledge production of this wartime experience.
George Leslie Mackay, a Presbyterian missionary based in late nineteenth-century Tamsui, might be the most well-known Canadian in Taiwan. His last surviving granddaughter, Margaret, passed away earlier this week.
How do artists invite us to reexamine the changes in the Taiwanese identity? What methods do they use? In 2018, Liang-Pin Tsao opened an exhibition at TKG+ Projects examining the intertwined relationships between “identity” and “history”. Focusing on the images of the Martyrs’ Shrine, the exhibition asks: How does one become Taiwanese?
For decades, the Love River (愛河 Ai He) has always been a sparkling spot of Kaohsiung’s cityscape. In this article, readers will find out how the story of this beloved river intertwined with the city’s century-long history, from the Qing Dynasty, the Japanese colonial era, to the twenty-first century.
On July 12, 2021, Tokyo, the host city of the 2020 Summer Olympics, is entering another state of emergency to combat the spread of COVID-19. With COVID-19 still running rampant across the world, why is the Tokyo Olympics not cancelled or postponed?
In February 2020, the first physical diasporic Hongkonger magazine —Flow HK (如水), or “Be Water” in Chinese—was printed in Taiwan. In terms of its significance to the pro-democracy movement, this magazine is a living embodiment of an imagined Hong Kong community under the shadow of the Hong Kong National Security Law. The Reporter interviewed the editorial board of Flow HK to find out why they decided to publish in Taiwan and how they intended to keep the current of the Hong Kong protests flowing across borders.
