The government should rename roads that are named after former presidents, symbolize authoritarianism or are out of touch with modern Taiwanese identity, the Taiwan Statebuilding Party said yesterday.
The three most common road names in Taiwan are Jhongshan (中山), Jhongjheng (中正) and Jhonghua (中華), Taiwan Statebuilding Party secretary-general Wang Hsing-huan (王興煥) told a news conference in Taipei, citing information from the Ministry of the Interior.
The first two refer to Republic of China founder Sun Yat-sen (孫中山) and former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) respectively, while the latter is an alternate name for China.
“Transitional justice should not only focus on the transition of
To the consternation of its biological father China the young nation of Taiwan seems to prefer its step-dad, Japan.
When the latter was forced out, a semi-modernized iteration of the former returned. And just as some people thrive as adults, despite an unstable childhood, Taiwan has become a democratic success. Unfortunately, the island’s biological father behaves like a parent who is no use, yet who continues to meddle.
A combination of rose-tinted retrospection and growing mutual respect has given many Taiwanese a highly positive attitude toward Japan. Physical reminders of the 1895-1945 period of Japanese rule are treasured,
Taiwan’s six special municipalities, three smaller cities and thirteen counties are subdivided into 368 geographical units. Among them are municipal districts like Taipei’s Wenshan (文山); county-administered cities such as Yuanlin (員林) in Changhua County; urban townships like Luodong (羅東) in Yilan County; and rural townships, of which Nantou County’s Sinyi (信義) is one of the largest in terms of land area if not population.
In several of these places, for example Lukang (鹿港) and Hengchun (恆春), tourism is a major industry. Many others are ignored, rightly or wrongly, by sightseers.
This article looks at four perennially overlooked towns. None of them
It’s as if the outside world conspired to rob Yanshuei (鹽水) of its importance and prosperity.
As waterways filled with silt, access to the ocean which had made it possible for this little town, several kilometers from the sea in the northern part of Tainan, to become a major entrepot was lost. The north-south railway, a key driver of economic development during the 1895-1945 period of Japanese rule, never arrived. Then, in the 1970s, the sugar industry went into terminal decline.
Like Taiwan’s other old settlements, Yanshuei used to be a walled town. The defensive barrier is long