In case you didn't knew: Paraguay is one of the few countries, which recognize Taiwan as what it is - a country. And now they even improved my quality of life here👍 _ (only post from me about this event)

Congrats Paraguay! 🇵🇾⚽🇩🇪 Taiwan President William Lai shows off his personalized football jersey from Team Paraguay, which was gifted by President Santiago Peña. This FIFA World Cup season, Taiwan is cheering for our allies — Paraguay and Haiti — and friends, says Lai. youtube.com/shorts/gTpf9...

🇪🇺 The European Parliament's resolution on countering transnational repression identifies 🇨🇳 behind "the most comprehensive and systematic TNR campaign in the world." Tactics include targeting "artists by seeking the cancellation of events relating to Taiwan." www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/docume...

Hsia 夏 has quite a few ... likely to do with the dynasty rather than the season.

The top ten family names in Taiwan are: 陳 — Chen, 11.21% 林 — Lin, 8.33% 黃 — Huang, 6% 張 — Chang, 5.30% 李 — Lee, 5.13% 王 — Wang, 4.09% 吳 — Wu, 4% 劉 — Liu, 3.16% 蔡 — Tsai, 2.93% 楊 — Yang, 2.64% Altogether, 52.79% of people in Taiwan have one of these last names, according to 2023 data.

🧭 Taiwan's Ministry of Environment has released a "Cool Map" that directs the user to the closest water fountain as well as nearby parks, public facilities, and convenience stores, where people can find shade and reprieve from the summer heat. 抗高溫涼適地圖 Cool Map: taiwancoolmap.moenv.gov.tw/coolmap

Even though they've been in circulation since the early 2000s, the NT$20 coin and the banknotes for NT$200 and NT$2,000 are so rare that some businesses refuse to accept them due to counterfeit fears. Also considered an annoyance for inducing extra math. #2字頭貨幣: museum.cbc.gov.tw/web/en-us/ci...

#TaiwanArchives Long white beard blowing in wind, Yu Yu-jen (Yu Youren), calligrapher and president of the Control Yuan, boards a plane in Shanghai as part of the 1949 Nationalist retreat from China to Taiwan

#TaiwanArchives: Historic sites Taipei North Gate (Beimen), pictured in 1950

"She's a very nutty girl" 🏳️‍🌈 Nymphia Wind of RuPaul's Drag Race fame reimagines Taiwan's roadside culture for NYC Pride March. Through drag, this project reinterprets the Betel Nut Beauty as a cultural figure with agency, stylistic force, and contemporary expression. www.moc.gov.tw/global_outre...

#TaiwanArchives: 1950 Soldiers, rickshaws, cyclists, and automobiles navigate the streets of Taipei

"If Mr. Huang has time to attend a $1 million-a-head dinner at Mar-a-Lago and fly across the world to meet with President Xi Jinping of China, he should be able to find time to answer questions from Congress," said Elizabeth Warren after the Nvidia CEO refused to testify. bsky.app/profile/eliz...

Wildlife crossings and animal ramps are vital to forest conservation. Well-positioned stairs and slope nets help animals avoid becoming roadkill. Such structures also prevent natural habitats from becoming fragmented, thus ensuring wildlife have a better chance of finding food and romantic partners.

Taiwan scholars had their passports and phones confiscated for 20+ hours by security upon arriving in Kenya for the 2026 Our Ocean Conference. Their pre-approved visas retroactively withdrawn; their belongings returned upon deportation. Taiwan's Ocean Affairs Council names China as the culprit.

Forest cam snippets from southern Taiwan (April through May, 2026) 1️⃣ Pangolin, ambling youtu.be/cJyTp3S3CFg

China has not solved the Taiwan invasion problem...yet. Observers should pay attention to what each exercise reveals about evolving PLA assumptions, logistics concepts, and geographic options. It is rehearsing how to move, sustain, and conceal a large amphibious campaign across multiple locations.

In 2018, Hockney's 1972 masterpiece, "Portrait of an Artist (Pool With Two Figures)," sold for $90.3m at Christie's, a world record for a living artist at the time. The painting, inspired by Hockney's breakup with his lover, is currently in the collection of Taiwanese billionaire Pierre Chen (陳泰銘).

A cryptic species of sea slugs has been discovered at Keelung, Taiwan. Thecacera sesama #芝麻角鞘海蛞蝓 is named after its signature black dots resembling sesame seeds. Measuring just three millimetres long, the tiny nudibranch exhibits four primary behaviours: feeding, searching, mating, laying eggs.

As part of the rotation of this new collegiate baseball event between the three founding federations 🇹🇼🇺🇸🇯🇵, USA is set to host in 2027. Japan will host in 2028. Taiwan is the 1st host for this tournament. It’s a four-team, five-day format (three days of pool play): worldbaseball.com/inaugural-wo...

Lest We Forget 🕯️ "NORMALITY HAS BEEN RESTORED..." A comic by Australian artist Peter Nicholson published in The Age on June 5, 1989, mocking China's coverup of the Tiananmen Massacre that saw the Chinese Communist party use tanks and machine guns to crush the Chinese people's democracy movement.

Cezch Senate President Miloš Vystrčil received the Order of Propitious Clouds with Special Grand Cordon after many years of staunch support for Taiwan. Visiting the Legislative Yuan in 2020, Vystrčil said: "I am a Taiwanese. Wo shi Taiwan ren. I wish you [an] independent, true and just future."

NPUST Bird Ecology Lab suspends its birdcam live-streaming a crested serpent eagle family of four in southern Taiwan after a 43-day-old chick died yesterday, likely from rat poison. Hantavirus fears have increased the use of rat poison that can be ingested by unsuspecting pets and wildlife alike.

New stamps to feature hand-drawn illustrations showcasing Taiwan's night market cuisine: Taiwanese tempura Fried chicken & popcorn chicken Medicinal soup & guabao Black pepper bun Stuffed "coffin" bread Oyster vermicelli Rice sausage stuffed with pork sausage Egg waffle Fried yam ball Wheel cake

"Taiwan's democratic experience demonstrates that free societies can remain resilient even under sustained external pressure." The Taipei Declaration on Democratic Governance in the Indo-Pacific reaffirms commitment to joint cooperation in defense of open societies: www.forum2000.cz/en/news/taip...

China is carrying out a genocide against Uyghurs while building launch pads near missile silos in Xinjiang. "Some senior Western diplomats and analysts say China would possibly resort to nuclear coercion to limit outside involvement in a conflict over Taiwan."

From 2018 until the resignation of former prime minister Justin Trudeau last year, Canadian warships transited the Taiwan Strait 11 times. Under Mr. Carney’s government, this had happened only once before. A Canadian frigate made a single trip in September, 2025, along with an Australian destroyer.

Speaking at a US Independence ⁠Day reception in Taipei, President William Lai (right) presented a copy of TSMC founder Morris Chang's two-volume autobiography to the top US diplomat in Taiwan, Raymond Greene (left), and asked him to deliver it to Trump. Chang was in the audience, in a wheelchair.

#TaiwanArchives: 19th-century American trade cards featuring three elegant, bespectacled cats wearing bonnets, bows, and aprons over long, frilly dresses while sipping "Jungle Chop Formosa Tea" sourced directly from Taiwan. Tea sold in one-pound or half-pound chests. Dated circa 1870–1900. 🍵😺

2026 Europe Day Dinner highlights • Taiwan is Europe's 13th largest trade partner • Taiwan's investments in Europe have surged by 650% over the past decade • Europe can help Taiwan achieve energy security • Together we can create safe, ethical, human-centered AI www.ecct.com.tw/ecct-2026-eu...

🇫🇷 parliamentarian Olivier Faure visits Taiwan — "a de facto state" — to defend its autonomy from China's "escalating military intimidation and influence operations." His Socialist Party reiterated that the right to self-determination "cannot be applied selectively." www.lefigaro.fr/politique/ol...

The European Parliament 🇪🇺 cites the 2021 trade sanctions China imposed on Lithuania after the Baltic state improved investment and cultural relations with Taiwan as a case of economic coercion — "a form of blackmail" pressuring Lithuania to change a certain policy; in this case, its Taiwan policy.

"Sexualized fabrications are also not new: Chinese dissidents have long suffered such abuse. This is what a 'global superpower' spends its public security resources on." SD's Laura Harth, a target of industrialized transnational repression from China using AI: safeguarddefenders.com/en/blog/fake...

Loose snooot lassoed! 😍

Our escapee has been found! Five days after vanishing from her enclosure, the vagrant anteater who was discovered ambling within Taipei Zoo grounds this evening shows no visible wounds and initial tests reveal only slight dehydration. www.zoo.gov.taipei/News_Content...

This exclusive DW interview, in which Ma said to trust in Xi Jinping — claiming "unification is actually acceptable to Taiwan," since "you can never fight a war with the mainland. You can never win" — was why Ma was not invited to the KMT's final rally before the 2024 elections. youtu.be/OZcQaUR0yZg

Street cats of Taipei ✨

The military court detention center on Taipei's Qingdao E. Road was known as "the gates of hell" due to its high density of inmates, lack of hygiene, and unannounced executions (people were removed from their cells w/o prior warning of their imminent deaths for transportation to execution grounds).

The 1st book written in Mandarin Chinese to win the International Booker Prize "can serve as an example in the Chinese-speaking world, showing that in a free and democratic country like Taiwan — a country where I can come out openly as a queer person — we can do this together" and facilitate change.

Yang Shuang-zi: "We still live under a colonial regime [Nationalist China]" Lin King: "The invasion [of Ukraine by Russia] burst this bubble, or this illusion, that all world leaders respect the world order [...] The fact that it was so flouted was a sign that anything is game now around the world"

Gu Yu-shan (顧玉山), a pioneering advocate who has spent nearly 5 decades advancing Taiwan Sign Language culture, is the inaugural Taiwan Sign Language Contribution Award winner. The Taiwanese cultural ministry is also compiling a Taiwan Sign Language Corpus (臺灣手語語料庫). www.moc.gov.tw/en/News_Cont...

Snooot on the loose 😍

This elderly collared anteater (11 years and 10 months old) has escaped from Taipei Zoo, presumably because the banana tree she was climbing broke and became a makeshift bridge, allowing her to breach the enclosure. The nocturnal creature is not aggressive, please report sightings: 02-29382300 #630

Yáng's decision to write about Japanese colonial Taiwan was a response to the question posed by the 2014 Sunflower Movement: what is the difference between Taiwan and China? The colonial period, she concluded, was Taiwan's irreducible layer — the history that could not be appropriated or replaced.

Jailed in Taipei on trumped up treason charges, a young woman judiciously wrote to her family in Tainan, producing a prolific 68 letters over the course of 19 months behind bars. Although two Christmases came and went, the 30-year-old hoped to be reunited with family by the next liturgical feast.

My gut somersaulted to my chest. The corners of my mouth couldn't help but curl with glee.  Ah— so this was Taiwan, Land of the South! ~•~ Read an excerpt from #TaiwanTravelogue, the #InternationalBooker2026 winner, by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, translated by Lin King: thebookerprizes.com/the-booker-l...

Last year, the KMT-TPP legislative coalition unadopted White Terror Memorial Day, which was set to be May 19 to commemorate Chiang Kai-shek declaring martial law over Taiwan in 1949. The memories of an estimated 200,000 White Terror victims will live on. wordsfromtaiwan.medium.com/portraits-of...

Ambassador Alex Yui: Taiwan doesn't want a war. "It's like, our house, there's intruders trying to get into our house. We're trying to beef up our security system, and then they complain, the intruder complains, that because we're trying to improve our security system, it's making his job harder."

Celebrating "America250" and Taiwanese American Heritage Week, Taiwan Philharmonic proudly presents "From Formosa," a premier cultural diplomacy tour (LA, Phoenix, NYC) showcasing Taiwan’s rich musical tapestry — from ancient indigenous chants to modern chamber music. www.moc.gov.tw/global_outre...

Hantavirus. A New Zeland passenger of the cruise who had disembarked in Saint Helena has entered Taiwan on May 7, but Taiwan was only notified on May 13 by NZ through the IHR national focal point channel. The passager was then immediately isolated in hospital. www.cdc.gov.tw/En/Bulletin/...