Food is better. Whilst proofing news briefs for a Taiwan 🇹🇼 newspaper, I read a crazy story about how vendors in Beijing were caught stuffing cardboard into dumplings 🥟. People are so poor there and desperate to make a buck that they would put cardboard as a filler in shui jiao. Pretty pathetic! Disgusting and…
Read more‘Teacher Trista’ studied Atayal gardens in the remote mountain villages of Hsinchu County Wild East Editorial / By Trista di Genova When I’m ‘stateside’ in the U.S., people first – almost invariably – make the mistake of thinkin’ I’m talkin’ ’bout THAILAND. Guess it’s ’cause bein’ one of the world’s WORST in geography skills, we…
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In a southern district of Tainan, farmers carefully till their fields, working their way around ancient concrete sarcophagi that sit on the surface, or lay half buried in the sandy soil. One with a mushroom-like lid protrudes from a sand dune beside a farmhouse. Locals say that outsiders consider them interesting, but that they have…
Read moreAn 87 year-old farmer in Changhua County operates a drone to scare birds out of a millet field. Photo: 二林舊社「田龜計畫 Facebook Group. While Taiwan, like many other developed nations, is facing the problem of an aging population, the crisis in the agricultural sector is particularly acute. The average age of farmers in Taiwan is 62,…
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(translated by 吳耀翰) Because Taipei city is such that the residential always mixes with the commercial, and since commercial buildings here often leave their lights on after closing, we have a really bad case of nightly light pollution. If you don’t have proper blinds and an eye mask, light sleepers and insomniacs may have a…
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It’s a little over 12 hours since a 6.4 magnitude earthquake rattled the southern area of Taiwan and wreaked destruction on the City of Tainan: the oldest city in Taiwan. It’s a relatively short time for those of us observing from afar, even just a few miles away, where buildings stand intact and the people…
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Well, as we know, the world doesn’t revolve around the Sun anymore. Instead, we’ve got excess(ive) plastic packaging, unreused plastic bags, plastic straws, and the best of them all in Taiwan, the plastic cup! Of which each typically has 1 life. Many have heard of The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, AKA Plastic Island, but there are actually 5-7…
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By Trista di Genova / The Wild East / Beautiful island For me personally, Tamsui (淡水) has some of the most endearing of Taiwan’s features– fresh-air strolls along its lovely boardwalk, now Youbike-enabled cycling past the serene and picturesque Tamsui River (淡水河), Guanyin Mountain (觀音山). It might just be the best spot in Taiwan for…
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A still image from award-winning domumentary Voices in the Clouds. Watch Now A documentary by American Tony Coolidge about his personal journey discovering and exploring his Atayal roots in Taiwan. Tony is the founder of atayal.org. Voices in the Clouds explores issues of personal and cultural identity. Tony’s documentary is interesting because he is, from…
Read moreThe Wild East / Culture NEW FRIENDS: Despite the language barrier Eru Paranihi forges a friendship with an indigenous Taiwanese elder Six Maori media studies undergraduates from Aukland University of Technology (AUT) made a tour of Taiwan in January this year, where they learned about its indigenous people. Creative media projects between New Zealand and…
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