Living
What the typhoon alerts actually mean
A yellow, orange, or red from the Central Weather Administration is not a vibe. It is a set of decisions about work, schools, and whether you should still go to Costco.
5 min read · Sep 4
Back issues
Archive
Every Friday letter, and every story we have published. New issues land here the week after they go out.
2 letters · 13 stories
The letters
No. 01 · This week · Friday, September 4, 2026
Balconies, alerts, and the first cool evenings
Good evening from Taipei. The basin is still holding the summer, but the light drops earlier on the river now. Mid-Autumn is three weeks away — the first time many of this year’s arrivals will be invited onto someone else’s balcony. This letter is for that week, and for the quieter ones around it.
6 stories · Read the letter
Pilot · Friday, August 28, 2026
Heat, the HSR, and a cloudy mountain
This was the trial run: a short Friday note to see whether a letter from Taiwan, in English, was something people would actually open. The basin was still in high summer. We wrote about the thunderstorm, the train, and the mountain at the top of the city.
6 stories · Read the letter
All stories
Living notes, travel, culture, and the rest — not only the ones that made a Friday letter.
How to be here
Living
Living
The Friday trash ritual
Taipei does not have a chute. It has a truck, a song, and a set of bags you can only buy at certain counters. Get this wrong once and you will not forget it.
4 min read · Sep 3
Living
English-friendly clinics, without flying to Hong Kong
Taipei has a real medical system. You do not need a medical tourist corridor. You need an NHI card, a number ticket, and a short list.
4 min read · Aug 31
After hours
Culture
Culture
Mid-Autumn for people who just got here
Friday, September 25 is a holiday. The interesting part is the three weeks before it: pomelos in the supermarket, a balcony invitation, and the question of what you are supposed to bring.
4 min read · Sep 4
Culture
The 3pm thunderstorm as a civic institution
It is not a canceled afternoon. It is a pause. Learn to stand under the arcade like everyone else.
3 min read · Sep 3
Culture
The night market after you live here
Tourists line up for the famous stall. Residents have a second map: the stall that is good on Tuesdays, the one that closed, the one that moved two streets over.
3 min read · Sep 2
Off the basin
Travel
Travel
A weekend on the northeast coast, without Jiufen
The old street will still be there in November. This Saturday, take the train to Ruifang and keep going until the Pacific is louder than the tour groups.
4 min read · Sep 4
Travel
After the heat: when to book Alishan
The tea terraces are at their most photogenic in the mist, which is also when the trains sell out. September is the hinge.
3 min read · Sep 2
Travel
The HSR as a habit, not a holiday
Tainan for dinner and back is a real evening if you book the right train. Treating the west coast as far is a Taipei superstition.
3 min read · Aug 30
Travel
Yangmingshan when the city is too much
You do not need a clear view of the north coast. You need a bus, a trail, and an hour in the silvergrass.
3 min read · Aug 29
Work
Business
Business
How to read a Taiwanese payslip
Labor insurance, NHI, the pension contribution with the slightly too-long name — the deductions are less mysterious than they look in the first month.
5 min read · Sep 1
This week in Taiwan History
History
History
September 3, 1954 — the first shells on Kinmen
Seventy-two years ago yesterday the First Taiwan Strait Crisis began. Kinmen is a county you can fly to for lunch. It was also, for an afternoon, the center of the Cold War.
4 min read · Sep 4
History
August 23, 1958 — the week they still call 823
Five days before this letter, in 1958, the guns opened on Kinmen. The odd-even shelling that followed is why a museum on the island still treats earplugs as a joke with a date on it.
4 min read · Aug 28