History
The Association That Opened in a Girls’ School
On 17 October 1921 the Taiwanese Cultural Association held its founding meeting in Dadaocheng.
2 min read · Oct 16
This week in Taiwan History
History
A standing column: something that happened on this island, close to this Friday.
History
The bomb on the day before the uprising
October 9, 1911, is why October 10 became the holiday. Taiwan was not in that room.
2 min read · Oct 9
History
On this week: the French landing that failed at Tamsui
Eight October 1884, six days from this Friday, Qing troops drove 600 French marines back to their boats at the river mouth.
2 min read · Oct 2
History
Why Teachers’ Day is 28 September
The date is Confucius’s birthday on the official calendar, fixed in Taiwan in 1952. This year it also makes the Mid-Autumn weekend four days long.
2 min read · Sep 24
History
21 September 1999 — the night they still call 921
Monday is twenty-seven years later. It is why people still ask how old a building is, and why some of us keep a bag by the door.
4 min read · Sep 18
History
September 7–11, 1652 — Guo Huaiyi’s week
This Friday, 374 years ago, Chinese farmers with bamboo spears met Dutch muskets outside present-day Tainan. Fort Provintia is an afternoon walk now. It was a bamboo palisade then.
4 min read · Sep 11
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