There’s a lot of money to be made from religion in Taiwan. With everything revolving around luck and seemingly any material object being able to be given an association to luck in one way or another, the lesser educated quarters of Taiwanese society are a potential goldmine for the deceptively creative. One temple keeper from [...]
No visit to Pingxi’s Sky Lantern Festival is complete without the launching of your very own prayer riddled sky lantern. Armed with a few wishes, a paintbrush and one big red paper lantern, I recently had the pleasure of launching my own sky lantern into the skies of Taiwan as part of the annual Sky [...]
If I had to peg a figure on just how many car crashes constitutes a large enough number to even register, let alone acknowledge that there had been a measurable rise in deaths statistically, I’d probably tell you that you’d want at least 100 deaths to work with. I suppose you could get something remotely [...]
I was sitting there at my desk lost in my own writer’s world and furiously typing away, when the front door burst open. ‘OMG LOOK WHAT I HAVE!’ My girlfriend slammed down what appeared to be an A3 cardboard design of some sorts and I looked down at it, slightly confused. ‘So uh… what’s that?’ [...]
Situated in the Daan District of Taipei City within a stones throw from Taiwan National Normal University, although modest in size Shida Nightmarket is one of Taipei’s most crowded nightmarkets. What Ximending is to young adults and fashion in Taipei, Shida Nightmarket is to food. There’s plenty to eat here and it’s priced for university [...]
I dunno if it’s just my crappy non-Taiwanese stomach or something everyone else goes through, but in the course of an all-you-can-eat hotpot session, somewhere in the middle I find it necessary to have a break. During this time I like to take in my surroundings. The people around me, all stuffing their faces or [...]
If you’re out and about during Chinese New Year in Taiwan, chances are you’re probably going to notice an unusually greater amount of non-Taiwanese guys out and about trying to keep themselves occupied, but still looking like they’ve got nothing better to do. For hundreds (thousands?) of Taiwanese girls every Chinese New Year heralds the [...]
Although I find them nice to look at, my public enemy #1 during Chinese New Year in Taiwan is always going to be the excessive and constant use of fireworks by the locals. Two years ago in a guide to surviving Chinese New Year in Taiwan I wrote, With the exception of the whistling fireworks [...]
Ask any guy who’s entered the dating scene in Taiwan about ‘Princess Syndrome’, and chances are you’ll get that all too familiar slow nodding and appreciative but weak smile of understanding. Taiwanese and western guys alike in Taiwan’s dating scene often run headfirst into Princess Syndrome, the scenario at times feeling like being armed with [...]
We’ve all got our fetishes in bed and undoubtedly from person to person what is acceptable, what is pleasurable, what is desirable and perhaps most importantly what is tolerable, is going to differ. Not so if you’re a Taiwanese wife however. When it comes to the bedroom in Taiwan, it’s either ‘my way… or time [...]
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