Taiwan

Taiwan rises steeply from the sea across the Taiwan Strait from the Chinese mainland, pushed up where two tectonic plates collide. The Central Mountain Range runs down its length, crowned by Yushan, or Jade Mountain, and on the east coast it drops almost straight into the Pacific, cut by the marble walls of Taroko Gorge. The west is a broad plain of rice fields, fish ponds and cities. The Penghu islands lie in the strait, typhoons arrive most summers, and earthquakes are frequent.

Austronesian peoples settled the island thousands of years ago, and their languages are thought to have spread from the island across the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Dutch and Spanish traders built forts in the seventeenth century until Koxinga drove the Dutch out in 1662, and the Qing dynasty took the island in 1683. Japan ruled it from 1895 to 1945. In 1949, at the end of the Chinese Civil War, the government of the Republic of China withdrew to Taiwan; martial law, imposed that year, was lifted in 1987.

Folk temples to Mazu, goddess of the sea, are among the busiest on the island, and her yearly procession from Dajia draws pilgrims who walk for days behind her palanquin. Night markets sell oyster omelettes, stinky tofu and beef noodle soup, and bubble tea was first served here in the 1980s. Hsinchu’s science park anchors a chip-making industry that supplies electronics makers worldwide, alongside machine tools, bicycles from Taichung, petrochemicals and high-mountain oolong tea.