Taiwan

Taiwan is a large mountainous island in East Asia, separated from mainland China by a strait. Portuguese sailors named it Formosa, "the beautiful". About 23.5 million people live there, mostly of Han Chinese origin; the capital is Taipei. A prosperous democracy, the island makes most of the world's most advanced semiconductors, and its political status, contested by Beijing, remains unique. It is also the distant starting point of one of the greatest migrations in human history.

Taiwan is a vertical country: a mountain range runs from north to south, rising to nearly 4,000 metres, covered in forest and cut by dizzying gorges such as the marble gorge of Taroko. The fertile plains and big cities crowd the west coast, while the wild east coast drops straight into the Pacific. Tropical in the south and subtropical in the north, the island has lush scenery: terraced rice fields, mountain tea plantations, hot springs. Sitting on the Ring of Fire, it has earthquakes and typhoons.

Long home only to indigenous Austronesian peoples, the island saw Han Chinese settlers arrive from the mainland from the 17th century on, and they became the majority. After half a century of Japanese colonial rule, Taiwan's decisive turning point came in 1949: at the end of the Chinese civil war, the Nationalist government, beaten by the Communists, retreated there with more than a million followers and kept the Republic of China going. Under martial law until 1987, the island then made its democratic transition: its first free presidential election in 1996, and same-sex marriage in 2019, a first in Asia.

The official language is Mandarin, but Taiwanese (a Minnan dialect), Hakka and the Austronesian languages of the indigenous peoples are also widely spoken. Religious life is free and abundant: a mix of Buddhism, Taoism and Chinese folk religion, with thousands of colourful temples to countless deities, including the much-loved sea goddess Mazu. Ancestor worship and great processions mark the year.

Taiwan has preserved and kept alive traditional Chinese culture (calligraphy, opera, and the imperial treasures of the National Palace Museum, one of the richest collections of Chinese art in the world) while building a modern, free and creative identity. It is also the land of night markets, where you can try all kinds of street snacks: xiaolongbao, stinky tofu, and the famous bubble tea, invented here and now drunk all over the world. There is also high-mountain tea, cinema and pop music.