I'm going on an exchange to Taiwan this fall, and am going to study at NTU. There are very affordable dorm rooms on campus, which I have applied to, but there is no guarantee of getting a room. Therefore I am looking into alternative solutions if necessary.

Ideally I'd like a solo studio apartment somewhere near NTU (or quickly accessible using public transit), but I am also willing to share an apartment. My budget is realistically maximum 25000 NTD/month, but I may be able to stretch it to 30000/month if necessary.

I am aware of the Facebook groups and have joined a large number of them. I will definitely keep an eye out there.

I tried going on 591.com.tw, but since I don't yet read or speak any Mandarin I wasn't able to figure it out.

Do the members of this community have any general advice about renting or living in Taipei, or specific tips for places to look? I'm interested in any and all information about this! :)

I'll be visiting Taipei later this summer for a few days. What are some hidden games? I am most excited to see the old Spanish fort, the palace museum, and the indigenous park which will be a day trip away. Are there any hidden gems in Taipei I should out on my list?

I hope it wins. This film was SO good!

Let's be careful out there!

FAFO

A video showing the trail up to the main peak of Mount Jade—the tallest mountain in Taiwan—and back, with narration on its history, ecology and climate.

This looks really interesting. And I can't help thinking there's a certain poetic justice to showing films about human rights, in Taiwanese no less, in the memorial for the dictator who slaughtered thousands and tried to crush Taiwanese identity. 😉

Ugh. I can't believe we're still tripping over this. There was never any "One China" policy that stated Taiwan was part of China. This was about CKS's pipe dream of "retaking the mainland," which, frankly, had already long been dead 50 years ago when countries shifted their recognition from Taipei to Beijing. Yeah, there's one China. And one Taiwan. Get over it.

This is great to see. Taiwan's high speed rail is a great way to travel, but lately you can tell its popularity is straining capacity. All the trains are full, and often sell out during holidays. A boost of 25% peak capacity would be very welcome!

This has been a long time coming. I'm happy to see this for the Siraya community. I hope the other indigenous groups seeking this recognition also get it.

Well, this is disappointing. 😡

Unable to solve the enduring mystery of why Taiwan does not attract tourists in the desired numbers (despite the collective screams of all of us knowledgeable long-term foreigners watching the government flail uselessly at the problem), policymakers have decided to establish a Taiwan Tourism Institu

Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/7/26/polls-open-in-taiwans-key-recall-election-closely-watched-by-china

OK, I’m moving to Taiwan and I need to find a company that will ship a lot of stuff. I don’t need to do what’s considered a LCL or a less than container load, I just don’t have that much stuff what I’ve got is probably three to maybe five large suitcases worth of clothes books and various baby equipment; and a medium size crib in a stroller and a car seat.

Does anybody know of a service that’s kind of like pods in the United States where they drop off a small metal case in your driveway you fill it up and then they pick it up later ? 

Or does anybody know where we can take one large oversized wooden crate or pallet for shipment? Right now we’re in Kansas and a lot of the place I’m finding require me to haul my stuff to the east or West Coast before they can put it on a pallet. 

I need to buy a laptop, something that will run Windows, photoshop, export 4K videos. Any reason to think a Ryzen or i7 with a 4060/4070 will be cheaper in Taiwan rather than America? I will go back to America for a few months, can buy there and haul back or buy here.

Archived link

[...] Thousands of businesses, executives and entrepreneurs [...] rely on the island to turn their AI visions into reality. From Nvidia Corp. and Microsoft Corp. to OpenAI, the world’s AI frontrunners are increasingly turning to Taiwanese companies to fabricate their chips, build their servers and cool their devices. That in turn has made the island’s stock market the hottest major bourse in Asia over the past year, led by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and Hon Hai Precision Industry Co.

[...]

There are risks for Taiwan. For the first time in decades, an entire technology production ecosystem will be centered not in China but its tiny neighbour. Growing tensions between the US and China may have dissuaded some AI companies from producing hardware in the mainland. Yet the rising importance of Taiwan makes it all the more alluring for Beijing, which has long described the island as a breakaway province it will eventually reclaim.

[...]

The island is now chock-full of lesser-known firms that are just as essential for global AI development. These linchpins include server maker Quanta Computer Inc., power leader Delta Electronics Inc. and Asia Vital Components Co., a pioneer in creating computer cooling systems. Collectively, Taiwanese firms are poised to play an outsized role in an AI market that’s projected to reach $1.3 trillion by 2032.

[...]

As its economy grew, [Taiwanese] companies became more sophisticated manufacturers and began to open factories in mainland China. But they always kept their most advanced techniques at home.

In recent years, the increasingly aggressive US trade sanctions on China have forced companies to scout out alternative production locations, knocking the country out of many supply chains.

In less than two years, for example, those curbs have effectively sidelined China’s AI hardware industry. Taiwan’s exports of servers and graphics cards — the building blocks of data centers for training AI models — in the first nine months of 2024 were more than double China’s output, according to data collected by Bloomberg. That’s a sharp reversal from previous years.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/4250058

[Recently] more than 80 scholars and officials attended a grand ceremony in China to drive home the simple point that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China. The event centered on a new book by Taiwanese author Fan Wenyi whose title read like a brawling challenge — Who Says Taiwan is Not Part of China? (谁说台湾不是中国的). According to state media coverage, Fan’s book, which makes the case for reunification, will have “a positive significance in enhancing mutual understanding and trust between compatriots on both sides of the Taiwan Straits.”

But a deeper dive behind the headlines pushing this supposedly inspirational book turns up more questions than answers.

The Beijing event, splashed across a number of official media outlets, including the central government’s China Daily and the website of its Taiwan Affairs Office, is in fact a typical case study in how China rolls out propaganda campaigns through a combination of party-state linked activities and state-backed media publicity. Organizations and individuals, like “Taiwanese author Fan Wenyi,” are trotted out as personal and intellectual actors, emerging with their own voices from Chinese civil society. A closer look and these staged events unravel, revealing the party-state actors and agendas just behind.

While [China state-] media coverage presents “Professor Fan Wenyi” as a known scholar born in the city of Hualien in eastern Taiwan, virtually no information is available about the man [...]

Aside from a smattering of official media mentions prior to this book launch [...] Fan Wenyi seems to be a nobody. Last week’s coverage explains that Fan’s mother was an active member of literary societies during the Japanese colonial era in Taiwan, and that she instilled in him a sense of his fundamental Chineseness.

But the scholarship of this “research scholar” is nowhere to be found. Nor is it clear where he was ever a professor. And yet, audiences are meant to be moved by his authoritative declaration: “I am Taiwanese, and I am also Chinese.”

On the question of audience, the even odder fact is that Fan’s book, launched with so much fanfare within a week of Taiwan’s national day holiday (which a stage version taller than a human being), is apparently available nowhere. For starters, bookstores and suppliers in Taiwan, including the well-known Eslite, do not carry the book at all. Even on Douban (豆瓣), China’s popular domestic online book supplier, there is no whiff of Fan’s work. The only online source — oddly for a book meant to “enhance mutual understanding” on both sides of the Taiwan Straits — appears to be Amazon Singapore, where the book is “currently unavailable.”

[...]