20 Magnificent Facts About Taiwan

Taiwan is a small, thriving island located 100 miles (161 kilometers) off the southeast coast of China’s mainland. Taiwan is part of the vast island system that rims the western Pacific Ocean. The interior of the island is mostly mountainous, with mostly north-south trending ridges that slope gently westward to a small basin and plains bordering the shallow Taiwan Strait. Taiwanese culture is a fusion of Confucian Chinese and indigenous Taiwanese cultures. Despite the overwhelming traditional Chinese influence, Japanese culture also has an impact on Taiwanese culture.

1. Taiwan is a small country in East Asia. It shares maritime borders with the Philippines to the south, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, and Japan to the northeast.
2. The official name of Taiwan is the Republic Of China.
3. The national place museum in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, has the largest permanent collection of ancient Chinese imperial artifacts and artworks. The museum has about 700,000 pieces of these artifacts.
4. The Dutch colonized Taiwan in the 17th century, and even the Spanish built a settlement in the north region of the country for a brief period of time but was driven out by the Dutch in the year 1642.
5. The country is in a very seismic prone area as it lies on the pacific ring of fire, due because of which the country has faced 78 major earthquakes since the year 1736.
6. Every year the country receives about 2,500 mm of rain, most of which comes in the form of typhoons. On average three to 5 typhoons hit Taiwan every year which does provide much of the water supply but do bring the destruction like damage to building, flooding, and landslides. Typhoons happen mainly occur in the month of July to September.
7. Taiwan people are known for their mathematics skills and rank 8th with a score of 516.7 in the PISA 2018 Worldwide Ranking for mathematics, science, and reading. The country that ranks first is China.
8. The Fort San Domingo is the oldest building in Taiwan and is a historic fortress in the Tamsui District of New Taipei. It was mainly a wooden fort built in 1628 by the Spanish Empire, who named it as “Fort San Domingo.”
9. Mount Qixing is the tallest volcano in Taiwan and the highest mountain peak with an elevation of 3,674 feet.
10. The country has over 129 rivers, most of which flows to the west and the east. The biggest river is the Tamsui River which is stretched over a land of 159 Km.
11. The nation’s total forest is around 2.2 million hectares, which constitute 52% of the total land area of Taiwan.
12. During the Late Pleistocene glaciation or the last ice age, the sea levels in the area were about 140 meters lower than the present day. Due to which the floor of the Taiwan Strait was exposed as a broad land bridge that was crossed by mainland fauna until the beginning of the Holocene 10,000 years ago.
13. The Formosan Black Bear is the national animal of Taiwan. Whereas Formosan Blue Magpies the national bird.
14. Baseball is the most popular and widely played sport in the country and is also considered the national sport.
15. Taiwan is one of the most populous countries which is not a part of the United Nations.
16. Taiwan is one of the first countries in the world that offered free wi-fi to its citizens on a mass scale. Now it is also extending the free internet service to a foreigner visiting their country.
17. Taiwan became one of the first countries in the world to offer free wi-fi on a mass scale to its citizens, and now it is extending that to any foreign tourist, also for free.
18. The nation was the first Asian country to become a democratic republic.
19. Over 95% of the nation’s total population consists of Han Chinese, while 2.3% are Austronesian Taiwanese indigenous people.
20. Some important inventions were invented in this country. Some of them are Bubble tea, cat café, instant noodles, Mongolian barbeque, floating gate transistor, N95 mask, and high entropy alloys.