Written by Fasa’ Namoh. This article explores how charismatic Christian prophecy shaped the 1990s migration of Paiwan families from Taiwan to Belize. Drawing on multisited fieldwork in Belize, Taiwan, and the United States, the research examines how religious landscapes and cultural memory are reterritorialised through cross-cultural encounters and diasporic practices.
Written by Thomas Ching-Wei TU. This second part of the article presents possible suggestions for promoting Taiwan-Vatican relations. For instance, it could review the visa difficulties of foreign clergy and nuns and strengthen educational and technological exchanges. Only through a greater understanding of the Vatican’s special diplomacy can the friendship with Taiwan’s only European diplomatic partner be deepened.
Written by Thomas Ching-Wei TU. This two-part article reflects on Taiwan’s diplomacy with the Holy See from a high-level politics perspective and examines how Taiwan can enhance cooperation. It argues that in addition to calling for religious freedom in China, the Taiwanese should understand the primary goals of the Vatican’s diplomacy and its differences with secular states.
Written by Chee-Hann Wu. Taiwanese horror (taishi kongbu) is a rising genre that has claimed an important space in Taiwanese popular culture, particularly in the video game industry since the debut of Detention in 2017. These video games often incorporate elements of Taiwan’s local religions, ritual practices, and mythologies, especially the ones associated with ghosts and other supernatural beings. Although mostly implicit, many Taiwanese horror games contain hints of historical references to the 228 Incident and the White Terror under Martial Law. Malevolent monsters and ghosts become physical incarnations of state-sanctioned violence by perpetrators and accomplices and the suffering of those who were arrested, executed, or silenced.
Written by Yi-Ping Wu. Staying at home, not going to the beach, or climbing mountains, and not even opening an umbrella indoors are just a few taboos everyone must remember when Ghost Month 鬼月 arrives. Although the origin of the concept of Ghost Month is uncertain, the Taiwanese still emphasize the rituals that must be practised and the taboos that must be prohibited during this period. What attracts our attention most is the colossal amount of money that the Taiwanese pay for the rituals, offerings, and joss paper (paper money) to honour their ancestors because their past loved ones could return to the world of living since the gate of the underworld would open on the first day of July on the lunar calendar. The huge income that the cultural concept of Ghost Month contributes reminds us of an interesting question to think about thoroughly: How much money the “ghosts” could make?
Written by Liang Ting-Yu. Homeless ghosts are also known as “good brothers.” In Taiwan’s civil society, they are not Youying gong (有應公) who are sacrificed in ghost temples, but rather a kind of wandering spirits who do not have or appear on memorial tablets, tombstones, or graves, and who are not worshipped by anyone; there are no temples or shrines to which they can return, and no place in which they can take shelter. On the half of the seventh lunar month, commonly known as the “Ghost Month,” local families, stores and companies, temples and Wanshan shrines（萬善祠） offer sacrifices to homeless ghosts in the form of Zhongyuan Pudu（中元普渡）ceremonies and Chaodu devotions（超渡法會）, which are rituals that free ghosts from suffering and reincarnation.
Written by Dolma Tsering. Taiwan is known as the beacon of democracy, and its competitive democratic principles and practices distinguish it from authoritarian China. Advocacy for promoting religious freedom is one of the important tasks undertaken by the government. For instance, as a part of this advocacy, in 2018, President Tsa Ing-Wen announced that Taiwan would donate US$200,000 per year for five years to the United States’ International Religious Freedom Fund as a part of Taiwan’s contribution to advancing global religious freedom. The government, annually in association with the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT), hosts an international forum for religious freedom to establish a more inclusive society in Taiwan. However, on 6th June 2023, more than 112 Tibetan Buddhist centres in Taiwan joined a press conference which called for the government’s unfair treatment of visa restrictions for Tibetan Buddhist monks in Taiwan and therefore demanded an amendment to the existing visa restriction.
Written by Wen-Hsu Lin. According to statistics from 2017, about 6% of the Taiwanese populace are Christian. Despite having a history dating back several centuries, Taiwan’s Christian community remains largely understudied and rarely discussed. Scholars have tried to better understand this group using survey data. Through the data, we first reveal the demographic characteristics of Taiwanese Christians. More importantly, under the well-documented trend that the country has become more secularized, we further investigate whether Christian faith still matters to Christians’ behaviour and attitude toward social issues.
Written by Joseph W. Ho. Visual cultures – distilled in materials as granular as individual photographs or as broad as cross-cultural ways of seeing war and peace – mediated relationships between image-makers, subjects, and audiences. In the process, people and images constructed modern imaginations of the present while looking toward uncertain futures existing between nations and Christian groups as well as local and international histories.
Written by Yin-An Chen. The connection between Whiteness and Protestant Christianity does not simply result from its relation to Western missionaries but is consolidated by the power of Western Christianity in its theological language, ideology, and hierarchy. In other words, what Whiteness maintains in Protestant Christianity is not about whether white European and American people established Protestant churches—it is about who can talk about God and explain the doctrine. It is about the power of speech and authority instead of skin colour. Whiteness, in this sense, is a method of securing the power of speech and authority.
Written by Shao-Yun Chang (張韶韻) and Hang-Tang Chen (陳翰堂). Since their labour was first viewed as a supplement to the domestic labour market, Southeast Asian migrants have become indispensable to the manufacturing, agricultural, fishing, and care industries over the last three decades. While the initial foreign population was primarily Thai and Filipino workers, Vietnamese and Indonesian workers are now taking over factory jobs, farm work, and caring for seniors and the disabled.
Written by Natasha Heller. Rising global temperature increases and predictions about sea levels can be abstract, even for adults. How can the phenomena of global warming be visualized? How can climate change and environmental degradation be made understandable by young children? The earth’s round shape, as imagined from space, lends itself to the addition of eyes and a mouth to convey unhappiness or illness on a global level. Distressed or lonely polar bears also convey the negative effects of global warming but are still quite distant from most children’s everyday lives.
Taiwan Insight 