BFF, the new concept from the founders of BAO, is an attempt to take that specific culture somewhere. Not the format or inventory exactly, but the spirit of it. The feeling a good convenience store gives you: that everything you need is within reach, that the space belongs to everyone, that being there requires nothing of you. “Convenience as care,” as the founders put it. BAO spent a decade bringing Taiwanese food to London across seven full-service restaurants. This time, BFF is a different kind of ambition.

Still in the egg

The brand name carries more than one meaning. BAO Fast Foods, Better Fast Food, Best Friends Forever. The three readings sit together intentionally, the brand being built to hold multiple registers at once.

The Taipei space runs as a small convenience store up front, with an R&D kitchen in the back and a studio during the week for brand development. The founders describe it as “hatching an egg.” Taipei is the incubator, not the launch market. The idea inverts how BAO operates: rather than arriving in a foreign city with a fully formed identity, BFF is being developed in Taiwan itself before it goes anywhere else.

The founders — with Taiwanese roots and a decade building BAO in London — bring a deliberate focus to the project: a sharpening of identity around Taiwan specifically, its food, its visual language, its rhythms. BFF is an attempt to do the same thing at a different speed and on a larger scale. They keep a postcard as a kind of running mission statement, with a simple intention on it: bring Taiwanese culture to a global stage.

A culture that hasn’t travelled yet

Japan has Yoshinoya. Korea has its fried chicken chains all over the world. Taiwan, despite having one of Asia’s most vibrant and distinctive food cultures, has no equivalent global fast food presence. Bubble tea is the one clear exception, though even then it doesn’t always travel with Taiwan’s name attached.

The founders call this a “white space.” It’s an understatement. Taiwan has the convenience store density, the street food culture, the fast food instincts and all the raw ingredients for an export that could carry its origins with it. The fact that nothing has broken through like Japanese or Korean fast food is a gap that hasn’t been filled yet. BFF is positioning itself to fill it, or at least, to make the question impossible to ignore.

Inside the kitchen

The visual language of BFF draws directly from Taipei’s street environment. For example, the electrical transformer boxes (yes, those painted with murals on streets) are a reference point for the brand’s design direction. So are the tile patterns of Taipei’s streets and the layered urban streetscapes of the city, which the founders envision appearing on BFF merchandise. Sound plays a role too: the melody of Taipei’s garbage trucks pulling residents out at dusk, the looping jingles of 7-Eleven and Family Mart, as some of the most immediately recognisable sounds in Taiwanese daily life, are being worked into the sonic identity of BFF spaces as design material. “We want people to know it’s Taiwan in three seconds,” the founders said.

The food is equally deliberate. The team runs a series of testing sessions in the Taipei kitchen, working through what Taiwanese fast food flavor actually means when you start from first principles. A recent experiment is a dohua (豆花) reworked with a peanut-soy base, topped with a coriander sugar crumble — the logic borrowed from the peanut ice cream roll (花生捲冰淇淋) found at Taiwanese markets, where a familiar flavor is shifted into an unexpected form. “Taiwanese people know that flavor so well,” the founders said, “that when it’s in a completely different form, it still works.”

The drinks menu is where some of the most culturally specific thinking is happening. First, you have a coke-like drink built on a Tieguanyin (鐵觀音) tea base, flavored with smoked sour plum and spices, becoming something that reads as both contemporary and deeply old-school at once. The second is a fizzy, vivid, guava-orange soda, drawn from the memory of mixing juices at a betel nut stand (檳榔攤), pouring whatever was in the fridge into a single cup. For anyone who grew up in Taiwan, that last reference needs no explanation. For everyone else, the flavor makes the case on its own.

Pushing boundaries

The founders’ position on cultural representation has shifted over the years. Where ten years ago the pressure to simplify concepts for foreign audiences was real, they now find that pressure has largely inverted. People are seeking more authenticity, not less. The appetite for the genuinely Taiwanese is growing.

But representation and innovation are not the same thing, and the founders are careful about that distinction. They believe that if you only represent, you can never move forward. “The beauty,” they said, “is in the tension of making something a little out there, a little new, but still unmistakably Taiwanese.”

A small example is that while traditional Taiwanese fried chicken doesn’t come with a dipping sauce, BAO’s fried chicken does. The founders received pushback on this, but they kept the sauce anyway, because they believed it made the product better and opened the culture up.

If you take a closer look, Taiwan’s own food culture has always evolved this way — absorbing, innovating, becoming something new without losing the thread. The founders see BFF as part of that same continuum, and they’re thinking in longer timelines that the things being made now might be considered part of Taiwan’s culinary heritage a hundred years from now.

Convenience as care

For a brand built on the convenience store as its model, the question of who the space is actually for matters enormously. The convenience store in Taiwan works precisely because it belongs to everyone, from office workers grabbing breakfast, students pulling an all-nighter, neighbors who come in every morning for the same thing. That accessibility is not incidental to what makes it culturally significant.

The founders describe their approach to brand-building as “open source”. They publish the thinking, the decisions, the process, so that the community participates rather than just watches. The core audience they’re building towards is people who share the same cultural investment in seeing Taiwanese culture represented with complexity. A smaller group who really understands what you’re doing, as the founders put it, is a more meaningful foundation than a much larger audience who doesn’t.

The BFF Taipei pop-up is the room where the product is being figured out, rather than a preview of a finished product. The global fast food landscape is full of concepts that arrived fully formed and market-tested. BFF is doing the opposite: working in public, in the city where the culture lives, before taking it anywhere else.

If Taiwanese fast food finds its global moment, it changes something about how Taiwan is understood from the outside, through the oldest form of soft power there is: food that carries its origins honestly, and doesn’t ask to be translated into something more convenient.

BFF Pop-up in Taipei

Location: 105 臺北市松山區光復南路32巷16弄2號1樓
Dates: June 10th – June 27th, 2026
Pop-up Days (Full Service): Thurs-Sat, 17:00-22:00
Talks: June 10th-14th, 12:00PM Noon (Registration for the industry talks is essential due to limited capacity. Interested participants can sign up via our official website or via Link in Bio on Instagram @baofastfoods starting on June 4th.)

Following the pop up in Taiwan from 10th – 27th June, BFF plans to open its first permanent site in early 2027.

The city is shifting into summer mode. The afternoons are getting hotter, sudden rain showers appear out of nowhere, and people are spending more time indoors, whether it’s a museum, a cinema, or a new restaurant with excellent air conditioning.

Anyway… a lot is happening this month, and here’s what’s on our radar this June.

Events & Exhibitions in Taipei

✦ Surrealism: Worlds in Dialogue

📆 2026.04.25-08.30
📍 Taipei Fine Arts Museum
🌐 https://www.tfam.museum/Exhibition/
🎫 NT$30

One of the year's most anticipated exhibitions has arrived at Taipei Fine Arts Museum. Bringing together around 120 works by nearly 60 artists and filmmakers, the exhibition traces the movement from pioneers such as Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí, René Magritte, and Man Ray to later figures including Cindy Sherman and David Lynch. Organized around four thematic dialogues, the exhibition spans painting, photography, installation, film, and video, exploring how Surrealism continues to reshape our understanding of reality, dreams, memory, and imagination.

✦ A World of Wonder

📆 2026.06.19-09.28
📍 National Taiwan Science Education Center
🌐 https://www.gbding.com/categories/a-world-of-wonder
🎫 From NT$240

Created by Spanish creative duo Anna & Daniel, the show turns visitors into part of the artwork itself. Combining handmade props, playful photography, and visual humor, the exhibition invites you to step inside a series of whimsical scenes and complete the story through your own participation. For their Taiwan debut, the artists have also unveiled a brand-new work: a giant bubble tea bed. Complete with hand-sewn straw pillows and a soft milk tea blanket, it's exactly as delightfully absurd as it sounds.

✦ 2026 Taipei Film Festival

📆 2026.06.26-07.07
🌐 https://www.taipeiff.taipei/en/
🎫 From NT$160

The 28th Taipei Film Festival returns with a strong lineup of local premieres and international discoveries. This year’s Taipei Film Awards are led by A Foggy Tale with 13 nominations, while Double Happiness follows closely behind. The festival will also host premieres of highly anticipated Taiwanese films and series, alongside a special focus on Japanese filmmaker Takuya Uchiyama. Elsewhere, the program ventures into Brazilian cult cinema, AI-generated mockumentaries, and boundary-pushing works from around the world.

✦ WE Are Becoming

📆 2026.05.08-08.16
📍 C-LAB
🌐 https://clab.org.tw/en/events/we-are-becoming/
🎫 Free entry

Rather than searching for a fixed cultural identity, this exhibit explores identity as something constantly evolving. Bringing together 29 works by artists from Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, Lithuania, Peru, and the United States, the exhibition imagines culture as an ongoing process of exchange, reinterpretation, and transformation. The result is a space where stories, histories, and perspectives continuously reshape what “we” means.

✦ Program X-site 2026: The Jade: Plaza Calls to Plaza

📆 2026.05.16-07.26
📍 Taipei Fine Arts Museum
🌐 https://www.tfam.museum/Exhibition/
🎫 Free entry

Every year, Taipei Fine Arts Museum's X-site program transforms its outdoor plaza into an experimental public space. This year's winning project, created by Shape Blank, takes the form of an open structure that exists somewhere between architecture, installation, and gathering place. Through reflective surfaces, lifted rooflines, and unexpected spatial interventions, the project encourages visitors to pause, wander, and interact with the plaza in new ways.

✦ LEE KAN KYO: The Last CD

📆 2026.05.23-08.16
📍 TheCube Project Space
🌐 https://thecubespace.com/en/project/the-last-cd-en/
🎫 Free entry

What does a CD mean in the age of streaming? In The Last CD, artist Lee Kan Kyo revisits the compact disc as both a technological object and a cultural memory. Set in Gongguan, once one of Taipei's most vibrant record-store districts, the exhibition recreates an environment somewhere between a music shop and a media archive. Through reconstructed albums, sound installations, and immersive displays, it reflects on how yesterday's vision of the future has quietly become today's nostalgia.

✦ CHOU Kai-Lun: Layers in Bloom

📆 2026.05.30-07.03
📍 Mind Set Art Center
🌐 https://www.art-msac.com/en/exhibitions/151/overview/
🎫 Free entry

Featuring around 30 new works created between 2024 and 2026, this exhibition marks a new chapter in painter Chou Kai-Lun's practice. Instead of focusing on obvious subjects, he turns his attention toward details and scenes that might otherwise go unnoticed. Through vibrant colors, sketches, paintings, and studies, the exhibition becomes a celebration of observation itself.

✦ Find Your Voice

📆 2026.05.15-08.29
📍 NUNU FINE ART
🌐 https://ntcart.museum/en/exhibition_content.aspx?id=H2604001
🎫 Free entry

Bringing together six artists and creative groups, Find Your Voice explores questions of identity, memory, belonging, and participation. Through painting, photography, performance, textile works, sound, and installation, visitors are invited not only to observe but also to contribute. Some projects function as living studios, while others encourage direct interaction, blurring the line between artist and audience and asking what it truly means to be heard.

✦ Material Extensions

📆 2026.05.01-08.16
📍 Taipei Fine Arts Museum
🌐 https://www.tfam.museum/Exhibition/
🎫 NT$30

Drawing from Taipei Fine Arts Museum's collection, Material Extensions brings together 87 works by 29 artists across nearly 90 years of Taiwanese art history. Beginning with external environments such as cities, homes, and systems of consumption, the exhibition gradually shifts inward toward questions of bodily experience and selfhood. The result is a broad yet thoughtful survey of how artists have used materials to reflect changing ways of living and seeing.

✦ Young Folks: The World as an Aesthetic Membrane

📆 2026.05.23-08.30
📍 MOCA Taipei
🌐 https://www.moca.taipei/en/ExhibitionAndEvent/Info/
🎫 NT$100

This exhibition examines how younger artists navigate a world shaped by technology, spirituality, memory, and digital images. Built around the idea of the “membrane,” it explores how perception is layered, filtered, and constantly reconstructed.

New Spots in Taipei

✦ Tsai Ming-Liang Art Space

📍 No. 152, Zhangchun Rd, Meitan Village, Xindian District, New Taipei City
⏰ 11:00-17:30, closed on Mondays and Tuesdays

Acclaimed filmmaker Tsai Ming-Liang has opened a new art space in Xindian, extending his artistic practice beyond cinema and into a physical environment. The space showcases paintings, film-related works, posters, installations, and personal collections. Visitors can also enjoy coffee and light meals inspired by Tsai's own tastes, creating a place that feels part exhibition, part café, and part personal archive.

✦ Xiao Ping Kitchen

📍 Taipei City, Xinyi District, Xingya Village, Section 5 of Zhongxiao East Road, No. 37
⏰ 18:00-05:00
🌐 https://www.instagram.com/xiaopingkitchen/

Taipei's beloved late-night congee restaurant has expanded with a new location in Xinyi District. Known for earning Michelin Bib Gourmand recognition in both 2024 and 2025, Xiao Ping Kitchen offers the kind of comforting Taiwanese meal many people crave after a long day (or a very long night). The new space maintains the familiar choose-your-own-dishes format while introducing a brighter, more contemporary design suited to the neighborhood's fast-paced energy.

✦ YUDOFU

📍 No. 37, Lane 61, Section 2, Hangzhou S Rd, Jintai Village, Da’an District, Taipei City
⏰ 11:00-20:00
🌐 https://www.instagram.com/yudofu.tw/

Located within the beautifully restored Nishiki Town, YUDOFU takes inspiration from Kyoto's tofu traditions. The restaurant prepares fresh Japanese dashi daily and pairs it with delicate handmade tofu, highlighting simplicity rather than excess. Set inside a tranquil Japanese-style environment, it's the kind of place that encourages you to slow down and appreciate ingredients in their purest form.

✦ USHIGORO S.

📍 Taipei City, Zhongshan District, Jintai Village, Lequn 3rd Rd, No. 299
⏰ 17:00-23:00 daily and 12:00-15:00 on weekends
🌐 https://www.instagram.com/ushigoro.s.tw/

One of Tokyo’s most sought-after wagyu omakase experiences has officially arrived in Taipei. Unlike traditional yakiniku restaurants, USHIGORO S. builds its tasting menu around premium wagyu prepared in multiple ways, from grilling to shabu-shabu and beyond. The fully private dining rooms, modeled after the Ginza flagship, create an experience centered on intimacy and focus. For many diners, that’s just as important as the beef itself.

✦ Standard Bread

📍 Taipei City, Xinyi District, Songshou Rd, 新光三越台北信義新天地 A11
⏰ 11:00-21:30
🌐 https://www.instagram.com/standardbread_taipei/

The Korean bakery sensation known for its freshly baked loaves and indulgent French toast has finally landed in Taipei. Signature items include the Crème Brûlée French Toast, featuring brioche soaked in custard and finished with a caramelized crust, as well as a sweet-and-savory maple bacon pistachio version. Fresh bread emerges from the ovens every 30 minutes, making it dangerously easy to leave with more than you planned to buy.

That’s a wrap for June! Which of these caught your eye? Drop us a line and let us know what you’re most excited to check out – we love hearing from you!

Events & Exhibitions in Taipei

✦ Peter Zimmermann: Painting Rules

📆 2026.04.11-06.06
📍 NUNU FINE ART
🌐 https://www.nunufineart.com/
🎫 Free entry

German artist Peter Zimmermann’s latest exhibition Painting Rules centers on a new body of sticker-based installation works shown alongside his signature epoxy resin paintings, marking an important shift in his recent practice. Known for translating digital imagery into smooth, highly controlled resin surfaces, Zimmermann has long explored how images move between systems, from book covers and printed matter in his early works to algorithmically altered visuals since the 1990s. Here, the exhibition also quietly asks what painting can still do in an age shaped by digital overload and AI image production: when images can be endlessly generated, what still belongs to the human hand?

✦ 2026 Treasure Hill Light Festival

📆 2026.03.06-03.08
📍 Treasure Hill Artist Village & Huan Min Village
🌐 https://www.artistvillage.org/event-detail.php?p=5069
🎫 Free entry

This year’s Treasure Hill Light Festival turns Taipei’s hillside artist village into a maze of light, sound, and slow discovery through May 3. Using “doors” as its central metaphor, 14 artists respond to Treasure Hill’s layered architecture through site-specific works that settle naturally into stairways, walls, rooftops, and narrow passages. Light pools inside cracks, sound travels unexpectedly through alleyways, and the whole settlement feels briefly suspended between memory and present time.

✦ Fallenstadt: the Rise and Fall of Cities

📆 2026.03.21-07.12
📍 Jut Art Museum
🌐 https://jam.jutfoundation.org.tw/en/exhibition/107/5429
🎫 General admission NT$150

Curated by independent curator Nobuo Takamori and the Jut Art Museum team, Fallenstadt brings together 11 artists from across Asia, Africa, and Europe to think through what cities become under pressure from political, environmental, economic, and historical aspects. Rather than focusing on familiar Western urban narratives, the exhibition shifts attention toward places like Damascus, Tainan, and West African electronic waste sites, where urban collapse and reinvention unfold under very different conditions. Through video, installation, mixed reality, and documentary-based works, it asks what an “ideal city” even means once hidden systems begin to surface.

✦ Tomas Saraceno: Interwoven

📆 2026.03.20-09.05
📍 New Taipei City Art Museum
🌐 https://ntcart.museum/en/exhibition
🎫 General admission NT$250

Argentinian artist Tomas Saraceno’s first major Taiwan exhibition at the New Taipei City Art Museum invites visitors into a world shaped by webs, air currents, clouds, and invisible systems of connection. Known for working across art, science, and environmental research, Saraceno often collaborates with biologists and physicists to turn scientific structures into sensory experiences. In Interwoven, that thinking unfolds across immersive installations and sound works, where spider silk becomes both material and metaphor. Moving through the exhibition feels like shifting scales from microscopic vibrations to cosmic structures, while quietly reconsidering how everything around us is linked.

✦ Alex Prager: Echoes of Dissonance

📆 2026.03.07-05.02
📍 TAO ART
🌐 https://taoartspace.com/echoesofdissonance-alexprager/
🎫 Free entry

Los Angeles-based artist and photographer Alex Prager makes her Taiwan debut at TAO ART with Echoes of Dissonance, a show built around her unmistakable cinematic still images. Her photographs often look like frozen scenes from films that never fully explain themselves. They’re visually seductive, carefully staged, and just slightly unsettling. What makes them even more intriguing is that many begin as moving-image shoots before being distilled into one exact suspended moment.

✦ 2026 Golden Horse Fantastic Film Festival

📆 2026.04.10-04.19
🌐 https://www.goldenhorse.org.tw/?r=en
🎫 Ticketing

The Golden Horse Fantastic Film Festival returns this month with 50 films and a lineup that already has local film fans excited. Japanese animation director Yoshitoshi Shinomiya will attend the opening film, while Hungarian director Ildikó Enyedi visits Taipei for screenings and talks alongside actor Tony Leung Chiu-wai. Several highly anticipated series will also premiere with cast appearances, turning this year’s festival into something especially lively. If you enjoy cinema that leans playful, strange, emotional, or slightly unpredictable, this is one of Taipei’s most enjoyable festival weeks.

✦ 2026 TMC Happy Land

📆 2026.04.04-04.05
📍 Taipei Music Center
🌐 https://www.tmc.taipei/en/blog/show/happyisland2026

For one weekend only, Taipei Music Center transforms into a giant music-themed playground for children and families. Happy Land includes oversized retro games, musical theatre performances, and hands-on workshops spread across the outdoor plaza and indoor spaces. Many of the games are scaled-up versions of childhood classics with stamp collecting built into the experience. It’s playful, loud, slightly chaotic and timed perfectly with Children’s Month.

✦ LOST & FOUND in THE CITY

📆 2026.04.18-05.10
📍 Huashan 1914 Creative Park
🌐 https://www.accupass.com/event/2601260226381089036551
🎫 Ticketing

This exhibition uses the idea of lost objects as a way to talk about misplaced feelings, overlooked emotions, and fragments of urban life that often go unnoticed. Eleven artists from Taiwan and Japan each create a distinct “emotional archive room,” guided by illustrated characters and interactive systems rather than fixed viewing routes. Visitors carry a device through the exhibition that records movement and interaction, eventually generating a personalized “lost item report” at the end.

✦ 2026 Zhuzihu Calla Lily

📆 2026.03.13-06.21
📍 Zhuzhihu
🌐 https://www.travel.taipei/en/event-calendar/details/66740

If you need a break from the city, April is still prime time for calla lilies in Zhuzihu on Yangmingshan National Park. The white fields usually peak between mid-March and mid-April, covering the valley in one of Taipei’s most recognizable spring landscapes. Most visitors split their time between Dinghu and Xiahu, where flower farms and walking paths make it easy to spend a slow afternoon taking photos, picking flowers, or simply enjoying cooler air a little above the city.

✦ Divine Doors, Hundred Faces - Hsia Yan’s 70-year Ton-fan Legend

📆 2026.02.07-04.04
📍 ESLITE GALLERY
🌐 https://viewingroom.eslitegallery.com/en/viewing-room/73-divine-doors-hundred-faces-hsia-yans-70-year/
🎫 Free entry

At 94, Taiwanese modern art legend Hsia Yan returns with a major solo exhibition tracing more than seventy years of work. A founding member of the Ton-Fan Group (東方畫會), Hsia Yan’s career has moved through Taipei, Paris, New York, and Shanghai, and this exhibition brings together works from across those periods alongside new pieces. From the early “hairy figures” developed in Paris to later blurred urban characters shaped by New York, the show feels less like a retrospective and more like following one artist’s restless visual language across decades.

New Spots in Taipei

✦ AUFGLET

📍 No. 53, Section 1, Anhe Rd, Da’an District, Taipei City
⏰ 09:00-18:00, closed on Wednesdays
🌐 https://www.instagram.com/aufglet_taipei/

Seoul’s famous café AUFGLET has arrived in Taipei, bringing with it the minimalist industrial aesthetic and croffles that made it a phenomenon in Korea. Originally known for helping define croffle culture (croissant dough pressed in a waffle iron and served with ice cream), the brand built a loyal following among Seoul’s fashion crowd before expanding. In Taipei, the formula remains familiar: clean interiors, carefully styled desserts, and that balance between café and social scene that makes people stay longer than planned.

✦ The Ice Cream & Cookie Co.

📍 Uni-ustyle B2
⏰ 11:00-21:30 on Sun to Thu, 11:00-22:00 on Fri and Sat
🌐 https://www.instagram.com/icecreamcookieco.tw/

Singapore’s The Ice Cream & Cookie Co. lands in Taipei with its “Better for You” philosophy and flavors rooted in Southeast Asian ingredients rather than standard Western sweetness. Founded by Andrew and Natasha, the brand grew from a desire to create ice cream that felt lighter, less sugary, and more connected to regional taste memory like coconut, pandan, and black sesame, rather than predictable vanilla-heavy menus.

✦ EMMA’s HOTDOG

📍 Taoyuan City, Taoyuan District, Xinbu 7th St, No. 20
⏰ 11:00-15:00, 16:00-19:00, closed on Wed and Thu
🌐 https://www.instagram.com/emmas_hotdog.tw/

Japanese premium hot dog brand EMMA’s HOTDOG rethinks the hot dog as something far more precise than fast food. Their handmade sausages are fully additive-free, made with natural casings and cooked sous vide to preserve texture and moisture, then paired with lightly toasted naturally fermented buns made from Japanese flour. The result is crisp, warm, and unexpectedly refined!

✦ Royal Caviar Club

📍 Taipei City, Songshan District, Alley 1, Lane 97, Section 4, Minsheng E Rd, No. 12
⏰ 11:00-17:30, closed on Fri to Mon
🌐 https://royalcaviarclub.com.tw/

Hong Kong luxury caviar brand Royal Caviar Club has chosen Taipei’s Minsheng neighborhood for its first overseas flagship, bringing caviar tasting into a much more relaxed setting. Beyond retail, the space plans regular tasting classes and “Caviar Afternoon” sessions that introduce sourcing, flavour profiles, and pairing ideas without making the whole thing feel intimidating.

✦ Nove

📍 Taipei City, Da’an District, Section 4, Zhongxiao E Rd, No. 124-8, 9F
⏰ 18:00-22:30, closed on Sun and Mon
🌐 https://www.instagram.com/novetaipei/

Hidden on the ninth floor of a building, Nove is led by Chef Yen, whose years in Europe included deep immersion in regional Italian home cooking. Rather than simply reproducing restaurant classics, the menu reflects techniques and stories gathered directly from family kitchens across Italy. From pastry to wine pairing, the team around her is equally considered, and the whole place feels precise without becoming stiff, which is harder to pull off than it sounds.

✦ French Twist Bakery

📍 No. 37-1, Section 5, Minsheng E Rd, Songshan District, Taipei City
⏰ 10:00-16:00, closed on Mon and Tue
🌐 https://www.instagram.com/frenchtwist_bakery

From the team behind The Antipodean comes French Twist Bakery, a new space where Australian breakfast habits meet French baking techniques. You’ll find croissants, banana cake, coffee, and baked goods shaped by multiple food cultures rather than strict authenticity. It’s French method, Australian instinct, with room for other influences to slip in naturally.

That’s a wrap for April! Which of these caught your eye? Drop us a line and let us know what you’re most excited to check out – we love hearing from you!

It’s also that sweet in-between season: architecture legends arrive in town, indie publishers take over the city, fashion week resets its rhythm, and experimental art leans fully into myth and memory. You can feel the spring energy in the exhibitions, in the markets, in the way the city stretches awake again.

Events & Exhibitions in Taipei

✦ Le Corbusier: Pioneer of Modern Architecture and Design

📆 2026.02.25-04.17
📍 Tamkang University

Running from February 25 to April 17 at Tamkang University, this officially certified international touring exhibition marks Le Corbusier’s first major presentation in Taiwan. Having traveled to over 40 cities worldwide, the show brings rare models and archival materials that unpack how the modernist master reshaped architecture through both theory and design. The curatorial team also reworked the exhibition layout to echo Corbusier’s spatial logic, meaning the act of walking through the show becomes part of understanding his architectural philosophy.

✦ 2026 Taipei Art Book Fair

📆 2026.03.06-03.08
📍 Taipei Performing Arts Center
🌐 https://taipeiartbookfair.com/
🎫 From NT$400

Celebrating its 10th anniversary, the Taipei Art Book Fair expands into the Taipei Performing Arts Center with nearly 700 creators transforming the iconic venue into a massive experimental publishing cave. This year’s highlight includes a talk by legendary Japanese editor Kyoichi Tsuzuki, who will share how he has sustained a life through making books and running his long-standing newsletter ROADSIDERS’ weekly. Adding to the immersive atmosphere, artist AKA Zhang reshapes the space with laser installations that blur the boundaries between structure and light, encouraging visitors to wander and lose themselves.

✦ Of Thread and Stone

📆 2026.02.07-06.14
📍 New Taipei City Art Museum
🌐 https://ntcart.museum/en/
🎫 General admission NT$100

This exhibition traces the intertwined histories of mining and textile industries in New Taipei City, examining how these parallel yet intersecting industries shaped labor systems, technical development, and generational memory. By grounding industrial history in everyday tools, bodily experience, and lived narratives, the show highlights how work and material culture quietly shaped communities over decades.

✦ Macho Mystic Meltdown; Chapter 2: Monster; She Wrote.

📆 2026.02.07-04.19
📍 MoCA TAIPEI
🌐 https://www.moca.taipei/en/ExhibitionAndEvent/
🎫 General admission NT$100

At MoCA Studio, Indonesian artist Natasha Tontey explores the idea of “manufactured fear” through speculative myth-making and fictionalized histories. Her work centers on those often excluded from dominant institutional narratives, imagining alternative futures through surreal storytelling and cinematic imagery. Female warrior figures drift across myth, history, and contemporary politics, opening conversations about land, gender roles, resistance, and power structures in ways that feel imaginative yet pointed.

✦ Lucas Arruda: Deserto-Modelo

📆 2026.01.31-05.31
📍 Winsing Art Place
🌐 https://www.instagram.com/winsingartplace/
🎫 Free entry

Brazilian painter Lucas Arruda presents his “Deserto-Modelo” series in his first solo exhibition in Taiwan, featuring 24 works installed under his direct supervision. Though often categorized as landscapes, his paintings do not depict specific locations; instead, they construct contemplative spaces shaped by memory, time, and perception. Positioned between abstraction and figuration, the works feel meditative and atmospheric, offering viewers a quiet encounter with interior states rather than geographic places.

✦ 2026 Taipei Azalea Festival

📆 2026.03.06-03.31
📍 Daan Park
🎫 Free entry

Beginning March 6 at Daan Park, the annual Taipei Azalea Festival fills the city’s signature park with soft pink blooms and a lineup of music performances, workshops, and community activities. As the city flower of Taipei, azaleas mark the official arrival of spring, transforming the park into a relaxed gathering space where visitors can listen to live music, stroll among the flowers, and soak up the season’s first truly warm afternoons.

✦ Taipei Fashion Week AW26

📆 2026.03.26-03.29
📍 Songshan Cultural and Creative Park
🌐 https://tpefw.com/

Starting this season, Taipei Fashion Week shifts its focus back to individual brands by eliminating the traditional themed opening show. Designers now present runway shows, presentations, and events that reflect their own creative rhythm and development stage. In addition to the runway, visitors can explore a live-stream showcase zone, an editor’s pick market, and an international buyer conference, creating a format that feels less spectacle-driven and more brand-centered.

✦ Much Ado About Nothing

📆 2026.01.31-03.14
📍 Soka Art Taipei
🌐 https://www.instagram.com/sokaart_taipei/
🎫 Free entry

London-based artist Will Harman brings bold, rhythmically layered paintings that examine collective social behaviors such as gatherings, rituals, competition, and conformity. In this exhibition, he moves away from cityscapes and focuses closely on figures rendered in exaggerated, rubber-like forms against saturated monochrome backdrops.

✦ Little Theatre: KAPPAO, CLASUTTA

📆 2026.01.10-03.04
📍 Whitestone Gallery
🌐 https://www.whitestone-gallery.com/
🎫 Free entry

This duo exhibition at Whitestone Gallery brings together Korean artist KAPPAO and Indonesian artist CLASUTTA, who explore emotional subtleties in everyday life through ceramics, woodwork, and painting. Their works depict understated figures and quiet moments that reveal the tension between intimacy and distance, loneliness and connection. Rather than dramatizing conflict, both artists focus on small gestures and psychological nuance, encouraging viewers to slow down and notice the emotional undercurrents of daily life.

✦ Tony WONG 1970 – 1980: A World Drawn Together by Lines: Tony Wong solo exhibition

📆 2026.03.07-05.02
📍 Tina Keng Gallery
🌐 https://www.tinakenggallery.com/en/
🎫 Free entry

This retrospective revisits works from the 1970s and 80s by Tony Wong, tracing themes of migration and displacement across Guangdong, Hong Kong, and beyond. Featuring rare sketches, collages, slides, and early pastel works, the exhibition highlights how Wong used line as a tool to measure rhythm, gravity, direction, and space. Compared to his later mythologically layered paintings, these earlier works feel searching and exploratory, revealing how movement across borders shaped his artistic language.

New Spots in Taipei

✦ paopao

📍 No. 22, Liaoning St., Zhongshan Dist, Taipei
⏰ 11:00-19:00, closed on Thursdays
🌐 https://www.instagram.com/paopao.com.tw/

The new brand from Taipei cake shop “More,” paopao combines layered limited-edition desserts and artisan coffee inside a warm 1960s Japanese-style house. The standout dine-in dessert, white chocolate strawberry pork floss cheesecake, reimagines the original cake with a creamy white cheese base, crisp white chocolate crust, Taiwanese strawberries, and savory pork floss from a heritage meat shop. Sweet and salty meet in surprisingly balanced harmony.

✦ Asasumi

📍 Taipei City, Songshan District, Fujin St, No. 448
⏰ 10:00-17:00, closed on Tuesdays
🌐 https://www.instagram.com/asasumi.tw/

From the team behind “Chuyu Teppanyaki,” Asasumi brings charcoal-grilled fish set meals into the brunch hour. With only ten counter seats and two charcoal grills running from early morning, the chef focuses on precise technique as fish skin crisps and fat sizzles over open flame. The atmosphere, rhythm, and aroma evoke a quiet Japanese morning, making it an unexpectedly comforting start to the day.

✦ Dew

📍 No. 36, Sanyuan St, Zhongzheng District, Taipei City
⏰ 13:00-21:00, closed on Tuesdays
🌐 https://www.instagram.com/dew_taipei/

Located near the Taipei Botanical Garden, Dew is Taiwan’s first counter-style seasonal coffee experience. Each season features six plus one drinks, all fully replaced in the next cycle. Guests can walk in during the day for single drinks or book an evening tasting set that includes small bites and curated coffee pairings. The concept emphasizes time-bound flavors, making each visit a fleeting, once-only encounter.

✦ Mengyo

📍 No. 37, Lane 84, Section 2, Zhongshan N Rd, Zhongshan District, Taipei City
⏰ 11:30-21:30
🌐 https://www.instagram.com/mengyo_tw/

Tokyo’s acclaimed ramen shop Mengyo opens in Zhongshan, specializing in sea bream broth built on precise technique rather than heavy seasoning. Using fish bones and clear water for the lighter broth and incorporating fish head with minimal chicken collagen for the richer version, the shop focuses on preserving the pure umami of the sea bream.

✦ Mooku

📍 Taipei City, Zhongshan District, Lane 85, Linsen N Rd, No. 11
⏰ 17:00-00:30, clossed on Mondays and Tuesdays
🌐 https://www.instagram.com/mooku_san/

Hidden near Zhongshan Station, tonkatsu specialist Mooku has quickly drawn lines with its dedication to balance and restraint. Pork cutlets are fried to a precise golden crisp with juicy interiors, while sauces, pickles, and even the seaweed used in side dishes are made in-house. The space feels warm and understated, allowing the focus to remain on ingredient quality and the comforting rhythm of a well-executed meal.

✦ Shan Zhong Keting

📍 No. 12, Lane 30, Section 2, Roosevelt Rd, Zhongzheng District, Taipei City
⏰ 12:00-20:00, closed on Mondays and Tuesdays
🌐 https://www.instagram.com/shanzhongketing/

Originally operating in Jinshan before moving into central Taipei, Shan Zhong Keting has now relocated near Wanlong Station. The new space retains its signature dark retro aesthetic but feels more spacious and pared back, almost like stepping into someone’s private living room.

That’s a wrap for March! Which of these caught your eye? Drop us a line and let us know what you’re most excited to check out – we love hearing from you!

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It’s written by someone we’ve known for years. Liao is not a full-time writer, not a cultural critic, just someone who genuinely loves wandering through Taipei and paying attention to the kinds of old shops most people walk past.

She has a soft spot for places that have quietly survived decades: traditional salons, aging storefronts, businesses that never bothered to rebrand. And in this piece, she takes us into one of those spaces.

Hidden inside an office building in Taipei’s old district, Tianchi Hair Salon feels like a small oasis where time has quietly paused. It has been operating for more than forty years. In a city now filled with sleek, fancy, efficiency-driven hair studios, Tianchi continues to hold on to the almost-vanished craft of “sit-down shampooing,” along with a kind of warmth that’s hard to find nowadays. For many regulars, this isn’t just somewhere to get their hair done; it’s a familiar corner in the city where they can relax for a while and catch up with old friends.

The unique sit-down shampoo tradition in Taiwan

The biggest difference becomes clear the moment you step inside: here, customers remain seated while having their hair washed. Unlike modern salons, where everything happens at a backwash unit, Tianchi’s stylists work while you sit upright in your chair. Aside from a few curious foreign visitors, most of the customers were elderly regulars. As the shampooing began, what filled my ears was the easy back-and-forth between clients and stylists—updates about family, small everyday frustrations, bits of neighborhood news. That casual exchange, woven into the rhythm of washing and massaging, created an atmosphere full of human warmth.

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In Taiwan, drinks have never been just about thirst. Long before convenience stores lit up every corner and coffee chains took over, there was another kind of space quietly holding people’s time: the bubble tea shop. You ordered one drink, claimed a seat, and spent the whole afternoon there. For students, couples, office workers, and night owls, bubble tea shops once functioned as a shared, unspoken second living room.

The unofficial social space of a generation

If you’ve ever been inside a bubble tea shop, the menu probably feels familiar. Brick toast, solo hotpots, fried snacks, lu wei, noodle soups, and of course, bubble tea! Drinks cost a little more than the to-gos, but you weren’t paying for the drink. You were paying for time and a space to relax. You could sit there all afternoon chatting, people-watching, doing homework, or doing absolutely nothing. On the table, there was often a round zodiac fortune machine. Drop in a NT$10 coin, pull the lever, and out came a slip of destiny. Probably not accurate, but guaranteed to spark a heated conversation.

What bubble tea shops really offered was a rare thing in a growing city: a space that didn’t demand efficiency. The same types of people always showed up: students killing time after school, exam takers catching their breath between cram sessions, couples on dates, office workers avoiding heading to their quiet apartments, and behind the counter, owners watched TV, letting the day roll by.

So, where did bubble tea shops come from?

Read more

Before We Start…

You’re now reading a free post, but we have so much more to share with you. Get weekly insider stories, exclusive features, and weekend getaway guides for a bubble tea per week. Plus, you can also access our curated Taipei maps for free!

Events & Exhibitions in Taipei

✦ 2026 Taipei International Book Exhibition

📆 2026.02.03-02.08
📍 Taipei World Trade Center
🌐 https://www.tibe.org.tw/en/

This year’s Taipei International Book Exhibition takes Thailand as its guest of honor under the theme “CreaTHAIvity,” curating a mix of children’s books, literature, comics, civic reading, and digital storytelling, alongside forums, author talks, and cross-disciplinary events. The full program is already out, be sure to skim in advance if there’s something you really don’t want to miss.

✦ Mika Ninagawa Exhibition with EiM: Light of the Other Shore, Shadow of This Shore

📆 2026.01.17-04.19
📍 Huashan 1914 Creative Park
🎫 From NT$490

Mika Ninagawa returns to Taiwan after a decade with a large-scale, immersive solo show (also its first overseas stop after Kyoto!) Spread across eight themed sections, the exhibition blends light, color, music, and spatial design into a dreamlike sensory experience. One highlight features nearly 2,000 crystal strands that shimmer as you move, turning the space into something between a jewel box and a hallucination.

✦ Dihua Street's Lunar New Year Market

📆 2026.01.31-02.15
📍 Dihua Street
🌐 https://www.facebook.com/DihuaHerbalStreet

Every Lunar New Year, Dihua Street transforms into Taiwan’s most iconic holiday market. Historic baroque façades line a street packed with dry goods, herbal medicine, snacks, red lanterns, and non-stop shouting vendors. It’s loud, crowded, slightly overwhelming, and absolutely essential if you want to experience new year culture in motion.

✦ If this ain’t Ai, don’t make me Bi.

📆 2026.01.16-04.11
📍 New Taipei City Art Museum
🌐 https://ntcart.museum/en/
🎫 General admission NT$100

This group exhibition leans into wordplay, visual ambiguity, and the slipperiness of meaning. Starting from two easily confused locations, Taiwan’s north coast (北海岸) and Japan’s Hokkaido (北海道), the artists explore how images, tourism, and collective imagination shape our sense of place. Through family footage, interviews, sound, installation, and painting, the show questions how destinations are packaged, circulated, and consumed in the age of social media and algorithms.

✦ ”Pegasus“ Year of the Horse Special Exhibition

📆 2026.01.15-02.28
📍 Bluerider ART Taipei．Dunhua
🌐 https://blueriderart.com/en/
🎫 Free entry

Using the horse as both symbol and metaphor, this exhibition gathers 32 international artists and 73 new works across media. Traditionally, the horse represents speed, imagination, and the refusal to stay still, and for Bluerider ART, it’s an energy that mirrors their own approach to contemporary art. Presented simultaneously across four cities worldwide, the show frames the zodiac animal as a bridge between creative cultures and traditions.

✦ Withdrawal: Our Collective Existence

📆 2026.01.31-05.03
📍 MoCA TAIPEI
🌐 https://www.moca.taipei/en
🎫 NT$100

MOCA’s first exhibition of 2026 looks back at Taiwanese art collectives formed after 2000, from their emergence, disappearance, and lasting impact. The title Withdrawal hints at both absence and imprint, examining how collective life shapes individual creativity. Through artworks and archival material, the exhibition reflects on intimacy, distance, and the often-invisible labor behind shared artistic practice.

✦ José John Santos III:​ The Space that Connects

📆 2026.01.28-03.22
📍 Nunu Fine Art
🌐 https://www.nunufineart.com/the-space-that-connects
🎫 Free entry

Known for his dreamlike realism, Santos blurs the line between presence and absence through painting, collage, drawing, and resin casting. His work feels narrative but never fully legible, opening space for interpretation rather than closure. In this exhibition, positive and negative space constantly shift roles, destruction becomes creation, and what’s missing feels just as important as what’s shown.

✦ Iseult Perrault: Domestic Nature

📆 2026.01.29-03.14
📍 BACK_Y
🌐 https://yiriarts.com.tw/en/
🎫 Free entry

Perrault’s first solo exhibition in Taipei revolves around a contradiction: trying to contain nature while knowing it can’t be contained. Using a fixed vertical painting format and cinematic hanging rhythm, she mirrors how landscapes are consumed today through scrolling, repetition, and rapid replacement. The works sit somewhere between interior and exterior, turning the canvas into a kind of interface for imagined nature.

✦ Eternal Picasso: Art, Muses, and Companions

📆 2026.01.01-04.06
📍 Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall
🌐 https://www.firenzecx.com/eternal_picasso/
🎫 From NT$450

Taiwan’s first immersive Picasso exhibition uses light and sound to reframe his artistic journey from the Blue Period to Cubism and beyond. Iconic works like Guernica are reinterpreted through large-scale projections, while the exhibition also highlights the emotional and creative relationships that shaped his work.

✦ CIZ: Third Nature

📆 2026.01.24-03.01
📍 pon ding
🌐 https://www.instagram.com/pondingspace/
🎫 Free entry

Designer-artist CIZ approaches nature as a collaborator rather than a subject. Combining plants, photography, sculpture, and mixed materials, the exhibition translates sunlight, wind, rain, and organic textures into poetic visual language. Alongside finished works, visitors can see her creative process unfold through sketches, samples, and personal references.

✦ Beyond the Puppet, Beyond the Summit

📆 2025.11.10-2026.03.01
📍 Taipei 101 Observatory

Hosted at Taipei 101, this exhibition reframes Yunlin County beyond its agricultural image. Through puppetry, design, and landscape narratives, it presents a region rich in cultural depth and creative reinvention. Classic glove puppets from folk heroes to TV-era icons trace the evolution of the art form across generations. Seen from the city’s highest vantage point, the exhibition asks what “local” really means in a global, touristic context.

✦ 2026 Taipei Lantern Festival

📆 2026.02.25-03.15
📍 Taipei Expo Park & Ximen
🌐 https://2026lanternfestival.travel.taipei/en/
🎫 Free entry

This year’s Lantern Festival adopts a dual-venue format, lighting up both Ximending and Yuanshan Expo Park. Easy to reach by public transport, the festival blends tradition with playful innovation. There will be a limited-edition lantern inspired by Optimus Prime, combining tech aesthetics with childhood nostalgia. And don’t forget to get yourself a free mini lantern from March 1-3!

New Spots in Taipei

✦ cancan

📍 No. 12, Lane 30, Section 2, Roosevelt Rd, Zhongzheng District, Taipei City
⏰ 12:00-21:30 on Fri and Sat, 12:00-17:30 on Wed and Thu
🌐 https://www.instagram.com/cancan.fooddesign/

Part food design studio, part private dining space, cancan shifts roles from day to night. There’s no fixed menu, just ongoing experimentation, conversation, and intimate gatherings built around trust. It’s less about “going out to eat” and more about rethinking what a shared table can be.

✦ Ichiryu Manpuku

📍 No. 21, Section 1, Chengde Rd, Datong District, Taipei City
⏰ 11 :00-18:00
🌐 https://www.instagram.com/ichiryu_manpuku_taiwan/

This Tokyo onigiri specialist brings the philosophy of ichiju-sansai (one soup, three dishes) to Taipei. Rice balls are hand-formed to order, with careful attention to temperature and pressure. Using premium Japanese rice, seaweed, and salt, they make the flavors stay simple, warm, and deeply comforting.

✦ Daily by Meowvelous

📍 Taipei City, Songshan District, Section 3, Minsheng E Rd, No. 135, 7F
⏰ 08:30-15:30, closed on Tuesdays
🌐 https://www.instagram.com/dailybymeowvelous/

A new daytime offshoot from Meowvelous, this spot revives the spirit of classic American diners once beloved by old Taipei. Expect all-day breakfast plates, nostalgic American dishes, and subtle local twists like crispy egg pancakes sneaking into an otherwise very Western menu.

✦ WHAT’S LA SAUCE? Kitchen & Bar

📍 No. 12, Alley 6, Lane 553, Section 4, Zhongxiao E Rd, Xinyi District, Taipei City
⏰ 17:00-23:00, closed on Mondays and Tuesdays
🌐 https://www.instagram.com/whatslasauce/

This Taiwanese-American fusion spot treats sauces as cultural storytellers. With 11 house-made sauces and a menu built around dipping, pairing, and mixing, familiar dishes get unexpected upgrades like a BLT burger with peeled chili chicken sauce.

✦ KIMU showroom

📍 Taipei City, Zhongshan District, Section 2, Bade Rd, No. 172
⏰ By Appointment Only
🌐 https://www.kimushoptw.com/en/

Lighting brand KIMU opens its first permanent showroom, designed around the spatial logic of traditional Dadaocheng homes. As you move deeper into the space, light shifts subtly, revealing the brand’s long-term exploration of materials, craft, and atmosphere. These lamps are perfect for setting the emotional tempo.

✦ Ruchang Hotpot

📍 Taipei City, Zhongshan District, Lane 60, Section 3, Minquan E Rd, No. 11
⏰ 17:00-23:30
🌐 https://www.instagram.com/ruchang_hotpot/

If this place has a soul, it’s the bubbling clam pot. Giant, hand-selected clams simmer in a slow-cooked chicken-and-pork broth, finished with a signature mix of fried and raw garlic. It’s rich, fragrant, and deeply satisfying!

That’s a wrap for February! Which of these caught your eye? Drop us a line and let us know what you’re most excited to check out – we love hearing from you!

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From the moment a child is born, fate is consulted through the careful calculation of a name. When school feels stuck, when a relationship goes sideways, when work won’t move forward, people turn to fortune tellers. Couples compare bazi before marriage. Houses are bought and renovated based on feng shui. Even something as small as moving a bed can suddenly become a metaphysical decision. Fortune telling feels almost infrastructural for us Taiwanese.

At the core of this obsession is a shared belief in forces beyond individual control. Call it fate, timing, luck, or cosmic alignment, the idea that life is shaped by something larger than personal effort runs deep in Taiwanese culture. But why does fortune telling remain so present in modern society? And beyond the common bazi charts and tarot cards, what are some of the more unexpected ways people in Taiwan still ask the universe for answers?

Why do we want to know our fate so badly?

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Our guest writer is Kathy Cheng, a Taipei-based writer and the voice behind Tricky Taipei, a blog that traces the city through its design, culture and people. She’s also the author of Hey Taipei, the first English-language picture book about the city, and a crowdfunded project that found readers around the world and reflects her long-standing interest in how Taipei is introduced, remembered, and reimagined.

In this piece, Kathy writes about a project close to her heart: a pop-up bookstore she recently organized in Taipei. It offers a behind-the-scenes look at Kathy’s ongoing work of collecting and curating English-language books about Taiwan, and why creating space for these stories matters.

We’ll let Kathy take it from here.

Back in 2018, I had an idea for a project that I couldn’t get out of my head. It was a picture book about Taipei in English for kids. At the time, no book like this existed. Who would publish a picture book about Taipei, anyway? And who would buy such a book?

But armed with new-parent determination (my daughter was born here the year prior), I crowdfunded my way to publication with a skeptical local publisher by my side. That project, a rhyming travel story titled “Hey Taipei”, turned out to be a small success. I’m most proud of the fact that it’s managed to sell thousands of copies without ever having been sold on Amazon.

Fast forward to 2024. I was on vacation in Vietnam with my then 7-year-old. Every gift shop we walked into in Danang had a display table of books about Vietnamese history and culture. Then a year later, we were in Jakarta to visit friends. On our way back, I noticed a bookshop at the airport with a section labeled ‘Books on Indonesia’. There were hundreds and hundreds of books covering two entire walls. And yes, “Eat Pray Love” was there.

It made me think, it would be cool to see a ‘Books on Taiwan’ shelf like that, wouldn’t it? A wall of books about Taiwan in English. A place for “Hey Taipei” to call home.

So sometime this past summer I started a spreadsheet and an Instagram account. I decided to try and list every book in English that was about Taiwan or set in Taiwan, that was written by Taiwanese authors or authors based in Taiwan. Very quickly that list was populated by both fiction and non-fiction, titles by Taiwanese authors translated into English, books for kids, teens and young adults, and so many more.

The length of the list surprised me, especially the number of books published within the last five years, with more on the way in 2026. Are books about Taiwan having a moment? It certainly feels that way.

Since then, I’ve been crossing out titles on that spreadsheet. I’ve rifled through my own bookshelf at home. I’ve bought boxes of books from Amazon with free shipping to Taiwan. I’ve ordered second-hand hardcovers from Ebay, sending the orders to US-based friends so they can bring them back on their next trip. (Those are some good friends.) My Ebay search peaked when I found a first-edition library copy of “Green Island” by Shawna Yang Ryan.

The most magical part has been receiving book donations from people who simply wanted to help out. I received messages from friends and fellow authors, and people who’ve been following along on Instagram since the early days.

It’s only been a few months but I’ve already learned so much. Now when someone asks what’s the big deal with Taiwan and China, I can name a handful of Taiwan primer books written by journalists and academics who’ve spent extensive time observing Taiwan. When someone asks for gift ideas, I can suggest gorgeous cookbooks and historical fiction. If a family is visiting Taiwan for the first time with their kids, I have a bunch of lovely picture book titles to share beyond “Hey Taipei”.

Something I’m still doing when I travel is pop into bookshops to see if they have any Taiwan books beyond a copy of Lonely Planet. The answer is usually no, but when they do it feels like I’ve hit the jackpot.

In Paris, I was delighted to see “Ghost Nation” by Taipei-based journalist Chris Horton at Shakespeare & Company. Since we’re friends, I took a photo of the book spine in the Asia section (breaking the rules of the shop, I’m afraid) to send to him later. Inside the flagship Dymocks bookstore in Sydney, the only title I could find was in the Asian History section. It was “The Taiwan Story” by Kerry Brown.

I didn’t know it at the time, but that book and its author are the source of some not insignificant controversy in the Taiwan book circle. To give you a quick summary, Kerry Brown is a British historian who has focused his entire career on China. His book, “The Taiwan Story”, was originally titled “Why Taiwan Matters” but this was flagged by Taiwan experts who were asked to review the manuscript by his publisher.

The reason for flagging the title was pretty straightforward: there’s already a book titled “Why Taiwan Matters”. It’s written by Shelley Rigger, an American academic who, unlike Kerry Brown, has focused her entire career on, you guessed it, Taiwan. Kerry Brown’s publisher released the first run of the book using “The Taiwan Story”. But for the second run, they went ahead and used “Why Taiwan Matters” anyway. That’s the title you’ll now see on sale in airports and online.

This situation brings up the question of who gets to write about and represent Taiwan. There was a time not that far back, maybe just 15 or 20 years ago, when there was only a handful of foreign correspondents based here. This meant the majority of mainstream media coverage about Taiwan was reported by journalists who weren’t on the ground, oftentimes quoting sources who didn’t specialize in Taiwan and weren’t in Taiwan either. That all changed during COVID, but that’s an even longer story for another day.

To be honest, my Taiwan book collection is still far from complete. It turns out buying dozens of new books adds up. And I can’t say I’ve read most of them — yet. But what I have so far is available to browse in-person under the banner of Little Tricky.

The name Little Tricky is a nod to how it’s always been a bit hard to talk about and understand Taiwan. It’s much easier to link Taiwanese culture to food and boba tea, semiconductors and 7-11s. Everything else can get a little messy, even for Taiwanese.

I’ve managed to take Little Tricky from an Instagram account into a real-life library pop-up thanks to my friend Jimmy Yang, a fellow Taiwanese-Australian who gave me an enthusiastic yes when I asked if Little Tricky could take up a few shelves in his cafe, Woolloomooloo Fujin (map). There are around 30 books there for now, all wrapped up library-style with Little Tricky stickers on them — with more on the way.

My goal in 2026 is to read more books about Taiwan. I hope you’ll join me, and if you’re in town, drop in and visit the Little Tricky library pop-up. Oh, just one more thing: if you find yourself in a bookshop somewhere, please check if they have any books about Taiwan and send me a photo if they do!

Little Tricky Library Pop-Up @ Woolloomooloo Fujin

No. 104, Fujin St, Songshan District, Taipei City
IG: @littletrickybooks

About our guest writer

Kathy Cheng is a Taipei-based writer. She is the author of the picture book, Hey Taipei, and blogs irregularly at Tricky Taipei.

With the new calendar freshly flipped and the temperature continuing to drop, it’s the perfect time for indoor activities like gallery-hopping and unhurried museum visits.

If your resolution this year is to see more art, eat better, or simply leave the house more often, this month’s lineup is a pretty great place to start. From exhibitions to new spots worth bookmarking, here’s what January looks like when you zoom in.

Before We Start…

You’re now reading a free post, but we have so much more to share with you. Get weekly insider stories, exclusive features, and weekend getaway guides for a bubble tea per week. Plus, you can also access our curated Taipei maps for free!

Events & Exhibitions in Taipei

✦ ONE ART Taipei 2026

📆 2026.01.16-01.18
📍 Hotel Metropolitan Premier Taipei
🌐 https://www.onearttaipei.com/
🎫 From NT$450

ONE ART Taipei returns this January, once again turning a hotel into a high-end, slightly surreal art playground. Sixty galleries from Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, and South Korea take over the rooms, ranging from Yayoi Kusama to emerging artists under 35. If you don’t know where to start, the newly announced Top 10 Highlight Works offer a solid entry point, spanning painting, sculpture, and video, and showcasing how diverse (and emotionally sharp) contemporary Asian art is right now.

✦ Unseen Lives: Reportage Photography from Ren Jian Magazine, 1985–1989

📆 2025.12.20 - 2026.03.01
📍 MoNTUE
🌐 https://montue.ntue.edu.tw/en/
🎫 Free entry

This exhibition pulls the camera back to a crucial moment in Taiwan’s history when Ren Jian (Human World) Magazine documented lives rarely centered in mainstream narratives. While the magazine’s writing has been widely discussed, its photography has long been overlooked. The show revisits nearly 5,500 images across 47 issues, spotlighting 12 photographers who shaped its visual language. Through archival material and interview footage, the exhibition reveals how documentary photography became both witness and participant during Taiwan’s transition from martial law to a more open society.

✦ Fubon Collection-Resonance: Symphony of Light, Love & Color

📆 2025.12.24 - 2026.04.20
📍 Fubon Art Museum
🌐 https://www.fubonartmuseum.org/
🎫 NT$500

Built around the idea that “a fleeting moment can be eternal,” the exhibition brings together works by 16 major contemporary artists, using light, color, and material as emotional triggers. While one of the highlights, Ai Weiwei’s The Last Supper in Pink(2022), anchors the show visually, the dialogue between sculpture, painting, and installation turns the exhibition into a slow, immersive walk rather than a quick scan-and-go.

✦ Into Eternity: Giacometti, Miró, Calder

📆 2025.12.24 - 2026.04.20
📍 Fubon Art Museum
🌐 https://www.fubonartmuseum.org/
🎫 NT$500

This exhibition brings together Giacometti, Miró, and Calder through themes of time, movement, existence, and spirituality. Highlights include Giacometti’s nearly three-meter-tall Standing Woman II and Walking Man I, alongside Miró’s rarely seen painted bronze sculptures and monumental tapestry.

✦ Yoshitomo Nara: All Within the Detour

📆 2025.12.20 - 2026.01.25
📍 Huashan 1914 Creative Park
🎫 Free entry

Known for his iconic, sharp-eyed figures, Yoshitomo Nara shows a very different side of himself here. ‘All Within the Detour’ is his first large-scale photography exhibition in Taiwan, featuring 162 images shot across Taiwan, Hokkaido, and Sakhalin. Without the weight of paint and canvas, Nara’s gaze becomes direct and transparent, capturing travel as a state of mind rather than a destination.

✦ 2025 Taipei Art Awards

📆 2025.12.13 - 2026.04.26
📍 Taipei Fine Arts Museum
🌐 https://www.tfam.museum/Exhibition/
🎫 NT$30

This year’s Taipei Art Awards reflect how broad contemporary practice has become. Selected from 308 submissions, the exhibition features works that stretch from astrophysics and sound to everyday observation and body politics. What emerges is a snapshot of Taiwan’s current art scene: it’s messy, diverse, and deeply responsive to the complexities of the present moment.

✦ 247 Music Festival

📆 2026.01.10 - 01.11
📍 Taipei Music Center
🌐 https://www.instagram.com/247musicfestival/
🎫 NT$2,000

After a two-year pause, 247 Music Festival is back! Curated by Taiwan hip-hop platform Long Hu Men, this year’s lineup brings together legends and new-generation voices. Manchuker returns, joined by Kumachan, Gummy B, Trout Fresh, J.Sheon, Dr. Beauty and more. With that, the event becomes not just a music fest but more of a cross-generational snapshot of Mandarin hip-hop.

✦ The Realm of Narrative: Witnessing and Inner Voice Behind the Lens

📆 2025.12.19 - 2026.05.24
📍 National Center of Photography and Images Taipei Galleries
🌐 https://ncpi.ntmofa.gov.tw/en/
🎫 Free entry

In an age of algorithm-driven platforms, this exhibition argues for photography’s unique ability to “be present.” Drawing from the NCPI’s collection, the show is structured around three themes from urban realism, youth culture, and documentary witnessing. What stands out isn’t just subject matter, but how storytelling emerges through the interaction between photographer, subject, and viewer, reminding us that images still carry emotional weight beyond the scroll.

✦ Jing You: Syzygy

📆 2025.12.13 - 2026.01.11
📍 Hiro Hiro Art Space
🌐 https://hirohiroartspace.com/2025/jingyou-syzygy2025/
🎫 Free entry

“Love is how fate guides us to meet.” That’s the core idea behind Jing You’s solo exhibition Syzygy. Borrowing an astronomical term describing celestial alignment, the show visualizes human relationships as a garden of interconnected flowers. Known for her fashion illustration background, Jing You’s work focuses less on the image itself and more on atmosphere, resulting in a quietly immersive, intimate, and strangely calm feeling.

✦ All Living Beings - Yu Sheng Li Solo Exhibition

📆 2025.12.11 - 2026.01.11
📍 Joyful Art Gallery
🌐 https://joyfulart-gallery.com/
🎫 Free entry

This debut exhibition traces artist Yu Sheng Li’s long-standing interest in how bodies occupy space. Combining painting and installation, the works blur the boundary between two-dimensional and three-dimensional experience. Here, color, line, and spatial arrangement translate abstract bodily sensations into something you can walk through, pause in, and feel rather than simply observe.

New Spots

✦ GAO Taipei

📍 Taipei City, Songshan District, Fujin St, No. 453
⏰ 11 AM-6:30 PM, closed on Mondays
🌐 https://www.instagram.com/gao.tp/

A second-generation offshoot of beloved cheesecake brand Kao Shieh, GAO Taipei repositions dessert as cultural storytelling. Designed by Skillability with branding by HOUTH, the space balances rough textures with refined details.

✦ Miznon Taipei

📍 No. 53, Dongfeng St, Da’an District, Taipei City
⏰ 11 AM-3 PM and 5-11:30 PM, closed on Mondays
🌐 https://www.miznontaiwan.com/

Miznon brings Mediterranean energy to Taipei, wrapping flavors inside pita bread with boldness. Founded by Michelin-starred chef Eyal Shani, the concept centers on fire, spice, acidity, and vegetables.

✦ Miaodong Wine & Bites

📍 No. 1, Lane 14, Siwei Rd, Da’an District, Taipei City
⏰ 1–11 PM, closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays
🌐 https://www.instagram.com/miaodong.taipei/

Part natural wine bar, part food design experiment, Miaodong feels like a modern Taiwanese living room. The space blends Taiwanese flavors, seasonal exhibitions, and sound curation into a five-sense experience. Named after Taichung’s Miaodong Night Market, it reinterprets nostalgia through a contemporary lens, keeping the warmth and dialing up the thoughtfulness.

✦ Saturn Wonton Bar

📍 Lily Murphy Bistro & Space
⏰ 6 PM–12 AM, closed on Mondays
🌐 https://www.instagram.com/lilymurphy.tp/

What if wontons were the main character at a wine bar? Saturn Wonton Bar, a spin-off from Lily Murphy, answers that question without irony. Just wontons and natural wine, stripped down and approachable. By intentionally lowering the threshold (both in price and vibe), the team hopes to pull wonton into the world of wine tasting.

✦ Oani

📍 No. 69, Baoqing Rd, Zhongzheng District, Taipei City
🌐 https://oani.staymeander.com/oani/en

Right in the chaos of Ximending, Oani feels like hitting pause. Designed around natural materials and gentle light rhythms, this new boutique hotel leans into calm rather than spectacle. From HARIO glassware to locally made leather slippers, every detail is curated with restraint. It’s another level of your hostel experience.

✦ PLOT

📍 No. 3, Alley 3, Lane 217, Section 3, Zhongxiao E Rd, Da’an District, Taipei City
⏰ 11 AM–7 PM, closed on Tuesdays
🌐 https://www.instagram.com/plot_by_plot/

Coffee by day, tea highballs by night, PLOT quietly hides in a Taipei alley doing a little bit of everything without feeling messy. Alongside carefully sourced coffee beans, you’ll find natural wines from Australia and Japan, plus a Kyoto-style genmaicha highball developed with S.C Lab.

That’s a wrap for January! Which of these caught your eye? Drop us a line and let us know what you’re most excited to check out – we love hearing from you!

Kenting is great. Sandy beaches, surfing, nightlife scene, feeling like a tropical paradise without leaving Taiwan’s main island. But Pingtung is deeper and frankly more interesting than a single coastal postcard.

What about slowing down to see what’s quietly happening on the ground, inside old factories, abandoned villages, and forests? That’s the Pingtung we’re talking about this week.

Why you should visit Pingtung

To many people, other townships in Pingtung are just the places you pass through on the way to Kenting. But that’s exactly what makes them exciting.

Pingtung isn’t a busy city, and it’s not trying to be one. Its local culture unexpectedly shows up through food, architecture, art festivals, community-led projects, and people who choose to come back (or never leave). The southernmost county of Taiwan moves at a different pace, and if you’re craving a weekend that feels less curated and more lived-in, this is your sign to go.

Getting there and around

From Taipei, the easiest way to get to Pingtung is by railway. If you hop on a Puyuma Express, it takes you about four hours to your destination.

Once you’re there, mobility is flexible. Renting a car gives you the most freedom, especially if you’re heading into villages, coastal areas, or mountain neighborhoods. But local trains, buses, and even taxi charters can get you surprisingly far.

Things to do in Pingtung

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For many people, those street cries still unlock a very specific memory: asking parents for spare change, running downstairs in flip-flops, and buying a popsicle or a warm bowl of miancha (roasted wheat flour). Simple pleasures.

Why were there so many street vendors?

Street vendors were once a core part of everyday life in Taiwan.

In the 1950s, Taiwan was still recovering from political upheaval and economic instability. Selling food and services on the street was often the most direct way to make a living. It required little capital and no storefront.

You’d see vendors under the blazing sun, wearing conical hats, carrying shoulder poles. Others pushed carts or pedaled bicycles through narrow alleys, selling whatever they could prepare and transport.

And from early morning to late night, people told time by listening to the street cries. Zongzi sellers started a day; a wooden box of popsicles meant afternoon. Breakfast, snack, dinner, midnight craving, all delivered to your doorstep (In some ways, it was even more convenient than today…?)

Selling with sound

Read more

The history of Yongle Fabric Market

Yongle didn’t start out as a fabric paradise.

Back in 1908, during the Japanese colonial period, the area around today’s Yongle was reorganized into what was then called Dadaocheng New Market, one of the largest and most important public markets in Taipei at the time. It was built on what had previously been a garden, quickly transformed into a brick structure with additional wooden buildings for food vendors.

Over the next few decades, as Taipei grew and changed with urban reforms, the market evolved too. By the early 1930s, it had expanded into multiple single-story buildings, housing more than 200 shops. Food was still central, but something else was quietly taking over. It was fabric.

Read more

Before We Start…

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Events & Exhibitions in Taipei

✦ A Century of Viennese Flower Painting: From Ferdinand Georg Waldmuller to Gustav Klimt

📆 2025.12.05 - 2026.03.22
📍 National Museum of History
🌐 https://www.mediasphere.com.tw/exhibitions/116
🎫 NT$500

Belvedere Vienna and Taiwan’s National Museum of History come together for a rare showcase of 60 floral masterpieces spanning the 18th to early 20th century. Expect six different themed galleries, from classical realism to the shimmer of Viennese modernism, offering a lush survey of how flowers became vessels for mood, beauty, and symbolism.

✦ Taipei Marathon 2025

📆 2025.12.20 - 12.21
🌐 https://www.taipeicitymarathon.com/

One of Taiwan’s most competitive marathon events returns, drawing over 64,000 runners vying for just 28,000 slots. Whether you’re chasing a PB or cheering from the sidelines, the city transforms into a nonstop celebration of endurance and spectacular street energy.

✦ Chihiro Nagashima Solo Exhibition: Magic Place

📆 2025.12.12 - 2026.03.02
📍 Contemporary by U
🌐 https://contemporarybyu.com/
🎫 NT$150

Japanese artist Chihiro Nagashima unveils her first overseas solo exhibition in Taipei! Known for her impossibly delicate brushwork, Nagashima paints the porous space between reality and imagination, capturing fleeting feelings with soft, translucent hues. Three years in the making, this exhibition invites viewers into a quiet, dreamlike threshold where inner worlds crystallize on canvas.

✦ 2025 West-Taipei Life Festival

📆 2025.11.15 - 12.14
📍 Bopiliao Historical Block
🌐 https://www.bopiliao.taipei/Event_News/Detail/696

Every year, the West-Taipei Life Festival is held in Wanhua District with a different theme. This year, it looks back at Wanhua’s long-rooted printing culture, an industry now fading with the rise of digital production. The festival, inspired by the final chapter of the 50-year-old Print Shop, unfolds across Bopiliao Historical Block and becomes an elegy to the stories inked into a neighborhood’s identity.

✦ Caroline Halley des Fontaine: Light Scape

📆 2025.12.12 - 2026.01.04
📍 sunsun-museum
🌐 https://www.instagram.com/sunsunmuseum/

Presented by ALIEN MODE at the sunsun museum, the exhibit marks the French photographer’s first Taipei showing. Drawing on years of travel to Tibet, Ladakh, Easter Island, and the Galápagos, Caroline Halley studies the spiritual ties between people and nature. Installed within a designed living space, the exhibition lets images respond quietly to light, movement and architecture, creating an intimate, contemplative encounter.

✦ Future Vision Lab 2025

📆 2025.11.29 - 12.21
📍 C-Lab FVL DOME
🌐 https://clab.org.tw/en/
🎫 https://www.accupass.com/event/2511061042455211242810

C-LAB’s giant 15-meter dome is back, hosting four weekends of immersive screenings and live performances. Featuring 12 works from Taiwan, Argentina, Russia, Romania, China, Canada and Japan, the program pushes the boundaries of digital architecture, 360° imaging and sensory storytelling. Step inside the dome and into the future of experiential cinema.

✦ 2025 Golden Pin Design Award Exhibition

📆 2025.11.25 - 2026.04.26
📍 Taiwan Design Museum
🎫 NT$50

With 2,300+ entries from 28 countries, this year’s Golden Pin highlights 124 innovative designs judged across integration, creativity, functionality, aesthetics and communication. Curated by ISLAND Studio, the exhibition visualises each project’s evaluation through radar charts and introduces three experiential “rooms” built around scale, weight and pace, making design thinking more accessible to everyone.

✦ Christmasland in New Taipei City

📆 2025.11.14 - 12.28
📍 Banqiao Station Square
🌐 https://christmasland.ntpc.gov.tw/en/
🎫 Free entry

The beloved Christmasland is back! Expect 3D projection mapping, Christmas markets, concerts, family events, and the oversized light show that transforms Banqiao into a glowing seasonal playground. The new projection effects scale the city hall facade for the most immersive edition yet.

✦ Daisuke Abe: The Present shapes the Past

📆 - 2026.03.23
📍 House of Leica Taipei
🌐 https://www.instagram.com/leica_camera_taiwan/
🎫 Free entry

Photographer Daisuke Abe partners with Leica for an exhibition exploring how light, form, and abstraction shape our memories. Through the shape and vague series, Abe traces the delicate moment where the present becomes the past, inviting visitors into a quietly hypnotic spatial journey.

✦ 2025 Taipei New Year’s Eve: 101 Fireworks Show & Concerts

📆 2025.12.31
📍 Taipei Civic Plaza

Taipei ushers in 2026 with a magnificent firework show, weaving pyrotechnics with original music. This year introduces surprise effects and a new collaboration with the Taipei Music Center, which has mentored and collaborated with young Taiwanese composers to create the soundtrack.

New Spots

✦ Little Tricky Books

📍 Woolloomooloo Fujin
⏰ 10:00-18:00, closed on Mondays
🌐 https://www.instagram.com/littletrickybooks/

A new English-language library pop-up has opened at Woolloomooloo Fujin, featuring books about Taiwan in English. From novels and memoirs to cookbooks, academic titles, and children’s literature (many published within the past five years), you can browse and read freely in the café. The hope is to eventually build this into a more permanent home, but for now it stands as a lovingly curated resource for anyone curious about Taiwan’s history, culture and imagination.

✦ Théorie Theory

📍 No. 300, Section 3, Zhongxiao E Rd, Da’an District, Taipei City
⏰ 11 :00-15:00, 17:30-21:30
🌐 https://www.instagram.com/theorietheory/

A sleek new French steakhouse lands in Taipei, spotlighting 900°C high-heat grilling and 35-day dry-aging to achieve a crisp, aromatic crust with tender centres. It’s French precision meets poetic plating, making it a promising new destination for anyone hunting for a refined night out.

✦ Gyutan Yusuke

📍 Uni-president Department Store Taipei
📆 12.21 Grand opening
🌐 https://www.instagram.com/gyutanyusuke_tw/

Kanpai Group is launching a new beef-tongue specialty brand, bringing its full in-house supply chain to the table. Opening December 2025, Gyutan Yusuke offers Sendai-style grilled beef tongue sets starting at an unexpectedly friendly NT$390. The combo includes charcoal-grilled salt or miso gyutan, barley rice, grated yam, oxtail soup, and pickles.

✦ Huan Huan Pinglin

📍 No. 67, Section 8, Beiyi Rd, Pinglin District, New Taipei City
⏰ 10:00–17:30, closed on Mondays and Tuesdays

Once the old Pinglin Visitor Center, this space has been reborn as an immersive, slow-travel hub. Huan Huan Pinglin brings together tea-ceremony culture, art installations, and plant-based dining to spotlight the quiet beauty of this mountain town. It still serves as a gateway to Pinglin, but now with an emphasis on sustainable travel, multisensory experiences, and taking a genuine pause.

✦ Tokyo Shokki

📍 Taipei City, Songshan District, Alley 4, Lane 36, Section 5, Minsheng E Rd, No.43
⏰ 12:00-19:00, closed on Sundays
🌐 https://www.tableandstyle.com/

A new go-to for anyone obsessed with Japanese tableware. Tokyo Shokki curates pieces from well-known kilns and craftspeople across Japan, from casual everyday plates to dramatic serving vessels, plus restaurant-grade tools and gift-worthy artisan work. Thousands of items, all styled in modern Japanese dining aesthetics, are waiting for you to discover the beauty of everyday tableware.

✦ 3.3 Dim Sum Time

📍 Taipei City, Songshan District, Lane 165, Dunhua N Rd, No.3
⏰ 11:00 - 19:00, closed on Mondays and Tuesdays
🌐 https://www.instagram.com/dimsumtime_3.3/

From the Michelin-starred T+T team, this new dim sum house is led by former Regent Taipei dim sum master Chef Dicky Wu. The menu sticks to classics such as har gow, siu mai, rice rolls, and radish cakes, each executed with polished technique. Bonus: they offer cocktail pairings by the renowned experimental bar unDer lab for a modern twist on yum cha.

That’s a wrap for December! Which of these caught your eye? Drop us a line and let us know what you’re most excited to check out – we love hearing from you!

Why you should visit Chiayi

If you love Tainan for its food and slow-living charm, Chiayi will feel like its quieter, equally (or perhaps even more?) lovely cousin. Same cozy small-city vibe, more hidden gems to be discovered.

Chiayi is also an arts town at heart. Nicknamed “畫都 (the city of paintings)”, it’s the birthplace of major Taiwanese artists like Chen Cheng-po. Random but true: it also happens to be home to an unusually high number of doctors.

But the real joy of Chiayi is wandering. It’s a city made for alley explorers; every corner hides an indie shop, an old building, or something unexpectedly delightful.

Oh, and did I mention the food? Because Chiayi seriously nails it.

Getting there and around

From Taipei, the easiest way to reach Chiayi is by HSR or TRA. The HSR is faster, but keep in mind that the station is about a 30-minute drive (or a 40-minute shuttle ride) from the city center. The TRA, on the other hand, takes longer but lands you right in town.

Once you arrive, do what every local does: get yourself a scooter. It’s hands-down the best way to move around Chiayi. If you don’t ride or don’t have a license, no worries! The city is covered in YouBikes, and they’re perfectly convenient for short hops.

Things to do in Chiayi

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Walk past any temple in Taiwan and you’ll see it: incense smoke drifting upward, people standing with their eyes closed, hands clasped, whispering wishes to the universe.

Or maybe you’ve seen another scene: someone dragging a fold-out table to the sidewalk on a random weekday, covering it with fruit, drinks, and snacks, while burning paper money next to them in a metal burner.

So… why do Taiwanese people “拜拜 (bài bai)”? And who exactly are they praying to?

Find your way in a temple full of gods

When newcomers step into a Taiwanese temple, one of the first questions is often: “So… who am I supposed to pray to?”

It’s a fair confusion. Each temple has a central deity, and understanding that “host” offers a helpful anchor. From there, you’ll notice that different gods take on different roles, whether it’s guiding love, supporting studies, protecting health, or warding off bad luck. It’s a warm, lived-in network of divine specialists that reflects how everyday Taiwanese people navigate life with a mix of practicality, humour, and quiet devotion.

Meet Taiwan’s most common gods

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As of 2024, Taiwan has over 19,000 breakfast shops, roughly one for every 1,000 people (no other country in the world can beat that density!). Step outside anywhere in Taiwan, and chances are you’ll find a Mei & Mei (美而美), Good Morning (早安美芝城), My Warm Day (麥味登), or Hong Ya Burger (弘爺漢堡) just around the corner, each with similar menus.

You can order a danbing next to a French toast, a burger beside a turnip cake, or even get some nuggets and sweet potato balls (地瓜球) with a side of corn soup. Anything goes.

Here’s the usual combo: Pick one main dish: sandwich, burger, danbing, or hot plate noodle. Add a protein like ham, tuna, or bacon, then finish with a drink (black tea or milk tea are classics). If you prefer a sweet breakfast, go with jam sandwiches or thick-cut butter toast.

Also, each shop adds its own twist, maybe swapping in bagels, croissants, or English muffins, mixing and matching a hundred different ingredients into endless combinations. Breakfast in Taiwan is basically a personalized paradise. How did this so-called “Western-style breakfast” become one of the most Taiwanese things imaginable?

It All Started in the 1980s McDonald’s Craze

To trace the roots of the phenomenon, we have to go back to 1984, when McDonald’s opened its first branch in Taiwan.

Read more

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Events & Exhibitions in Taipei

✦ Taipei Biennial 2025 - Whispers on the Horizon

📆 2025.11.01-2026.03.29
📍 Taipei Fine Arts Museum
🌐 https://www.taipeibiennial.org/

We’re in love with this year’s Taipei Biennial! Spanning 35 cities, it brings together 52 artists exploring the idea of yearning. The works unfold across video, sculpture, and immersive installations, each urging us to listen differently. Curated to occupy the “in-between” spaces of memory and imagination, it’s a show that invites you to explore more.

✦ 2025 Taipei Art Book Fair

📆 2025.11.21-11.23
📍 Huashan 1914 Creative Park
🌐 https://taipeiartbookfair.com/

Taipei’s biggest art book fair returns, bringing together small publishers, indie bookstores, and zine creators from Taiwan and beyond. Walking into aisles of handmade prints, art books, and limited editions, every corner feels like a new creative rabbit hole.

✦ Tatsuo Miyajima: Endless Life Cycles

📆 2025.10.22-2026.02.07
📍 Tao Art
🌐 https://taoartspace.com/upcoming/

At his first solo in Taiwan, Japanese artist Tatsuo Miyajima transforms numbers and light into meditations on life and time. Through LED installations that flicker and fade, he reminds us that every count, every blink, is both an ending and a beginning. A quiet, glowing reflection on what it means to exist in cycles.

✦ OPEN HOUSE TAIPEI 2025

📆 2025.11.22-11.23
🌐 https://www.opentaipei.org/

For 2 days only, over a hundred usually closed-off spaces across the city open their doors. From the metro depot, backstage of Taipei Dome to the historic Tianjin Hotel (天津大飯店), it’s a rare invitation to step inside the behind-the-scenes of Taipei and see the city through new eyes.

✦ magma: Mixed Foods

📆 2025.10.17 – 2025.11.23
📍 Whimsy Works
🌐 https://whimsyworks.co/

Japanese duo magma brings their playful assemblages to Taipei for the first time. Using food as a metaphor, they piece together collages of humor and critique, turning ordinary objects into vivid commentaries on waste, excess, and modern appetite.

✦ 2025 Simple Life

📆 2025.11.29-11.30
📍 Huashan 1914 Creative Park
🌐 https://simplelife.streetvoice.com/2025/

Taipei’s beloved music and lifestyle festival returns to Huashan. This year reunites legends, including Sandy Lam (林憶蓮), Wu Bai (伍佰), and the long-awaited comeback of Natural Q (自然捲樂團). What started as a stage for young creators is now a nostalgic celebration of Taiwan’s indie soul.

✦ Charwei Tsai Solo Exhibition: Touching the Earth

📆 2025.10.30 – 2026.1.31
📍 TKG+
🌐 https://www.tkgplus.com/en/exhibitions/143/

Charwei Tsai (蔡佳葳)’s new solo exhibition is a quiet act of grounding. Through clay, mineral pigments, and video, she reflects on human connection with land and ritual. Each work carries a meditative stillness, inviting viewers to see touch as a form of coexistence.

✦ Collection Storeroom on the Street – Where is the Memory

📆 2025.09.27-11.23
📍 MoCA TAIPEI
🌐 https://www.moca.taipei/en

MoCA Taipei brings the “collection” outdoors, turning the streets into an open archive. Through site-specific works by nine artists, the show explores what happens when art meets public life — when events become exhibitions, and memories take physical form.

✦ Jazz Szu-Ying Chen Solo Exhibition: Dura Mater

📆 2025.11.08-12.07
📍 Chini Gallery
🌐 https://www.chinigallery.com/en/

In her solo show, Chen reflects on womanhood in her 30s, mortality, and myth. Drawing from medieval memento mori and modern anxieties, she weaves together symbols from religion, archaeology, and subculture. The works feel intimate yet unsettling, inviting the viewer to look inward.

✦ 2025 Camping Asia

📆 2025.11.10-11.21
📍 Taipei Performing Arts Center
🌐 https://tpac.org.taipei/en/campingasia

A 12-day cross-cultural program by Taipei Performing Arts Center, Centre National de la Danse, and CHANEL, Camping Asia merges performance, education, and experimentation. This year’s edition brings together artists and students from across Asia and Europe, proving once again that performance is as much about thinking as moving.

✦ Chen Ching-Yuan: Drawing Fold

📆 2025.10.30 – 2026.1.31
📍 TKG+
🌐 https://www.tkgplus.com/

Chen’s paintings hover between clarity and absence, emotion and restraint. His soft yet precise brushwork folds memories into layers of light and shadow — each piece a fragment of feeling suspended in time.

New Spots in Taipei

✦ Xin Ju Yuan

📍 No. 99, Songren Rd, Xinyi District, Taipei City
⏰ 11:00-24:00
🌐 https://www.facebook.com/Xinjuyuan/

A new landmark for fine Cantonese dining in Xinyi. From tableside roast duck carving to delicate handmade dim sum, Xin Ju Yuan turns every meal into a five-sense experience. Don’t miss the signature cherry duck (especially its crisp, glistening skin paired with a house-made kumquat sauce)!

✦ Wan Noodle Bar

📍 No. 32, Lane 313, Fuxing N Rd, Songshan District, Taipei City
⏰ 11:30-16:00 on Mon-Thu, 11:30-19:00 on Fri-Sat
🌐 https://www.instagram.com/wan_noodle_bar/

From the team behind the elusive Ouah Hanchi, this noodle bar distills fine-dining craftsmanship into comforting bowls. The signature zhajiang noodles blend two family recipes with modern precision, while the chili-century egg noodles bring heat, texture, and soul.

✦ Chaud Doux

📍 No. 11, Alley 6, Lane 113, Section 3, Minsheng E Rd, Songshan District, Taipei City
⏰ 18:00-10:30 on Tue-Sat, 12:00-14:30 on Fri-Sat, 11:30-16:30 on Sun
🌐 https://www.instagram.com/chaud.doux/

A new French restaurant by Chef Kai Ho (Taïrroir) and Chef Leo Lin, Chaud Doux celebrates Lyon-style cuisine with local sensibility. Think cake aux oreilles de cochon with pig’s ear, pâtés laced with fig and pistachio, and comforting sauces with just the right intensity. No frills, all heart.

✦ SOIL by FujinTree

📍 No. 269, Section 2, Dunhua S Rd, Da’an District, Taipei City
⏰ 18:00-02:00
🌐 https://www.instagram.com/soil_byfujintree/

It’s FujinTree’s first foray into nightlife, led by award-winning mixologist Yumi Yoshino. Each cocktail at SOIL tells a story of time, place, and culture: rooted in the earth, distilled through experience. Come for the concept, stay for the quiet rhythm of Taipei’s new nocturnal soul!

✦ Kaneko Optical

📍 No. 23, Lane 203, Section 2, Jinshan S Rd, Da’an District, Taipei City
⏰ 11:00-19:00
🌐 https://www.0km.com.tw/

Founded in 1958 in Fukui, Japan, Kaneko brings its handcrafted eyewear to Taipei. Every frame is polished, cut, and finished by hand, carrying the legacy of Japanese precision and timeless design. A quiet luxury for those who appreciate craftsmanship done right.

✦ 炭夕 すみびりょうり

📍 Taipei City, Da’an District, Lane 223, Section 4, Zhongxiao E Rd, No. 75
⏰ 18:00-24:00
🌐 https://www.instagram.com/sumiyuu2025/

Celebrating honest, charcoal-grilled Japanese cooking with a neighborhood izakaya warmth, this place offers intimate plates crafted from market-first ingredients. Standout: the beef-tongue sashimi, using the tenderest tip of grain-fed Australian tongue, sous-vide for silkiness then finished with garlic purée, sesame oil and the restaurant’s signature pepper salt to amplify natural sweetness.

Other Cool Stuff We’re Obsessed About

✦ A Broad and Ample Road

A Broad and Ample Road sits at the intersection of history, justice, and everyday humanity. Written by historian Albert Wu and writer-lawyer Michelle Kuo, it’s a space that asks what resistance looks like today. Each post gathers reflections on law, politics, art, and the small, sustaining gestures of care to society.

The writers draw from their work in prisons, classrooms, and immigrant communities, connecting local stories in Taiwan with global conversations on justice and solidarity. It’s a reminder that hope often whispers, builds, and insists on staying.

A Broad and Ample Road

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From late-night noodles to 5 a.m. book shopping, Taipei’s 24-hour culture is way beyond necessity. It’s a city that hums quietly (and sometimes loudly) through the night, where convenience has evolved into an even higher level.

A City That Refuses to Sleep

They say, “You’ll never run out of things to do in Taipei.”

And it’s true. Besides the convenience stores at literally EVERY corner, there’s always something open. Street food stalls steaming up the midnight air, cafes glowing softly past dawn, bars tucked away in alleys, midnight movie screenings, and those winding hills where couples drive up to catch the first light. It’s a city that prizes energy, adaptability, and hustle.

But here’s the funny thing: many of the city’s 24-hour spots don’t actually need to stay open all day and night. They do it anyway. Not because there’s overwhelming demand, but because we Taiwanese just love to keep busy (aka make money). These places become quiet sanctuaries for night owls, overthinkers, procrastinators, and dreamers who just don’t want to go home yet.

So tonight, let’s go wandering!

Shops in Taipei That Open 24/7

Ching Shin, Gongguan 清心福全公館店

📍No. 1-6, Ln 316, Roosevelt Rd, Section 3, Zhongzheng District, Taipei City

Midnight bubble tea cravings? This one’s for you. Not every Ching Shin is open 24/7, but the Gongguan store proudly is. Ching Shin has been around longer than most of Taipei’s current milk tea brands have existed, with must-try classics like Yogurt Green Tea and Oolong Green Tea. The menu is simple, nostalgic, and deeply comforting at 2 a.m.

Huahsin Florists 華新花苑

📍Taipei City, Datong District, Nanjing W Rd, No. 99-1

Rows of lilies, roses, and orchids glow under fluorescent light, feeling like a fever dream. Founded decades ago, Huahsin Florists was the first flower shop to go fully 24/7, offering everything from bouquets and wreaths to preserved flowers and gift baskets, because love (and grief) doesn’t keep office hours.

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Just 45 minutes from Taipei, this fog-wrapped port offers a slower rhythm and a touch of cinematic mystery. It’s a place where ships whistle in the distance, murals bloom across old warehouses, and locals chat over coffee with a view of the sea.

Why you should visit Keelung

For decades, Keelung was seen as a working harbor. It was practical, gritty, and perpetually rainy. But in recent years, artists and designers of the younger generation have begun to rediscover the city’s layered identity, finding beauty in its damp concrete walls and ocean-worn textures.

This shift has been led by a series of cultural events like the Keelung Ciao Art Festival and the Zhengbin Art Biennale, which transformed industrial spaces into creative playgrounds. Meanwhile, local cafés and shops seamlessly blend art and everyday life.

And when the drizzle hits (it usually does), Keelung embraces it. The sound of rain here feels like part of the soundtrack.

Getting to Keelung

By Train

Taking the train is hands-down the easiest way (in my opinion) to get to Keelung. Trains from Taipei run frequently, and the ride takes around 45 minutes. If you have a TPASS, the trip is completely free. Most of Keelung’s main attractions, from the Miaokou Night Market to the harbor, are within walking distance of Keelung Station, so it’s perfect for a spontaneous day trip.

Book tickets: https://www.railway.gov.tw/tra-tip-web/tip

By Bus

There are plenty of routes between Taipei and Keelung. The Kuo-Kuang 1813 line goes directly from Taipei Main Station to the Keelung Transit Center, making it one of the most convenient options. You can also hop on the 1550 or 1579 routes from MRT stations in Taipei, or the 2088 from the Taipei City Hall Bus Station if you’re heading straight to Badouzi.

Just a heads-up: buses can get stuck in traffic during rush hours. It’s a commuter route, after all. TPASS holders can also ride these for free. You can buy tickets online or simply purchase them on-site before departure.

By Tourist Shuttle T99

If you’re in the mood for sightseeing rather than just commuting, the Taiwan Tourist Shuttle T99 is your best bet. It loops along the coastline, stopping at all the must-see spots: Miaokou Night Market, Fort Commander’s Residence, Buddha’s Hand Cave, Zhengbin Fishing Port (Colorful Houses), Heping Island Park, Badouzi Fishing Port, the National Museum of Marine Science and Technology (Chaojing Park), and Badouzi Station. It’s a great hop-on-hop-off style option for exploring Keelung’s sea-facing attractions.

More info: https://www.taiwantrip.com.tw/Frontend/Route/Select_p_en?RouteID=R0056

By Car

Driving gives you the most flexibility! It’s ideal if you’re planning to visit hidden corners or late-night fish markets. You can easily explore Keelung’s more remote coastal spots, pull over for sea views, and set your own pace. Just note that parking near the harbor can get tricky on weekends, so go early!

Things to Do in Keelung

📌 Keelung Ciao Art 基隆潮藝術

Date: 2025.09.26 - 10.26
Website: https://keelungciaoart.tw/
Social: https://www.instagram.com/keelungciao/

Every summer, the city’s old harbor turns into an open-air gallery. The Keelung Ciao Art Festival brings together installations, performances, and site-specific works that stretch along the coast. This year’s Ciao Art brings together Taiwanese curator Sid Chen and Korean curator Jeauk Lucas Kang, looking back at the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II through art.

The Mountain Area climbs to the newly opened Keelung Tower and descends into the Xin’er Air-Raid Shelter, transforming these contrasting spaces into immersive installations that explore memory, architecture, and the city’s layered history; The Sea Area unfolds along the waterfront, where artists draw inspiration from the sea breeze, maritime trade, and ghostly industrial remains, crafting works that feel both nostalgic and forward-looking; The City Area connects urban life and art, linking the Keelung Art Museum Plaza, Commission Store Shopping District, and Haiping Square. Together, they reveal Keelung’s heart as a living stage of memories and imagination.

📌 6th Zhengbin Art Biennale 基隆海濱美術館雙年展

Date: 2025.08.09 - 11.02
Website: https://www.waterliveshere.com/
Social: https://www.instagram.com/zhengbin.art/

At the colorful Zhengbin Fishing Port, Keelung’s other major art event unfolds. Once lined with decaying warehouses, this harbor has been reimagined into a vibrant creative hub. The Zhengbin Art Biennale invites local and international artists to explore the forms of water and their relationships with local culture. After exploring, grab a drink at one of the renovated cafés nearby and watch as fishermen and visitors share the same waterfront view!

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