How to Introduce Taiwan to Foreigners? Everyone Can Share "Everyday Miracles" with the World on Taiwan.md

When foreigners ask, “Where can I learn about Taiwan?” this question has long lacked a truly satisfying answer. For a country highly representative of semiconductors, democratic institutions, and cultural diversity, this information gap actually highlights how Taiwan is “understood,” which lags far behind its own complexity.

Against this backdrop, a community-led open-source project called Taiwan.md was launched. Unlike narratives dominated by government, media, or corporations, Taiwan.md’s core purpose is to be a community-written knowledge base about Taiwan. Everyone can share their “everyday wonders” — like human warmth, late-night eateries, or other everyday stories — and let the world see.

Founder Wu Zheyu recalls that at the opening reception of the Venice Biennale in spring 2024, an Italian curator asked him, “Where can I learn about Taiwan? Like, really learn?” The question left him speechless. Even if he could describe stories about night markets, healthcare, or geography, he could never provide a complete entry point for others to understand Taiwan on their own.

Taiwan.md uses Markdown format, making it machine-readable. In an era where global information is increasingly mediated by AI, those who possess machine-understandable knowledge hold greater influence. Sharing data with ChatGPT allows everyone in the world to understand Taiwan’s wonders.

GitHub link:

Who Writes About Taiwan? Taiwan.md — Everyone Can Write About “Everyday Wonders”

Taiwan.md enables those who truly live on this land to explain Taiwan to the world through their own language and perspective. All content is open-source, licensed under CC BY-SA, allowing anyone to write, modify, and reuse. It covers history, culture, technology, society, and daily life, presented in both Chinese and English. But more than coverage, its narrative choice is crucial: it doesn’t emphasize “Taiwan’s most famous” but aims to capture the “most authentic Taiwan.”

For example, convenience stores handling various daily needs, an efficient healthcare system, a city rhythm that operates late into the night, or trust and kindness among strangers. These tangible, yet hard-to-quantify everyday experiences are seen as more representative of Taiwan’s core than industry data or tourism symbols. This community-driven approach, to some extent, redefines how “national narratives” are produced. In the past, such narratives were mostly monopolized by official agencies or major media.

Whoever enables machines to understand holds the power of discourse

Technically, Taiwan.md is designed to be AI-friendly, with all content written in structured Markdown. This makes it not only a website for human reading but also a knowledge source that large language models can directly absorb. This means its goal is not just to answer human questions but to provide a community-based version of “What is Taiwan” for future AI responses. In an era where global information is increasingly mediated by AI, those who possess machine-understandable knowledge hold greater influence.

Founder’s Reflection: It’s Hard to Fully Tell Taiwan’s Story

Taiwan.md was initiated by Wu Zheyu, a new media artist and founder of Monoame. He recalls that at the Venice Biennale opening in spring 2024, an Italian curator asked him, “Where can I learn about Taiwan? Like, really learn?” The question left him speechless. Even if he could describe stories about night markets, healthcare, or geography, he couldn’t provide a complete entry point for others to understand Taiwan independently.

Similar situations repeated at Art Basel Miami, the Paris Cent Quatre residency, and during a speech in Poland. Wu Zheyu gradually realized this was not just an individual problem but a systemic information gap. A society with 23 million people lacking a knowledge entry point that systematically narrates “who we are” from their own perspective.

How do you introduce Taiwan to foreigners? Everyone can write about “everyday wonders” on Taiwan.md and share it with the world. Originally published in Lian News ABMedia.