We’re overdue to acknowledge the significant contribution of our friend in Taiwan, Lin-Lee, to our collection of Taiwanese postcards.  As part of her work, Lin-Lee travels across the country, and keeps her eyes open for unusual and colourful items she thinks we might like to list.  And she is invariably correct in her choices.

Sometimes called “the other China,” Taiwan was once called Formosa, and some of our older cards used this name.  You would need to have lived in a cave for a very long time not to know the current status, and it’s not our place to go into all of that here.  We’ll say a few things about the postcards.

Taiwanese people tend to have an affinity for all things Japanese, and this shows in postcard design as well.  Some themes are just overdone:  Taipei 101–once the world’s tallest building–and Sun Moon Lake among them.  But then there is an impressive range of what we  call “local” cards, sometimes almost impossible to understand because English-language captioning is limited.  The FunTaiwan series is great, and quite a few postcards are cut into the shape of the island, but with different locations and themes.  What you see along with this blog entry illustrates those.  China Airlines and EVA Air also get into the act.  Their names are always somewhere in their cards, but we can’t always figure out what’s going on.  Universities and design institutes like to issue postcards for whatever they are doing at the time.  We have some of those, too.

So a big 谢谢 to Lin-Lee for all she has contributed to us, and as we enter the New Year of the Horse, we wish all readers “Kung Hei Fat Choy!” or “Gong Xi Fa Cai!” depending entirely on which China you’re in!

Until next time …