The cultures, Customs and traditionof the place

Welcome Video of Taiwan

Facts and statistic

Location: Eastern Asia, islands bordering the East China Sea, Philippine Sea, South China Sea, and Taiwan Strait, north of the Philippines, off the southeastern coast of China
Capital: Taipei
Climate: tropical; marine; rainy season during southwest monsoon (June to August); cloudiness is persistent and extensive all year
Population: 22,858,872 (July 2007 est.)
Ethnic Make-up: Taiwanese (including Hakka) 84%, mainland Chinese 14%, indigenous 2%
Religions: mixture of Buddhist and Taoist 93%, Christian 4.5%, other 2.5%
Government: multiparty democracy

(http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/resources/global-etiquette/taiwan.html)

cultures, Customs and tradition

In different areas of Taiwan, there entails different cultural practices, beliefs, customs and etiquette of different groups of people.

Tangible culture of Taiwan: Taiwan’s craftworks are all done by the later generation of the Taiwanese. To date, traditional crafts play an important part in the local art scene, with ceramics from Yingge, Shueili and Kinmen, woodcarving from Sanyi, stone carving from Hualien, and Meinung's hand-crafted oil-paper umbrellas. Oriental glassware art has also taken on a new lease of life in Taiwan: Liuli Gongfang and Tittot are two examples of glass art manufacturers who have earned international recognition in recent years. Given the chance to visit the cultural places of Taiwan, one will realise that the crafts can be found in the buildings. Ceramic, Stone carving, handcraft oil-paper umbrella and oriental glassware can be found in the older building structures in Taiwan.

 Let us now take into a deeper understanding of woodcarving.

In Sanyi (a place found in rural Taiwan), woodcarving is the most important creative industry. The first two woodcarving masters in Taiwan, Wu Luo-song and Li Jin-chuan, were both from Sanyi and studied woodcarving abroad. In the early days the woodcarvings were mostly of traditional subjects such as statues of local deities or decorative items. However, nowadays the form and technique has expanded, often combining wood with other materials.

Taiwan has many other thriving local arts and crafts. They may not be world-famous or on a grand scale, but these arts reflect the age old wisdom and traditions of the local people, who combine local natural resources and history with modern technology and creativity to produce contemporary, living works of art.
(http://www.go2taiwan.net/monthly_selection.php?sqno=15)

From what I have analyse, wood carving experts in Taiwan are decreasing as he country grow to be more globalize. The masters of woodcarving are from the previous generation which in my opinion, the current generation of Taiwanese prefers more modernize culture. This can be seen in the everyday life of the Taiwanese. However, I feel that woodcarving is a skill that shouldn’t be stopped, i is a special technique which represents the culture inTaiwan.

Intangible Culture of Taiwan: the values and attitudes of Taiwanese are practiced everywhere. Like any other culture, Taiwanese are very formal in their greetings. It is always the oldest person in the group greeted first. This is a form of respect to the older person. One interesting fact that one will never see in Singapore is when greeting someone, Taiwanese look towards the ground as a sign of respect.

Chinese women do not change their names when they marry other Chinese and the children’s last name will generally follow that of the father. This can also be seen in locals or any other Chinese race family. They address the wife by the husband’s surname. Often their personal names hold some poetic meaning or significance. The names of their children are often named by the elder or their parents. For example, if a child named 志气, it can mean that the child’s parents hopes that he would become a pillar in the society with strong backbone.

(http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/resources/global-etiquette/taiwan.html)

Taiwan is a Chinese populated country, where more than half of the races are Chinese. Thus, practices freedom of religion, research has shown that 93% of the population’s religion is mixture of Buddhist and Taoist.

(http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/resources/global-etiquette/taiwan.html)

Taiwan religions

Taiwan practices freedom of religion in which citizens are given the freedom to believe in the religion of their choice. Taiwan generously accepts foreign religious ideas while honouring traditional beliefs: even within the same family, it is common for different faiths to exist. As a result, the development of many different religions exists.

A structure of the Budhha

Taoism Symbol

Traditional Chinese religions include Buddhism, Taoism, and folk beliefs. Taoism is indigenous to China, while Buddhism was introduced from Indian. In the past, there exists distinctions in religion where one group is purely Taoist and the other group is the Buddhism where they worshipped idols and deity. After World War II, the two religions have blended together; while a few temples today are purely Buddhist, most Taiwanese continue worshipping a variety of Buddhist, Taoist and folk deities in a single temple.

Numerous other religions took hold in Taiwan in the atmosphere of religious freedom than followed retrocession. Taiwan today also has followers of many other religions.