Bubbletea is a Taiwanese tea-based drink invented in Tainan and Taichung in the 1980s. Recipes contain tea of some kind, flavors of milk, as well as sugar (optional). Toppings, such as chewy tapioca balls, popping boba, fruit jelly, grass jelly, agar jelly, and puddings are often added. Ice-blended versions are frozen and put into a blender, resulting in a slushy consistency. There are many varieties of the drink with a wide range of flavors. The two most popular varieties are black pearl milk tea and green pearl milk tea. "Boba" (波霸) is Cantonese slang for "large breasts" referring to the tapioca balls, as a reference to 1980s Hong Kong sex symbol Amy Yip, whose nickname was “Boba".
Kaohsiung is a coastal city in southern Taiwan. It is officially a special municipality with an area of 2,952 km2 (1,140 sq mi) stretching from the coastal urban centre to the rural Yushan Range. As of 2018, the municipality has a population of 2.77 million, making it the third most populous administrative division in Taiwan.
Taiwan, formerly known as Formosa, is an island in East Asia; located some 180 kilometres off the southeastern coast of mainland China across the Taiwan Strait. It has an area of 36,104 km2 (13,940 sq mi), which includes other nearby islands such as Penghu. The East China Sea lies to the north, the Philippine Sea to the east, the Luzon Strait directly to the south and the South China Sea to the southwest. The island makes up 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China, which is also known as "Taiwan".
The national economy of Taiwan, is the 7th largest economy in Asia, and is included in the advanced economies group by the International Monetary Fund and gauged in the high-income economies group by the World Bank, and ranked 15th in the world by the Global Competitiveness Report of World Economic Forum, has a developed capitalist economy that ranks as the 22nd-largest in the world by purchasing power parity (PPP), ranks as 18th in the world by gross domestic product (GDP) at purchasing power parity per capita (person), and 24th in nominal GDP of investment and foreign trade by the Republic of China (Taiwan) government, commonly referred to as Taiwan. As of 2018, telecommunication, financial services and utility services are three highest individuals paid sectors in Taiwan. The economy of Taiwan ranks the highest in Asia for 2015 Global Entrepreneurship Index (GEI) for specific strengths. Most large government-owned banks and industrial firms have been privatized, and now family owned businesses are the streamlined economic factors in Taiwan. With the technocracy-centered economic planning under martial law until 1987, real growth in GDP has averaged about 8% during the past three decades. Exports have grown even faster and since World War II, have provided the primary impetus for industrialization. Inflation and unemployment are low; the trade surplus is substantial; and foreign reserves are the world's fourth largest. Agriculture contributes 3% to GDP, down from 35% in 1952, and the service sector makes up 73% of the economy. Traditional labor-intensive industries are steadily being moved off-shore and replaced with more capital- and technology-intensive industries in the pre-mature stage of the manufacturing industry in the global economic competitions on labor cost, automation, product design realization (prototype), technology commercialization, scientific materialization (patent), scientific discovery, and growing from the over-reliance from the original equipment manufacturer and original design manufacturer models, in which there is no single University from Taiwan entering Reuter's Global Top Innovative 100 University ranking, and the economy of Taiwan may need international collaboration on University, Research and Industrial cooperation on spin-off opportunities. Economy of Taiwan is an indispensable partner in the Global Value Chains of Electronics Industry. Electronic components and personal computer are two areas of international strength of Taiwan's Information Technology industry, which means the economy of Taiwan has the competitive edge on having the learning curve from advanced foreign technologies with lower cost to be produced and sold abroad. Institute for Information Industry with its international recognitions is responsible for the development of IT industry and ICT industry in Taiwan. Industrial Technology Research Institute with its global partners is the advanced research center for applied technology for the economy of Taiwan. Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics and Ministry of Economic Affairs release major economic indicators of the economy of Taiwan. Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research provides economic forecast at the forefront for the economy of Taiwan and authoritatively researches on the bilateral economic relations with ASEAN by The Taiwan ASEAN Studies Center (TASC). Taiwan Stock Exchange is the host to the listed companies of local industries in Taiwan with weighted financial exposures to the FTSE Taiwan Index and MSCI Taiwan Index.
The Taiwan independence movement is a political movement to pursue formal independence of Taiwan, with its primary goal being to become an internationally recognized sovereign state called "Republic of Taiwan".
Taiwanese indigenous peoples or formerly Taiwanese aborigines, Formosan people, Austronesian Taiwanese or Gaoshan people, are the indigenous peoples of Taiwan, who number almost 530,000 or 2.3% of the island's population or more than 800,000 people, considering the potential recognition of Taiwanese plain indigenous peoples officially in the future. Recent research suggests their ancestors may have been living on Taiwan for approximately 5,500 years in relative isolation before a major Han immigration from mainland China began in the 17th century. Taiwanese aborigines are Austronesian peoples, with linguistic and genetic ties to other Austronesian people. Related ethnic groups include Polynesians, most people of the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei, among others.
Mainland China, also known as the Chinese mainland, is the geopolitical as well as geographical area under the direct jurisdiction of the People's Republic of China (PRC). It includes Hainan island and strictly speaking, politically, does not include the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau, even though both are partially on the geographic mainland.
Taipei, officially known as Taipei City, is the capital and a special municipality of Taiwan. Sitting at the northern tip of the island, Taipei City is an enclave of the municipality of New Taipei City that sits about 25 km (16 mi) southwest of the northern port city Keelung. Most of the city is located in the Taipei Basin, an ancient lakebed. The basin is bounded by the relatively narrow valleys of the Keelung and Xindian rivers, which join to form the Tamsui River along the city's western border.
Taiwanese Hokkien, also known simply as Taiwanese, is a variety of Hokkien Chinese spoken natively by about 70% of the population of Taiwan. It is spoken by the Taiwanese Hoklo people, who descended from immigrants from southern Fujian during the Qing dynasty. The Pe̍h-ōe-jī (POJ) romanization is a popular orthography for this variant of Hokkien.
The controversy regarding the political status of Taiwan, sometimes referred to as the Taiwan Issue or Taiwan Strait Issue, or from a Taiwanese perspective as the Mainland Issue, is a result of the Chinese Civil War and the subsequent split of China into the two present-day self-governing entities of the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China.
"One-China policy" is a policy saying that there is only one country of China, despite the fact that there are two governments, the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC), with the official name of China. Many countries follow a one China policy, but the meanings are not exactly the same. The PRC exclusively uses the term "One China Principle" in its official communications.
"Chinese Taipei" is the name for Taiwan designated in the Nagoya Resolution whereby the Republic of China (ROC) and the People's Republic of China (PRC) recognize each other when it comes to the activities of the International Olympic Committee. The ROC participates under this name in various international organizations and events, including the Olympic Games, the Little League World Series, International Tennis Federation sanctioned tournaments, the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon, the US Open, Paralympic Games, Asian Games, Asian Para Games, Universiade, International Powerlifting Federation, FIFA, the World Kendo Championship, the Overwatch world cup and other eSports, Miss Universe, Miss Chinese International Pageant, FIRST Global, the Metre Convention, and the World Health Organization.
The New Taiwan dollar is the official currency of the Republic of China (ROC) used in the Taiwan Area. Formally, one dollar (圓) is divided into ten dimes (角), and to 100 cents (分), although cents are never used in practice. The New Taiwan dollars has been the currency of Taiwan since 1949, when it replaced the Old Taiwan dollar, at a rate of 40,000 old dollars per one new dollar. There are a variety of alternative names to the units in Taiwan. The unit of dollar is usually written in simpler form as 元. Colloquially, the currency unit usually called 篐 in Taiwanese Hokkien, 銀 in Hakka, and 塊 in Mandarin,
Cross-Strait relations, Mainland–Taiwan relations, or Taiwan–China relations refer to the relationship between the following two political entities, which are separated by the Taiwan Strait in the west Pacific Ocean:
Taiwanese people are people from Taiwan who share a common Taiwanese culture and speak Mandarin Chinese, Hokkien, Hakka, or Aboriginal languages as a mother tongue. Taiwanese people may also refer to individuals who either claim or are imputed cultural identity focused on Taiwan or areas under the control of the Government of the Republic of China since 1945, including Penghu, Kinmen, and Matsu islands. At least three competing paradigms are used to identify someone as a Taiwanese person: nationalist criteria, self-identification criteria, and socio-cultural criteria. These standards are fluid, and result from evolving social and political issues. The complexity resulting from competing and evolving standards is compounded by a larger dispute regarding Taiwan's identity, the political status of Taiwan, and its potential de jure Taiwan independence or Cross-Strait Unification.
Japanese Taiwan was the period of Taiwan and the Penghu Islands under Japanese rule between 1895 and 1945.
Hokkien or Minnan language (閩南語/闽南语), is a Southern Min Chinese dialect group originating from the Minnan region in the south-eastern part of Fujian Province in Southeastern China, and spoken widely there. It is also spoken widely in Taiwan and by the Chinese diaspora in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and other parts of Southeast Asia, and by other overseas Chinese all over the world. It is the mainstream form of Southern Min.
