Taipei        The twenty-five-year-old, Taipei Times, describes itself as the “last surviving English-language print newspaper in Taiwan.” Reportedly, thirty percent of the Taiwanese speak English, but given how difficult it is for any newspaper to survive, it shouldn’t be a surprise that specialized papers like the Taipei Times live constantly on the edge of extinction.  Their motto is “Bringing Taiwan to the World and the World to Taiwan.”  A copy was on the counter of the breakfast bar at the CitizenM hotel.  It’s a broadsheet, which essentially means big sheets and very few pages, including a three-page advertising hole.  We were curious exactly how this back and forth between the world and Taiwan really worked from the viewpoint of the Times as one simple barometer that we could access easily.

Simply put, there are two main themes from what we could suss out by reading the paper for several days.   One is whatever China is doing viz a viz Taiwan, and the other is about the same for the United States in relation to Taiwan.

The first day in this very thin paper, one of us counted six major articles about China.  That count is about the normal run from day to day.  China is hacking social media in Taiwan.  Some Chinese fishermen were rescued.  A columnist wondered why elite soldiers were being wasted on the honor guard for Taiwanese martyrs, when they were having trouble recruiting new soldiers for readiness to convince China – and the US – that they could defend themselves.  The editorial cartoons poked at the Chinese “one country” line.  It’s not hard to follow the drift, especially when this giant country is only 100 miles away across the shipping lanes of the strait with over one-billion people there and Taiwan with 23 million people just across the way.

There are about as many articles where the United States is the theme.  There was some bragging that a recent launch by SpaceX for the US included two Taiwan-made satellites.  The main editorial expressed umbrage at a remark made by the Australian leader that Taiwan was “Chinese real estate” and quoted former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others coming to the rescue.  The opening speeches by VP Kamala Harris found space in the paper.  Baseball is a big thing, including the fact that their Little League team squashed the Australian team in a beatdown that earned three pictures from Kingsport, Pennsylvania.  In short, events, news, and just about the heartbeat of Washington are followed closely.  None of this is surprising, as well, since it is the US that has its finger in the dike against incursion by China across the strait.

Away from the newspaper, it’s hard to feel this constant weight of being a small country wedged between two great powers.  The streets in the business district bustle with people, seemingly younger than the statistics on Taiwan led us to believe.  There are no anti-China or pro-US signs on the street or on buildings, although there is less graffiti here than I can remember in any major city in the west.  The natural history museum included Chinese art and pottery and an entire floor on Buddhism without a hint of antagonism.  The building itself is a remainder of the Japanese colonial period, but its construction was celebrated in the top floor of the museum.

People are somehow keeping the Taipei Times alive, so it is clearly filing a need for some segment of the population, perhaps in government, tourism, or even the military.  We attract no special attention, despite being visibly American and Canadian.  No one comes up to us, and thanks us for our service or help. We’ll have a better sense once we start meeting with organizations in coming days.