Taiwan

Taiwan is an island located about 100 miles from China. It was originally part of China. But in 1949, the communists seized Mainland China forcing the nationalists to retreat to

Taiwan. From then on, Taiwan is also known as Free

China. The leaders of Republic of China, (Free China) hoped someday that the communists will be driven out of

China. Therefore, they start to build Taiwan as a military base for such purpose. However, their dreams were never accomplished, instead, their efforts turned Taiwan into a economic powerful country. This is also known as the

Taiwan Miracle. There is another interesting information about Taiwan's name. Despite Free China, Taiwan also has two other names, "Taiwan" (the one we call it) and

"Formosa". Let's talk about "Taiwan" first. "Taiwan" means

"terraced bay" to the mountain tribal people who originally lives in Taiwan. When the immigrants from China migrated to this island 3 hundreds years ago, they kept hearing the tribal people calling (the place where the Chinese landed)

"Taiwan". Therefore, they assumed that the island is

"Taiwan". Formosa, on the other hand, was called by the

Portuguese sailors in the 1600s. It means "beautiful island".

Therefore, there are still people referring Taiwan as

Formosa when they try to beautify Taiwan today. Taiwan is a sub-tropical country that that is warm most of the year.

The Tropic of Cancer passes through Taiwan in the southern part. Therefore, snow is unusual to most the

Taiwanese here. But there are some places up in the high mountains that do get cold enough to snow. Because the land is hot and humid, it is the best for growing rice and other farm products. The farmers in north can grow two crops of rice a year in the north and three crops a year in the south. There are mostly mountains in the north part of

Taiwan while plate farmland in the south. The government of the Republic of China has some similarities to the government of the United States. The government is based on a Constitution and there is a President and Vice

President. ROC has a National Assembly instead of a

Congress and there are five branches of the government, legislative, executive, judicial, examination, and control.

There are three major political parties and some other lesser known ones. The best party that control many resources of the country is the KMT, (Kuomintang), also known as the Nationalists. The second best party is DPP,

(Democratic Progressive Party). And New Party. Well, from here I have to tell you that I am a partisan of New

Party and I will interprete the three parties in MY WAY.

Alright, let me give you detailed descriptions of the three