Taiwan's culture: one official language replaced by several national ones

Which languages Taiwan speaks and why the law changed

Before Han settlers began arriving in large numbers from southern Fujian in the 17th century, most people on the island spoke Austronesian languages. The settlers brought Hokkien and Hakka, and Hokkien spread furthest. Japan made Japanese the language of school and office from 1895 to 1945. The government that arrived in 1945 replaced it with Mandarin and enforced Mandarin by law in schools and workplaces, and the Wikipedia account of Taiwanese culture records children being penalised for speaking Hokkien, Hakka or an Indigenous language at school. The Presbyterian Church kept written Taiwanese in use in romanised form through both periods.

Almost everyone now speaks Mandarin, and many people speak something else at home as well. The Wikipedia account, in its revision of August 2026, estimates that about 70% of the population speaks Taiwanese Hokkien, that the Hakka make up about 13% and that speakers of the Indigenous Formosan languages and of Yami make up about 2.3%. Taiwanese Mandarin has its own vocabulary and pronunciation: the word that means potato in mainland China means peanut in Taiwan. Taiwan writes traditional Chinese characters where the mainland uses simplified ones. The record's list of languages runs from Standard Taiwanese Mandarin, Hokkien and Hakka through the Kinmen, Matsu and Wuqiu dialects to fifteen Indigenous languages and Taiwanese Sign Language.

The law reversed course after 1987. A Council of Indigenous Peoples was set up in 1996 and a Hakka Affairs Council in 2001, and local languages entered school curricula in 2004. The Indigenous Languages Development Act followed in 2017. Legislation passed between 2017 and 2019 recognised Hokkien, Hakka, the Indigenous languages and sign language as equal to Mandarin, and the Development of National Languages Act of 2019 required local-language classes, more broadcasting in those languages and funding to revive them. The Foreign Ministry's handbook records mandatory courses in Hakka, Holo, the Indigenous languages and the languages of new immigrants in the 12-year basic education system. The Wikipedia account records that Hokkien is still declining among the young and that Hakka and the Indigenous languages remain endangered.

Who the Indigenous peoples are

The government recognises 16 Indigenous peoples. The Foreign Ministry's handbook gives them a little more than 2.5% of the population; Britannica gives roughly 2%. They are Austronesian, and Britannica records them on the island for more than 10,000 years. The constitution's Additional Articles called them mountain people until 1994, when the term was replaced by Indigenous people, and since 1997 have committed the state to protect their languages and cultures in accordance with their own will. Six of the 113 seats in the Legislative Yuan are reserved for Indigenous voters.

Britannica gives the Thao and the Hla'alua only several hundred members each. The Seediq rising at Musha in 1930 against Japanese rule is the subject of the colonial history in Taiwan: history.

How waves of settlement shaped society

The Foreign Ministry's handbook describes more than 95% of the population as of Han descent, and the descent has layers. Britannica divides it into the Hoklo, whose ancestors came from southern Fujian and who make up about 65% of residents; the Hakka, from Guangdong and Fujian, about 15%; and the families who came from the mainland after 1945, about 15%. The Hoklo arrived in larger numbers, pushed the Hakka into the poorer land of the interior, and the two often fought local wars. Intermarriage and Mandarin have since blurred the lines between them. The handbook also counts more than 580,000 new immigrants, mostly from mainland China and South-East Asia and mostly arriving through marriage, as about 2.5% of the population.

Britannica describes a society organised around the family, with schooling close behind. By 1980 more than half of families were nuclear and a quarter extended, and the share has kept moving towards the nuclear family as the population urbanised and more women went out to work. Most businesses are still family-owned and family-run. Education is competitive from an early age, and the Wikipedia account records that nearly all students attend a cram school, a buxiban, for mathematics, languages or examinations.

How settlement shows in the buildings

Britannica records that Hoklo and Hakka settlers took the west coast first and moved inland over time, that many lowland Indigenous people were assimilated or withdrew to the mountains, and that the families arriving after 1945 settled mostly in and around Taipei. The population was mainly rural until after the war; about half lived in cities of more than 50,000 people by the early 1950s and close to four-fifths of the population was urban by 1980. The rural house of the Han settlers was the sanheyuan, a house built on three sides of a courtyard, its two wings, called protecting dragons in Taiwan, added in pairs as the household grew. In the towns the ke lau, or qilou, a shophouse built from the late 19th century to the 1960s with a covered walkway along the street front, combined shop and home. In the mountains the Paiwan and Bunun built houses of layered stone with thatched roofs, the Paiwan in stone slabs.

What people believe and where they worship

Most religious practice on Taiwan does not fit one label. The usual form is a blend of Buddhism, Taoism and Chinese folk religion, including ancestor worship and the worship of Mazu and of the Wang Ye. A Pew Research survey of 2023 counted 28% of residents as Buddhist, 24% as Taoist, 7% as Christian, 5% as following a combination of religions and 4% a local or Indigenous religion, with 27% reporting no religion. The Foreign Ministry's handbook lists the major religions as Buddhism, Taoism, I-Kuan Tao, Chinese folk religion, Christianity and Islam.

Taiwanese Buddhism has developed a form called Humanistic Buddhism, oriented to direct work in society, and its large organisations, Fo Guang Shan, Tzu Chi, Dharma Drum Mountain and Chung Tai Shan, run temples and relief work abroad. Most Christians are Protestant, and the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan has campaigned for human rights and for the use of written Taiwanese. The Confucius Temple in Tainan dates from 1665. The Taichung Mazu festival in April is a pilgrimage that the Foreign Ministry lists among the island's major annual events.

What Taiwan eats and drinks

The cooking starts from Fujian and the southern provinces, from which most settlers came, and absorbed dishes from all of China after 1949, when people from every province arrived with the government. Japanese rule left its own mark on it. Britannica describes meals as long and family-centred and Taiwanese as spending more time and money in restaurants than most. The Foreign Ministry's handbook counts night markets among the traditions of everyday life.

Two drinks are Taiwan's own. Bubble tea, milk tea with chewy tapioca pearls, was first sold in Tainan in the mid-1980s and spread abroad from the 2000s, Britannica records. Tea itself is grown on the island and drunk with ceremony: oolongs are the most common, among them Taiwanese high-mountain oolongs, alongside black and green teas. RECIPESpec is the sibling catalogue for the dishes themselves.

When the island celebrates

The festival calendar is mostly the lunar one. Britannica names the Lunar New Year as the most important holiday, when people go home if they can, eat with their families and, by tradition, settle their debts; the Dragon Boat Festival, the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day on 10 October follow it. The Taiwan Lantern Festival, held in February, moves to a different city or county each year, the Foreign Ministry's handbook records.

The memorial days read like an index to Taiwan: history. The list in force for 2026, published by the Directorate-General of Personnel Administration, runs to twenty: among them Peace Memorial Day on 28 February for the incident of 1947, a day marking the lifting of martial law on 15 July, Indigenous Peoples Day on 1 August, a memorial for the Kinmen bombardment of 23 August 1958, Taiwan Retrocession Day and the victory at Kuningtou on 25 October, and National Hakka Day on 28 December. Six of them are days off. The Legislative Yuan raised the rules to statute on 9 May 2025, adding Lunar New Year's Eve, Confucius' Birthday, Retrocession Day and Constitution Day as national holidays, and Indigenous people may now choose three days off for their own peoples' ceremonies. The Saisiyat hold their Pas-ta'ai festival on the 15th day of the 10th lunar month. The holidays page lists the dates.

The handbook's calendar of annual events runs from the lantern festival and the Taichung Mazu pilgrimage in April to fireworks over Penghu in May, a balloon festival in July and a cycling festival in October.

How governments have used culture

Every government on Taiwan has had a cultural programme. After 1945 the Nationalists set out to remove Japanese influence and to make the island Chinese, through compulsory schooling in Mandarin and in their own ideology. When the Cultural Revolution began on the mainland, Taipei answered with a Chinese Cultural Renaissance movement of subsidised classics, curricula built on traditional Chinese culture, and the symbolic use of the National Palace Museum. That museum, opened outside Taipei in 1965, holds artefacts, art and books that were moved from the mainland in 1949. Taiwanese cultural expression was suppressed in the same decades.

Democratisation turned the programme round. The movement known as bentuhua, Taiwanisation, has since the 1980s pushed school curricula and public culture towards Taiwan's own mixed history, and the Wikipedia account treats the first change of party, in 2000, as an important step in it. Britannica notes a revival of Japanese martial arts and films after the controls lifted, and a renewed interest in mainland literature after residents were allowed to visit the mainland in 1987. Britannica also records the government supporting the cultural activities of individual ethnic groups since the 1990s.

What popular culture exports

Taiwan has been a centre of Mandarin popular music since 1949, and singers from Singapore and elsewhere have built their careers there. Its variety shows have been watched since the 1990s by overseas Chinese communities in Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the United States. Publishers issued 56,121 new titles in 2022, by the Foreign Ministry's count. In 2019 Taiwan legalised same-sex marriage by special law, after a referendum had rejected it, Britannica records.

What the press and the stage look like

The press was controlled by the Kuomintang and the government in the early years after 1945, and democratisation brought considerable relaxation of those controls. The Central News Agency is the national news service. Radio stations broadcast in Mandarin, Taiwanese, Hakka and English, and cable television is widespread. The older performing arts that Chiang Kai-shek's government promoted, calligraphy, classical painting and Chinese opera, sit beside Taiwanese puppet theatre and shadow puppetry, which the Foreign Ministry's handbook describes as being preserved, and the Juming Museum in Jinshan shows contemporary art.

Which sports and pastimes are popular

Baseball and basketball are the team sports Britannica singles out. A professional baseball league was founded in 1989, and youth teams have won the Little League World Series in the United States. Britannica records that more people play basketball, with a semi-professional league from 2003; badminton, table tennis, golf, tennis and martial arts are also widely played.

Taiwan has competed at the Olympic Games since 1956. After 1971 its name became a problem, and athletes now compete as Chinese Taipei under a special flag in place of the national one. The sources date the arrangement differently: Britannica to an agreement with Beijing in 1989, the Wikipedia account of Taiwan to the International Olympic Committee's Nagoya Resolution of 1979.

Everyday leisure runs to karaoke, called KTV, mahjong, hot springs revived since 1999, and comics. The convenience store is part of daily life: the Wikipedia account counted 4,800 7-Eleven shops on 1 January 2009, one for every 4,786 people, and records them collecting parking fees, utility bills and fines for the government.