When I arrived in Taiwan I was shocked by the heat. Then I looked at the map and realised that if I was back in Australia a similar climate there would lie on the tropic of Capricorn which would put it in the Whitsundays or Heron Island even, and on the same circle as Madagaska or New Caledonia.
Taiwan is located on the the Tropic of Cancer
If you are interested the circumference of the tropic of cancer is about 3/5’s of the circumference of the equator, but finding its actual circumference is a difficult question. It depends on the time and the date and whether its the true or mean obliquity of the ecliptic that's used.
On January 1st at 0 hours 0 minutes calculated at true obliquity and 23 degrees 26 minutes it was 22859 kilometres.
Climatically Taiwan is quite similar to Hawaii.
But Honolulu is about 8200 km away from Taipei. Perhaps that’s why for Chinese and Japanese its been such a desirable location.
Prior to around 400 years ago Taiwan’s people consisted of around 14 Tribes of non Han Chinese aboriginals. These were the great seafaring adventurers that went as far north as Okinawa and as far south as the Philippines trading pearls jade and red coral . Later the tea loving people from Fujien settled here, they spoke what is known as Taiwanese. Which was the language of Fujien. Then came the Portugese and they named it Formosa(meaning a beautiful place) :Chiang Ka Shek took over and brought an influx of Mandarin speaking Han Chinese from the Beijing area . Finally Japan ruled Taiwan for 50 years and everyone had to learn Japanese , this lasted until around 1950 and corresponded with the end of the 2nd world war.
With an increasing trend of globalisation the latest invader has been England or more specifically the English language and American companies. Less Taiwanese people now speak Taiwanese and the aboriginal languages are hardly being taught at all. Some people are concerned that some languages like the language of the Amis people might be lost altogether.
