Culture of Taiwan

The culture of Taiwan is a blend of Han Chinese and indigenous Taiwanese cultures.^[1] Despite the overwhelming Chinese cultural influence and minority indigenous Taiwanese cultural influence, Japanese culture has significantly influenced Taiwanese culture as well.^[2] The common socio-political experience in Taiwan gradually developed into a sense of Taiwanese cultural identity and a feeling of Taiwanese cultural awareness, which has been widely debated domestically.^[3][4][5]

Reflecting the continuing controversy surrounding the political status of Taiwan, politics continues to play a role in the conception and development of a Taiwanese cultural identity, especially in the prior dominant frame of a Taiwanese and Chinese dualism. In recent years, the concept of Taiwanese multiculturalism has been proposed as a relatively apolitical alternative view, which has allowed for the inclusion of mainlanders and other minority groups into the continuing re-definition of Taiwanese culture as collectively held systems of meaning and customary patterns of thought and behavior shared by the people of Taiwan.^[6][7]