01
Ask
Start with one simple question: Why Taiwan?
WhyTaiwan? Project
What if we asked, “Why Taiwan?” and a million people answered?
One person. One story. Together, a bigger picture of Taiwan.
WhyTaiwan? is an independent storytelling project exploring how personal experiences of Taiwan can be captured, shared and passed from person to person, then grow into something much larger.
Taiwan is full of stories. Most are never captured.
People come to Taiwan to visit, study, work, build businesses, join families, explore, return and sometimes stay. Almost everyone carries away experiences they tell friends, family and colleagues.
WhyTaiwan? creates a simple way for those first-person experiences to be recorded and passed on. It is not one official story about Taiwan. It is a growing collection of individual stories, each told from one person’s perspective.
The idea starts small.
A few minutes, a few short questions and one next invitation. The model is designed around behaviour simple enough to repeat person to person.
02
Capture
Answer a few short questions in your own words.
03
Share
Give the story a chance to reach someone else.
04
Invite
Think of one more person with a Taiwan story.
More than a collection of videos.
At enough scale, the stories could help people discover Taiwan through voices they relate to and trust, while also creating a living record of how Taiwan is experienced by people from many backgrounds.
Recurring themes may eventually surface useful questions and patterns worth exploring. No individual story represents Taiwan as a whole. The value is in the growing range of perspectives, not in claiming one definitive answer.
Big idea. Practical next step.
WhyTaiwan? is currently being built and tested from Taipei. The focus is learning what makes participation easy, respectful and worthwhile, improving the model, and expanding only when the fundamentals work.
Why I’m building it.
I first came to Taiwan as a visitor, later returned to study and work, and eventually built a life here. Over the years, I kept noticing how many people carry a very personal answer to the question “Why Taiwan?”
The project grew from a simple thought: instead of telling people what to think about Taiwan, create an easy way for people to share what Taiwan meant to them, in their own words.
The ambition can be large while the next action stays small: ask one person, capture one story and help it travel.
— Troy Abbey
Have a Taiwan story?
WhyTaiwan? is collecting personal stories from people who have experienced Taiwan. Share yours in your own words in just a few minutes.
Share Your Taiwan Story