Silver Prize of the 5th Cyber-Island Photography Contest
Photographer: Qing-Quan Lin
Date and place photos were taken: 2006-2010; Fo Guang Shan

National Sun Yet-sen University Professor Ning-Yuen Wu stated in Chinese Buddhist Studies, 43:11, page 48-49 (1999.11): the modern society brings us the convenience, but it also gives us worries and problems that belong only to this era. They include “absence of direction”－vast diversity of thoughts and opinions, with for and against views on everything, has resulted in lost rules and standards; “absence of motivation” .....

Gold Prize of the 5th Cyber-Island Photography Contest
Photographer: Jun-Wei Hou
Date and place photos were taken: 2007; Yunlin and Chiayi County area. This is an uncanny experience of travel and photography. For most of us, this is an experience which we are all familiar with but unwilling to witness. It could happen before the sun rises or in the afternoon. The destination may be located in the deep of a mountain higher than 1000 meters, or, in an isolated small town in the countryside. The crying of the hired “professional daughter” of the dead and the melody of elegy together froze the air into a weighty and  .....

The Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines was established in 1994 as a specialist museum founded on the collection and display of artifacts of Taiwan’s indigenous peoples. It is dedicated to promoting mutual understanding between different ethnic groups, through careful research, preservation and explanation of the essence of Aboriginal cultures. Achievement of these aims of mutual respect and appreciation will help to create a harmonious and gentle society. The museum was originally based on the donation by its founder and chairman Safe C.F. Lin of his personal collection of Taiwanese Aboriginal artifacts acquired over many years in keeping with his desire to put something back into the community. By sharing his treasures with the whole of society he hoped to contribute to the ideal, “In loving our native place we must cherish each other’s cultures.”.....

The Kuroshio Current is the western boundary current of the subtropical gyre in the North Pacific Ocean. It flows to the north along the eastern coast of Taiwan and finally enters into the southern region of Japan. The waters off eastern Taiwan are strongly influenced by the Kuroshio Current, where the rich, fishery resources of Taiwan’s eastern coast are a direct result of that. Among such abundance resources, fishes have been those most appreciated by the eastern Taiwan people. Over the past 30 years, the Eastern Marine Biology Research Center of Fisheries Research Institute has conserved over 3,000 specimens of the fish fauna off eastern Taiwan. The Research Center has become a signature fish museum, offering a collection of numerous fish fauna and Kuroshio fisheries culture endemic to the eastern Taiwan coast. .....

Where does the literature in Taiwan come from? Of course it is cultivated more from tangible daily life rather than from the imagination or dreams. On the one hand, it comes from the wisdom of traditional agricultural society; on the other hand, it comes from the pursuit of modernization. These two great inspirations can be represented respectively by the water buffalo and the railway. The water buffalo, which plowed the land without complaints, plowed earth, is a spiritual representation of local culture. The railway implies vast distances and room for expansion, and in the 19th and 20th centuries it was also a symbol for connectedness with the larger world. .....