Taiwan country guide — sources and map notes Snapshot date: 24 October 2026 Rebuild: python3 scripts/build-taiwan-maps.py Requires Python 3 and Shapely 2. All source geometry is checked in; no network or Python is needed by the application build. ADMINISTRATIVE DIVISIONS 22 first-level local governments: 6 special municipalities, 13 counties, 3 cities. Hsinchu City/County and Chiayi City/County are separate. Lienchiang County is labelled with Matsu for orientation; Kinmen and Penghu are included. Boundary source: geoBoundaries gbOpen TWN ADM1, boundaryID TWN-ADM1-90331920, representing 2017 divisions; published 2023, OpenStreetMap / Wambacher source. These 22 first-level divisions remain the current local-government structure. https://www.geoboundaries.org/api/current/gbOpen/TWN/ADM1/ https://github.com/wmgeolab/geoBoundaries/raw/9469f09/releaseData/gbOpen/TWN/ADM1/geoBoundaries-TWN-ADM1_simplified.geojson © OpenStreetMap contributors, Open Database Licence (ODbL) 1.0: https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright Snapshot: scripts/taiwan-admin-source.geojson. Shared boundaries are simplified together by Shapely coverage_simplify at 0.0001 degrees. City pins are approximate settlement centres of the 22 administrative seats, not municipal territories. The map follows administered coverage and does not resolve sovereignty claims. Remote South China Sea outposts are outside this administrative teaching map; the marine learning targets cover those waters without asserting ownership. INLAND WATERS OpenStreetMap geometry returned by Nominatim, 24 October 2026, © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0. Relation IDs and source names are retained in scripts/taiwan-inland-source.geojson: Sun Moon Lake: relation 3858334 Zhuoshui River: relation 10550044 Tamsui River system: relation 4549011 Gaoping River system: relation 10550167 Liwu River: relation 10579100 Queries: https://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/search?q=NAME&format=json&polygon_geojson=1&limit=1 Whole available relation geometries are retained, with 0.00002-degree simplification. Each river is a single connected mainstem. The Tamsui system includes Dahan headwaters; the Gaoping system includes Laonong headwaters. Those upper reaches have different local names; the notes state this explicitly. No river is cropped to a county, national boundary or opening camera. The lake keeps its whole mapped shoreline, including land holes. These are reference geometries, not live water levels, navigation or trail-access information. MARINE WATERS Natural Earth 1:10m geography_marine_polys and land, public domain: https://github.com/nvkelso/natural-earth-vector/tree/master/geojson https://www.naturalearthdata.com/about/terms-of-use/ Taiwan Strait, East China Sea, South China Sea, Philippine Sea, and the combined North/South Pacific retain whole geographic polygons, with worldwide land removed. Offshore land is simplified at 0.0004 degrees, seas at 0.0005 degrees; a small land margin prevents shading the shore. Taiwan's detailed division geometry additionally removes small islands not resolved by Natural Earth. Natural Earth's Luzon Strait label polygon is too small for a whole-strait answer. Its target instead uses an explicitly generalised teaching area between southern Taiwan (about 21.95 N) and northern Luzon (about 18.5 N), including the Batanes and Babuyan waters and cut away from islands. This is not an official hydrographic delimitation. Smaller straits own their water before the larger seas; the Pacific target excludes separately selectable marginal seas. Snapshot: scripts/taiwan-marine-source.geojson. Marine boundaries have no visible outlines and imply no maritime claims. The opening view remains on Taiwan and its offshore counties; it does not crop the underlying water geometry. READING AND QUIZZES Taiwan government: geography, economy and government https://www.taiwan.gov.tw/content_3.php https://www.taiwan.gov.tw/content_7.php National Human Rights Museum https://www.nhrm.gov.tw/w/nhrmEN Development of National Languages Act (equal language status, Articles 3–4) https://law.moj.gov.tw/ENG/LawClass/LawAll.aspx?pcode=H0170143 Ministry of Culture https://www.moc.gov.tw/en/ Congressional Research Service, Taiwan: Political and Security Issues https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF10275 National Parks Service (check current Taroko recovery and access advice) https://www.taiwan.nps.gov.tw/ Taiwan Tourism Administration https://eng.taiwan.net.tw/ Council of Indigenous Peoples (communities, languages and recognition) https://www.cip.gov.tw/en/index.html Population is rounded to about 23 million rather than presented as a live count. No fixed count of Indigenous peoples is tested, because legal recognition and community identity differ and recognition is evolving. Trade superlatives are replaced with enduring industry facts. The black bear is a subspecies; Jiufen’s claimed connection with Spirited Away is not presented as established fact. 80 existing question prompts are retained as matching keys in the reviewed patch file. Read-time corrections preserve lesson/question IDs and progress. The pre-change published questions are in scripts/fixtures/taiwan-questions.json. Every four-choice set has a longest/shortest difference of at most 8 Unicode characters; correct positions are evenly distributed (20 per position). Choice length balance is checked before publication and against the live page. PHOTOGRAPHS Ten distinct, existing Taiwan topic photographs are reused from src/lib/asian-facts-heroes.json (TW), with individual Commons source links, authors and licences displayed. The Taipei 101 photograph also serves as the banner: AngMoKio, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Taipei_101_2009_amk.jpg Images are served locally from /images/facts-asia/tw/. The linked Mandarin course teaches general Mandarin and uses simplified characters; Taiwan normally uses traditional characters and has many languages.