Pokemon GO may not be the phenomenon it was a couple of years ago, when virtually everyone was playing it, but the mobile game still has its share of die-hard fans. And 70-year-old Chen Sanyuan may just be the world’s most dedicated Pokemon GO player.

If you’ve checked out the Pokemon GO subreddit over the last couple of months, you may be familiar with the “hardcore pokemon hunter grandpa” from Taipei City, in Taiwan. Photos of him riding his customized pokemon-hunting bicycle have been doing the rounds on Reddit for a while, and every time a new one is posted, the bike appears to be getting crazier. Well, it’s not just appearances, Chen Sanyuan, the 70-year-old pokemon hunter is upgrading his bicycle every chance he gets. He currently has a whopping 9 smartphones – all connected to different Pokemon Go accounts – installed on the handlebar, as well as 9 power banks stored in a small basket, which allow him to hunt pokemons for around 20 hours at a time. Now that’s dedication!

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A cafe in Taiwan has been getting a lot of attention online for serving puppy-shaped ice-cream that most people describe as adorable and terrifying at the same time.

When you think about food, the first thing that probably comes to mind is taste, but the fact is that eating is a visual experience as well, and sometimes you can be put off by a dish, even though you know it is delicious. That’s kind of the vibe I’m getting from the puppy-shaped ice-cream served at the Sowing the Sweets cafe, in Taiwan. I’m sure it tastes good – it’s ice-cream, after all – but at the same time I find the idea of digging into this realistic puppy with a spoon disturbing and morbid.

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Every year, more than a million pigeons die while competing in Taiwan’s controversial pigeon sea races, a series of grueling events in which young birds are shipped far out to sea, released in the middle of nowhere and forced to fly home. According to several reports from animal rights organizations, less than 1% of them make it back to land.

The small island of Taiwan hosts more pigeon racing events than any other country in the world. A reported 500,000 Taiwanese race pigeons every year, competing for billions of New Taiwan dollars in prize money. Pigeon racing is such a big business that the National Pingtung University of Science and Technology once introduced an optional course on it, which proved very popular with both young and old pigeon racers. However, important notions taught during this course, like injury prevention and the use of performance enhancing drugs fly out the window during Taiwan’s seasonal sea races.

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A female candidate for a local position in Taipei, Taiwan, recently became the butt of social media jokes, after people noticed that she looked nothing like the woman on her campaign posters.

The world of politics is no stranger to image editing software, as many politicians turn to programs like Photoshop to make themselves look better in campaign posters. However, PR people sometimes overdo it to the point where the editing is obvious even to the untrained eye. And then there are cases like that of Wang Zhiya, a politician running for a position on Taipei’s City Council, whose campaign posters look absolutely nothing like her.

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A Taiwanese man recently had his petition for divorce approved  by the New Taipei City District Court after claiming psychological torture due to his ex-wife’s hygiene habits, or lack thereof. The woman, surnamed Lin, allegedly bathed just once a year and only occasionally washed her hair or brushed her teeth.

The unnamed plaintiff said that Lin’s hygiene was questionable at the time they were dating when she bathed weekly, but that her behavior worsened after their wedding. Her weekly showers became monthly showers, then biannual, and when she started bathing only once a year, he just couldn’t take it anymore. The man said that due to Lin’s unsanitary habits they only had sex once a year, which prevented the couple from producing any children in their decade-long marriage.

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A Taiwanese dentist was recently ordered to pay $1 million to his mother in order to honor a contract that he had signed growing up, in which he agrees to pay 60 percent of his net profits until he can cover the cost of his upbringing and education.

The mother, known only as “Luo”, had to raise her two boys by herself, after divorcing her husband. At one point she became worried that despite all her sacrifices, her children would fail to look after her in her old age, so she decided to get some insurance. In 1997, when her sons were studying to become dentists, she asked them to sign a contract which clearly stipulated that they agreed to pay her part of their earnings until they covered the sum of roughly $1.7 million, as compensation for the money she had spent on their studies and upbringing. They both did, but one of them failed to honor the deal, so the mother took him to court.

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Paul Ferrell, a British ex-pat who has been living in Taiwan for the last 13 years, recently decided to show everyone how much he loved the small Asian country by getting a tattoo of its Chinese name on his forehead and its green independence flag inked on his chin.

Ferrell became the talk of the town in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, where he owns a popular bar, after getting the unusual tattoos inked on his face. He claims to have made the “rash decision” after a night of heavy drinking and a passionate discussion about Taiwan’s independence. The British ex-pat recently told reporters that he was inspired by his love for Taiwan, but insists that he would not have gone through with his impulse, had he not been so drunk at the time.

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Lure Hsu, a 41-year-old interior designer and fashion blogger, had already been attracting lots of attention online for her incredibly youthful looks, but people recently discovered that eternal youth runs in her family. Lure’s two sisters, 36-year-old Sharon, and 40-year old FayFay, both look like they are in their early 20s, and their 63-year-old mother looks like their older sister.

Just when people were starting to come to terms with the fact that Lure Hsu is actually in her 40s, photos of her sisters and mother starting showing up in Taiwanese media, and everyone lost their minds once again. The four Hsu women are now being called “the family of frozen ages” by the media in their country, while some people claim that they must be descendants of vampires. Truth be told, they do all look suspiciously young for their age.

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A hot-pot restaurant in Taipei, Taiwan, recently got a lot of attention online after photos of young bikini-clad waitresses serving and interacting with customers went viral.

The hot-pot restaurant business in Taiwan and mainland China is very competitive, and it’s very hard for newcomers to get an edge by relying solely on the quality of the food and impeccable service. So the owners of ‘Fresh Feast’, a new restaurant that opened in the Songshan district of Taipei, decided that they needed some extreme marketing in order to get the word out about their eatery and attract customers. For the grand opening, they hired five good-looking models and had them serve customers dressed only in skimpy bikinis.

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Taiwan recently banned euthanizing abandoned animals in shelters, a law believed to have been prompted by the shocking suicide of a young veterinarian, in May 2016. 31-year-old Chien Chih-cheng injected herself with euthanasia drugs, after becoming extremely disturbed by the large number of animals she had to put down.

Chien Chih-cheng was the director of of an animal shelter in Taoyuan’s Sinwu District. She had chosen to work at the shelter because of her love for animals, and her colleagues remember that she “often worked overtime, rarely took a proper lunch break, and sacrificed her holidays to give the dogs more attention and make their lives better.” After graduating from one of Taiwan’s top university with the highest score in a civil service examination, Chien could have opted for a number of desk jobs, but she chose to dedicate her life to helping abandoned animals and getting them adopted by new families. But her job also required her to euthanize the animals that didn’t get adopted after a certain period of time, and this took a heavy toll on the young animal lover, especially after animal rights activists accused her of killing hundreds of abandoned dogs.

“Some animal welfare activists have unleashed relentless attacks on the Sinwu shelter and Chien was a target of those attacks,” Taoyuan City Councilor Wang Hao-yu wrote on Facebook last year. “She was even described as a ‘butcher.’ For a young woman who chose to work at the shelter because of her love for animals and whose duties involved euthanizing stray animals every day, those abuses were like stabs to the heart.”

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For hundreds of years, fishermen in Taiwan have been catching sardines with the help of fiery stick held over the edge of a boat. The fish are so attracted to the light that they jump out of the water and into the nets of the fishermen.

Fire fishing is as simple as it is mesmerizing. Fishing boats head out to sea during the night, and light up a bamboo stick covered with sulfuric soil at one end to create a bright flame. The sulfur dissolves in the water and the gas produced then flashes with fire. Drawn to the light spectacle, sardines jump out of the water by the hundreds at a time and end up in the fishermen’s nets. Sulfuric fire fishing was developed during the period of Japanese Rule and is now practiced only in the Jinshan sulfur harbor.

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If you ever happen to visit Taiwan, you might be greeted to the sight of scantily-clad women in neon-lit glass kiosks by roadsides, waiting for men to pull over. Well, they’re not what you think!

These women are ‘Betel nut girls’ who peddle small snacks of tasty, stimulative betel nuts wrapped in betel leaves. They dress provocatively to attract potential buyers, but nuts is pretty much the only thing they sell.

The main roads are filled with around 60,000 such phone booth-style kiosks; they’re so much a part of the nation’s identity that they’re actually featured on old tourist guides. The women who operate the stalls are usually from poorer families, but according to news reports, the job pays more than housekeeping, waiting tables and other conventional jobs.

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Unwilling to accept that he was stood up, a Taiwanese man has reportedly been waiting for his date to show up for the last two decades! 47-year-old Ah Ji is now a permanent fixture at Tainan train station, where the love of his life promised to meet him all those years ago. It’s unclear whether the girl in question was his lover, or if they had arranged to meet for their first date, all we know is that he went to the station expecting to see her, and has never left since.

In the initial years Ah Ji was always seen hovering over a large staircase, as though ready to greet someone. After a few years of waiting he moved to a side door next to the exit station, from where he stares at passengers’ faces every day. The man is so heartbroken that he has taken to a life of hunger and homelessness at the station.

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A bizarre new dog grooming trend in Taiwan has dog owners giving their pet pooches square or round haircuts. Canine hairdressers all over Taipei are up to date on the special technique required for these eccentric makeovers.

“It came about because people were always looking for more impressive haircuts, and somebody came up with the idea of shaping the dog like a hedge,” parlour owner Tain Yeh says. It started with a few people opting for these haircuts and sharing their pets’ photographs online, after which the trend caught on. Thousands of pet owners are now approaching salons, asking for their dogs’ hair to be cut in geometric patterns. Some are actually doing it simply to gain more likes and shares!

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Chen Hongzhi, from Hsinchu county, in north-western Taiwan, suffers from a unique condition – he can’t remember anything for more than five minutes. The 25-year-old literally has to start his life from scratch every day. So he writes down every single thing about himself in a diary, in order to keep track of everything that goes on around him.

Hongzhi’s amnesia is the result of a serious head injury sustained during a car accident when he was 17 years old. After spending months in intensive care, his body finally recovered but the span of his memory was reduced to only five minutes. This means that he continually forgets pretty much everything that has happened between five and ten minutes ago.

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