Five years of Fun

-- By Courtney Donovan Smith Translated by Mei Lee

Five years ago, newly launched Taiwan Fun was an exotic animal in the Taipei media scene. Never had Taipei seen a full-blooded city guide, nor a bilingual publication outside of the language study world. Initial reactions were confused. Was it for foreigners or Taiwanese? Why a pull-out map? Why put listings, articles and what's on information for places that aren't advertisers and didn't pay for it (are these guys crazy!)? Why would a free magazine pay writers? Why are pages listed as 'special advertising feature' aren't all articles advertising? And why is the company based in, of all places, Taichung? Today these questions are no longer need asking.

We started life in Taichung as far back as 1994, albeit as a small newsletter. By 2001, Taichung's Compass Magazine was a fixture in the local, cosmopolitan, out-and-about scene of Taiwanese and foreigners who shared a passion for a good time out on the town. Visitors from Taipei regularly started snapping up copies of the magazine, and ever increasing numbers wrote, called or approached us to encourage us to create a similar magazine for Taipei. One regular Taipei reader became our first Taipei advertiser, Michel Blanc's original Tavern.

What to call our new publication? In the wake of Netscape Navigator in the late 1990's, domain names related to navigation--such as Compass--were unavailable. Planning to include details from around the island, we struck on the easy to spell and easy to remember Taiwanfun.com. Unable to match our original magazine name to the our domain name, we were now able to match our domain name to our new Taipei magazine.
Like all new ventures, the early days brought many challenges. In fact, our timing was terrible; a whole string of macro-economic shocks and major downturns in the domestic economy awaited in the coming years. SARS brought us and many of our supporters to the brink of disaster a little over one year after starting. Some Taichung-conceived features didn't work as well in Taipei, such as the tea/coffee scene section and our coupons. But it was the lessons learned that made the magazine a better product for our readers and supporters.

Today, thanks to our fantastic legion of readers, partners and our nearly 50 supporting advertisers (up from three in issue #1) we're providing more for the community than ever before. Our words echo across the airwaves and over half a million people visit us online every month. The Taipei County government has graced us with a section in the magazine to get you city folks out of town. We're at parties, at concerts, at restaurant openings and at galleries. Wherever our readers go for fun, we're there!

The current Taiwan Fun team is the strongest ever. Many readers and supporters know Taiwan Fun's ubiquitous and irrepressible Josie Wu personally, as she is always where it's at! No doubt you have read articles by long time contributors Shanzi Chen, Cat Thomas, Claire Tyrell and Rebekah Godfrey, ogled the yummy photos taken by Frans Kunst or Julia Koprak or laughed at the comic stylings of cartoonist TKO (Tim O'Brien). Many thanks to them, our newer contributors and to contributors past.
It's been a great five years and, from the Taiwan Fun and Compass Group crew, a very heartfelt THANK YOU! See in five more years!