Cultural
Because of the Taiwan's extensive rail network (including many now defunct industrial narrow gauge lines which provided passenger service to rural areas), railways in Taiwan often have a romantic connotation, especially amongst the older generation who remember growing up when rail travel was the primary means of transportation between cities in simpler (and less prosperous) times. Many remember leaving their hometowns to attend school in far away cities by train or leaving via train to perform their compulsory military service. This nostalgia has been capitalized upon in recent years through the introduction of various items such as "nostalgia box lunches" (懷舊便當), claimed to be authentic copies of the box lunches that were once served aboard trains.
There is also a sizable network of railway fans in Taiwan which has increased with the recent trend of Taiwanization.
Read more about this topic: Rail Transport In Taiwan
Famous quotes containing the word cultural:
“If in the earlier part of the century, middle-class children suffered from overattentive mothers, from being mothers only accomplishment, todays children may suffer from an underestimation of their needs. Our idea of what a child needs in each case reflects what parents need. The childs needs are thus a cultural football in an economic and marital game.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)
“The rumor of a great city goes out beyond its borders, to all the latitudes of the known earth. The city becomes an emblem in remote minds; apart from the tangible export of goods and men, it exerts its cultural instrumentality in a thousand phases.”
—In New York City, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“By Modernism I mean the positive rejection of the past and the blind belief in the process of change, in novelty for its own sake, in the idea that progress through time equates with cultural progress; in the cult of individuality, originality and self-expression.”
—Dan Cruickshank (b. 1949)