Russians in Taiwan form a small community. As of August 2021, statistics of

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the no ...

National Immigration Agency The National Immigration Agency of the Ministry of the Interior (NIA; ) is the statutory agency under the Ministry of Interior of the Republic of China (Taiwan) which is responsible for immigration, entry and exit security, border services and r ...

(NIA) showed 593

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-ei ...

ns holding valid Alien Resident Certificates. Informal estimates claim that their population may be as large as one thousand people. In history, the most well-known Russian in Taiwan was Chiang Fang-liang, wife of president

Chiang Ching-kuo Chiang Ching-kuo (27 April 1910 – 13 January 1988) was a politician of the Republic of China after its retreat to Taiwan. The eldest and only biological son of former president Chiang Kai-shek, he held numerous posts in the government ...

History

Russians had visited Taiwan before the 20th century. The Chinese translation of a book written in 1875 was published in 2023, called ''Excursion to Formosa. Ethnographic journey of P. I. Ibis'' (russian: Экскурсия на Формозу. Этнографическое путешествие П. И. Ибиса, italic=yes/ zh, t=1875．福爾摩沙之旅). It introduces the life story of Russian navy officer Pavel Ibis and his investigation notes on the indigenous people of Formosa. He participated in Askold's circumnavigation of the world, came to Taiwan alone for inspection in 1875, and published two journal articles, which were included in the Chinese translation. The Russian military officer Terentiev (В. А. Терентьев) came to Taiwan before Ibis came to Taiwan to collect information on the

Mudan incident The Mudan incident of 1871 (、 Japanese: 宮古島島民遭難事件、 Japanese: 琉球漂流民殺害事件) was the massacre of 54 Ryukyuan sailors in Qing-era Taiwan who wandered into the central part of Taiwan after their ship shipwrec ...

in 1874 and completed ''Formosa and the Japanese Conquest of Taiwan''. Some Russians from Shanghai and

Xinjiang Xinjiang, SASM/GNC: ''Xinjang''; zh, c=, p=Xīnjiāng; formerly romanized as Sinkiang (, ), officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC), located in the northwes ...

fled the establishment of the

People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...

and resettled in

in 1949. One cultural institution among the Russian community in Taiwan that survives from those days is the Astoria Confectionery and Cafe near

Taipei Railway Station Taipei Main Station () is a railway and metro station in Taipei, Taiwan. It is served by Taiwan High Speed Rail, the Taiwan Railways Administration, and the Taipei Metro. It is also connected through underground passageways to the terminal sta ...

, the first Russian-style eatery on the whole island. Founded in 1949 by five Russian émigrés from Shanghai, it continues operating today with an early local business partner as the sole owner. In recent years, the Representative Office for the Moscow-Taipei Coordination Commission on Economic and Cultural Cooperation has been active in promoting academic and professional exchanges between the two countries. According to NIA statistics, 174 Russian students studied at institutions in Taiwan, and 20 were employed as instructors; 21 were

housewives A housewife (also known as a homemaker or a stay-at-home mother/mom/mum) is a woman whose role is running or managing her family's home—housekeeping, which includes caring for her children; cleaning and maintaining the home; making, buying an ...

, 28 were children under 15 years of age, and the remaining 120 engaged in other types of work. Unlike in other European communities, men are relatively scarce, with a

sex ratio The sex ratio (or gender ratio) is usually defined as the ratio of males to females in a population. As explained by Fisher's principle, for evolutionary reasons this is typically about 1:1 in species which reproduce sexually. Many species dev ...

of 1.36 women for every man.

References

{{Russian diaspora

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

Russian diaspora in China

History

See also

References