Taiwan Today
Date: May 13, 2016

National Taiwan Museum and EasyCard Corp. jointly released May 11 new transit cards featuring depictions of the Yellow Tiger Flag, the banner of the short-lived Republic of Formosa. (CNA)

A set of transit cards featuring depictions of the Yellow Tiger Flag, the banner of the short-lived Republic of Formosa established in 1895 to resist Japan’s colonization of Taiwan, was jointly released May 11 by Taipei City-based National Taiwan Museum and EasyCard Corp., operator of the capital’s smartcard payment system.

The set of three smartcards was issued in the wake of the Ministry of Culture’s announcement April 19 that a reproduction of the flag in the NTM’s collection had been named a national treasure, Taiwan’s highest designation for cultural antiquities.

Only three copies of the original Yellow Tiger Flag are known to have been produced. One of these, believed to have been flown at a coastal fort in Keelung City on Taiwan’s northern tip, was taken to Japan after the republic fell. The item in the NTM’s collection is a replication of that flag produced by Japanese painter Untei Takahashi in 1909 for the institution, which was set up the previous year during Japanese colonial rule (1895-1945) as Taiwan’s first modern museum.     [FULL  STORY]