ic events included the 1895 Sino-Japanese War, World War II, the February 28 incident, and the all too infamous Korean War, which took such a physical toll on the many countries in that area of the world. (www.gio.gov.tw)
             The total population of Taiwan was 22.6 million as of June 2003. Its average population
             density is 623 people per square km. It ranks as the second-most densely populated area in the world. For every 1000 people on the island, 11 are born, and 6 dies. There is a 104:100 men-to-women ratio in Taiwan. There are more people under the age of 15 on the island than people over the age of 65. Men on average live to be 73 years old, while women live to be 79. The two most populated cities in Taiwan are Taipei, its capital city with 2.63 million, and Kaohsiung with 1.51 million. Taiwan is almost totally made up of Han Chinese, with the remaining amount of people divided into eleven other tribes. The Han Chinese or "Taiwanese" consist of two groups: the Hakka of the Guangdong Province, and the Southern Fujianese, from the Fujian province of China's southeastern region. The official language of Taiwan is Mandarin, based on the Beijing dialect. Southern Fujianese, often called Taiwanese and Hakka are also spoken on the island. (www.tecro.org)
             Taiwan is highly diversified in terms of religious faith, with the practice of Buddhism, Daoism, Christianity, Mormonism, the Unification Church, Islam, and Hinduism, as well as native sects such as Yiguandao and others. The island not only respects traditional faiths but also opens its arms to other types of religious thought from the outside. For the most part, the traditional religions practiced in Taiwan are Buddhism, Daoism, and folk religions; except for a small number of purely Buddhist temples, however, most of the island's traditional places of worship combine all three traditions.
             Today all sorts of different kinds of deities are worshipped in the same temple, forming one...