TAIPEI — A wall of iPhone photographers crowd around a glass case in the National Palace Museum snapping pictures of one of Taiwan’s greatest treasures — a cabbage. But this is no ordinary cabbage. In fact, the Jadeite Cabbage has been called the “most famous masterpiece” in the entire museum and was recently chosen by the
Taiwanese as the “most important item” in the museum’s entire collection.
Quite an honour, considering Taipei’s National Palace Museum — Taiwan’s equivalent of France’s Louvre — holds
some of China’s greatest historic artifacts, most of which were brought here for safekeeping in 1949 by legendary leader Chiang Kai-shek, whose Kuomintang were driven out of the mainland after losing China’s Civil War to Mao
Zedong’s Communists. The Chinese have asked for most of the items to be returned, including the Jadeite Cabbage, but the Taiwanese refuse. Ironically, most of the people I see huddled around the case are mostly
mainlanders — the Chinese flood into Taiwan thanks to a special tourism arrangement negotiated between Taipei
and Beijing.
The Jadeite Cabbage, which is the size of a mini iPad, is a
stunning piece of art. The two-tone jade sculpture is shaped like a Chinese cabbage head with insects — a locust and katydid — camouflaged in the leaves.

Above: Even Taipei's largest sky scrapper, 101, is environmentally friendly these days.

One legend has it that the cabbage was a popular allegory of purity and fertility. The common cabbage was carved from an imperfect piece of jade and bestowed as a dowry for the Chinese concubine Consort Jin, who was betrothed to the second last Qing Dynasty Emperor Guangxu.
These days, the jade cabbage also serves as a symbol of Taiwan’s commitment to eco-renewal, a movement the likes of which this island — nicknamed Formosa (beautiful island) by passing Portuguese sailors — has never seen.
Taiwan is indeed blessed with splendid mountains, beautiful rivers and a diverse ecosystem. I spent a week scouring shorelines, mountains and the country’s eco-friendly capital Taipei, inhaling a local mantra etched in eco.
Taiwan’s eco-tide is fuelled by industrialists, government officials and savvy millennials determined to return the island nation to its green roots.  
Solar powered scooters zip past me and the clean streets of Taipei glisten with nary a garbage bin to be found.
 I’m told Taipei has garbage pick-ups five nights a week and that there are 4,000 garbage pick-up spots designated across the sprawling city.
Dr. Eugene Chien, who founded the Taiwan Institute for Sustainable Energy (TAISE), is the one leading the eco charge in Taiwan. A career politician before he established the private, non-profit TAISE in 2007,  Chien feels Taiwan, despite its compact size — three times larger than the GTA — is a strong leader on sustainable initiatives.
“We must change. We cannot wait,” Chien says candidly during a meeting in Taipei, where he outlined Taiwan’s national green initiatives,  involving everything from waste management and transportation to air quality and marine conservation.      
Taiwan has come a long way from the days when it was called “Garbage Island” thanks to it dependence on coal and fossil fuels to power homes and plants.
Now the island nation embraces solar, wind and alternative energies. And one of the biggest side benefits to the eco revolution is that more and more tourists, conscious of sustainable development, are being attracted to Taiwan for vacations.

  Left: The Jadeite Cabbage is one of Taiwan's greatest treasures.

I even see Taiwan’s commitment to a greener environment at some of its greatest landmarks, like:

Taipei 101

The iconic building is the cornerstone of Taipei’s corporate-rich Xinyi District and proudly boasts being “The World’s Tallest Green Building since 2011” which I read on a sign I see hanging in a lobby fringed with bird’s nest fern, begonia formosana and Taiwan ivy. There’s also video consoles boasting the skyscraper’s eco-achievements — like 100 per cent of the rainwater collected is used for the building’s irrigation. A self-guided digital tour also introduces visitors to Taipei 101’s other environmental sustainability practices.

Beitou Library

This green treasure doubles as Taiwan’s first green public library and is situated in northern Taipei City along a holiday oasis of hot spring resorts in the green-fringed Beitou Park. The library building stands like a deep bowed cruise ship amid century-old trees and locals like to drift to this urban oasis in the afternoon to escape Taipei’s heat and humidity.
Over 300 years ago, this area was a blistering boil of tree-less terrain overpowered by sulphur and smoke.
Dubbed “Patauw” — meaning “home of the witches” — by the early Ketagalan residents, few dared to trek here.
Today, however, tourists flock to this heaven on Earth.
Beitou Library, with its vast depository of over 63,000 books, dedicates a collection to ecology and conservation and has been a crowd pleaser since opening in 2006.

Hair O’Right  
Everything’s “O’Right” as the clouds part and the sun shines when I arrive at Hair O’Right, a manufacturer of green shampoo in Taoyuan City — O’Right is the first company in the world to produce a carbon-neutral shampoo.
Taoyuan City, a short drive southwest from Taipei, is home to 27 tourist factories — factory tourism is an organized visit to a factory to see things being manufactured and it’s very popular in Taiwan.
There I meet Steven Ko, founder of Hair O’Right International and his executive assistant Nathaniel Dick, a fluent Mandarin-speaking North Carolinian transplant who leads me on a Willy Wonka-style tour of the factory.
“The money we earn goes back into product innovation. We do everything ourselves,” Ko says about his successful enterprise, which is celebrating 15 years of operation in 2018.
Hair O’Right’s mascot is a friendly polar bear. The talking robot stuffed animal, which holds a bottle of the company’s product, is nicknamed “Mr. Bear” and greets visitors when they enter the plant.  
Eco-consumers can’t seem to get enough of the world’s first blooming shampoo called Tree in the Bottle. The bottle, which is 100 per cent biodegradable, even has seeds from native trees embedded in the bottle’s bottom.  
On top of the plant, I visit the Sky Farm — it features a massive wind turbine and a solar panel farm.  
“Our goal when we built the facility is to have the wildlife that was here before, still be here afterwards,” says Nathaniel.
“Sustainability is the future market. This is the future,” he adds.
The future has arrived in Taiwan.