Geography of Taiwan Geography of Taiwan Taiwan, formerly known as Formosa, is an island in East Asia; located some off the southeastern coast of mainland China across the Taiwan Strait. It has an area of , which includes other nearby islands such as Penghu (). The East China Sea lies to the north, the Philippine Sea to the east, the Luzon Strait directly to the south and the South China Sea to the southwest. The island makes up 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China, which is also known as "Taiwan". Taiwan is a tilted fault block, characterized by the
Island of the Blue Dolphins one of the Channel Islands off the California coast, before being discovered and taken to the mainland in 1853 by sea otter hunter George Nidever and his crew. She is on record under the Christian name Juana Maria, assigned to her by the Santa Barbara Mission where she eventually was brought. No one alive spoke her language. According to Nidever, the Lone Woman lived in a structure supported by whale ribs and stashed useful objects around the island. In 2009, University of Oregon archaeologist Jon Erlandson found two old redwood boxes eroding from an island sea cliff, with a whale