After a year of closure for renovations, the National Museum of Taiwan History is back. And what a year it was, filled with border closures, lockdowns, and quarantine measures keeping people around the world apart. Even in Taiwan, so far spared the worst of COVID-19, social distancing is in force. The mass isolation of the past year is the inspiration for one of the museum’s first comeback exhibitions in this year—an examination of isolation, both physical and metaphorical, through Taiwan’s history. The exhibit features five case studies of people being cut off. The last in particular, an examination of how the physically and mentally ill were once placed in special facilities, is particularly timely. Joining me today for a look at isolation in Taiwan’s past is museum curator Shih Wen-cheng.