Taiwanese Threads user ChunChun Chen posted two photos from Jungfrau in Switzerland. She is standing in bright snow beneath a cloudless blue sky, with a rocky Alpine ridge behind her. A friend looked at the scene and asked whether she was at Qigu Salt Mountain in Tainan.
Qigu Salt Mountain (七股鹽山) was originally a pile from the former Qigu Salt Field. Taiwan’s Southwest Coast National Scenic Area says the salt compacted into a hard mound after years in place. The former industrial site later became a visitor attraction, giving people in Taiwan their own familiar image of a white mountain under strong sunlight.
The replies quickly expanded the comparison into architecture around the world. One traveler said a photo from the Taj Mahal had been mistaken for Tainan’s Chimei Museum. Another posted a town in France after a friend insisted it was Tainan Station. A stop near Machu Picchu became Wulai Old Street, while an Austrian museum was recast as Asia University in Taichung.
Natural landscapes received the same treatment. Canada became Taroko Gorge, Machu Picchu became Cingjing Farm, Hawaii became Kenting, and Turkey’s white terraces at Pamukkale became the Qigu salt fields. A Maldives overwater villa prompted one commenter’s mother to ask whether the area was flooded. The comparison also worked in reverse: Penghu was mistaken for the Maldives, while a trip to Jiaming Lake was jokingly presented as Switzerland.
Taken together, the replies turned one vacation joke into a collective game of remapping the world. The humor comes from treating Taiwan as the default reference point, with every distant landmark potentially recognizable as somewhere closer to home.