One of the best things about Taiwan.... Xmas Cards

…is cheap, high quality Christmas cards!

Every year, there’s a fantastic selection, many of which put to shame the shlock put out by the likes of Hallmark. Greetings cards here also cost between 1/3 - 1/10th of what one would pay in the US. Plus shipping costs are reasonable.

In the past, I’ve only sent out 10-15 cards each year. This year I’m going nuts and will send out 50+ cards. :slight_smile:

Yes, I agree! I love the Christmas cards selection here. Everyone gets a different card and they’re so cute too. Birthday cards are fantastic too.

i SOOOOOOOO beg to differ.
what i wouldn’t give for a Hallmark store in Taipei…
finding a decent birthday/christmas card is a huge headache here…
i even miss having a card section in the drug store… browsing through the FreshInk or shoebox cards just for a good giggle.

The Eslite stationery store on Wen Lin Road sells Hallmark cards. While you are begging to differ, you may enjoy paying 95 NT and up per card. :wink:

Gubo…thanks for the heads up. I will join you in increasing my cards sent this Christmas Season! :bravo: :smiley:

Right on. :slight_smile:

I should mention that a lot of the really cheap (10-15 NT each) cards fall into the ‘cutsy’ category and are aimed at younger folks. Granted, this is where you’ll find some truly funky and creative stuff. Personally, I LOVE the use of a variety of paper types, inks, folding techniques, etc, so I buy a lot of cards from this lot. You can also find some of the more standard message cards in the cheap lot, but with a bit of flair thrown in for good measure. Plus, a lot of these contain a blank card inside, so you can write whatever message you want. Personally, I prefer this over a canned, melodramatic, mushy message written by who knows who in a Hallmark greetings card sweatshop in lower Indiana. :wink:

If you want something a bit ‘older’ and more ‘sophisticated’ in a traditional sense, those are also out there. Hallmark type cards can be had for 35-40 NT each. The selection I bought were 35 NT each, with an elegant design and use of multiple ink types on high quality paper stock to create a very attractive effect. Plus they were slightly oversized. (An equivalent Hallmark card would cost around 120 NT.)

By the way, the Eslite I mentioned on Wen Lin (near the Shihlin MRT station) has a decent selection of all varieties of cards.

ESLite on the 10th and 11th floors of the Chung Yo department store in Taichung has a good range of nice quality cards. I didn’t see any that were as much as 95NT – most of them were far cheaper (around 20NT IIRC). Some of them have what looks like hand-made paper, some have intricate cut-outs. Most of them would be far more expensive in the UK.

There are lots of cards that have some design references to Chinese New Year – some of these cards say “Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year”, some of them only the new year bit. I bought some of both – they all look good and I’ll write “Merry Christmas” inside anyway.

If you insist on getting cards with snow, Christmas trees, reindeer and all that, however, most of those ones are very cutesy.

What do you expect … after all, the Chinese invented paper.