Hundreds of fans have packed more than a dozen outdoor beer bars in Taiwan's southern city of Tainan, their eyes glued to the TV screens broadcasting the 2010 World Cup soccer tournament.
In the capital city of Taipei, many restaurants have also been trying to ride the World Cup fever by setting up big-screen TVs to show live broadcasts and attract customers.
Media coverage of the tourney has increased dramatically in newspapers and on the TV news since May, and thousands of fans have been staying up to watch late-night live broadcasts since the tournament kicked off June 12.
The extensive coverage has largely eclipsed the scintillating performance of Lu Yen-hsun, who became the first Taiwanese tennis player to advance to the quarterfinal of the Wimbledon tennis tournament early Tuesday.
The phenomenon is unusual in the "soccer desert, " as Taiwan is called by local soccer fans, because soccer is a minor sport in Taiwan, where baseball and basketball are the most popular sports, and its national team ranks way down at 167 in the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) world rankings.
Taiwanese cable television operators carry limited soccer broadcasts of the top divisions such as the English Premier League and the European Champions League, but the ratings do not fare well due to lack of attention and the time difference.
That is why it's surprising to discover that World Cup matches have received relative success in Taiwan, where a 1.0 television rating is usually considered "above average" for any program.
"TV ratings of almost all the 10 p.m. games have surpassed 2.0 with a peak rating of 2.4, " said Su Chi-hui, a producer at Era Television, the exclusive local carrier of this year's World Cup competition. Su added that most of the games aired at 2: 30 a.m. have registered ratings of at least 0.8 percent.
"Keep in mind that those ratings were just for the group stage games, because the latest ratings have not yet been announced, " he added.
Viewership has been much better than the last World Cup four years ago when it was held in Germany, he went on. TV ratings at that time did not exceed 2.0 until the knockout stage of the final 16. Su said he expected the ratings to be even higher in the later stages of this year's cup.
But die-hard soccer fans who regularly follow the game dismissed the phenomenon of the "soccer madness every four years, " saying that the fad -- including the extensive media coverage and high TV ratings -- comes and goes quickly.
World Cup fever has become a norm, but is unrelated to the development of the game, according to local fans.
"Actually, it's not that unusual. We've seen this pattern every four years. It happened in 2002 and again in 2006, when almost everyone was talking about soccer for one month. It's happening again this year," said Clement Tsai, a soccer fan.
"The next thing you know, no-one cares about the sport once the World Cup is over," Tsai said.
Despite the disgruntled fans, soccer fever has hit the island on almost every front. And Taiwan is not exactly just an observer on the sidelines, as local textile manufacturers have supplied strips made from recycled materials for nine of the teams this year, according to the European Parliament magazine published recently.
Brazil, the Netherlands, Portugal, the United States, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Serbia and Slovakia are all wearing the Taiwan-made strips, which are made from 13 million recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles.
Off the pitch, meanwhile, Taiwanese politicians have not missed out on the most talked-about feature of this year's World Cup -- the vuvuzela, a raucous plastic horn blown by the fans that has become a symbol of South African soccer.
Gao Jyh-peng, a legislator of the main opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) , took notice of the trend and picked up the instrument in a June 26 rally in Taipei to protest against a trade agreement to be signed this week between Taiwan and China.
Acknowledging that the 200 vuvuzelas he bought were made in China, Gao was quoted by Agence Presse France as saying that "we'll beat them with their own medicine." Other representatives of the DPP also used 100 "Taiwanese vuvuzelas" -- actually the traditional suona -- to make noise during the rally.
At the same time, legislators from the ruling Kuomintang, which favors the trade pact, have described the signing of the agreement as "scoring a goal." President Ma Ying-jeou also referred to the quadrennial event, telling reporters June 15 that he played soccer in high school almost four decades ago. However, he also said soccer is unsuitable for Asians because Asians are "physically inferior to the bigger and stronger Westerners." Ma apparently was unaware that Japan, South Korea and North Korea are all playing in the 2010 World Cup.
The comment drew criticism from Lin De-jia, secretary-general of the Chinese Taipei Soccer Association, who disagreed with Ma and urged the government to show more support for "the beautiful game." Lin said his federation receives only NT$6.7 million in funding from the government, which is not even enough to pay for airfares for national teams to play abroad in international competitions.
"The fact is, our government does not pay enough attention to this sport," Lin said.
For Taiwan to establish itself as a soccer power to be reckoned with rather than just cheering from the sidelines during the World Cup, it needs to build up a soccer culture and develop players in all age groups.
"This takes time, patience and hard work," Lin noted.
By Chris Wang CNA Staff Reporter ENDITEM/J