Does Taiwan have Carnival?
Not observed here
Taiwan has no pre-Lent carnival. The Act on Commemorative Days and Holidays contains nothing of the kind, and Christian festivals occupy very little space in Taiwan's holiday system at all. What Taiwanese people know as a "carnival" is a borrowed word put to another use: the "XX Carnival" run by a city or county means a market, a fair or a tourism event, with no connection to Lent, fasting or Ash Wednesday, and with dates the organiser picks. The name of the festival crossed over; the position in the calendar that the name was meant to mark did not.
What is this topic?
Carnival is not a public holiday in Brazil. It is a *ponto facultativo* — a discretionary day off that the management ministry designates by decree each year for federal offices, with Ash Wednesday running only until two in the afternoon. The largest festival on earth has no statutory holiday status in its own country; it rests on an administrative order reissued every year. The United States turned it into a Louisiana state holiday, Japan moved it to August and dropped the fast, and Goa kept the form left behind by Portuguese rule.
Sources and dates
Dates follow local time zones, calendars, and official notices. Check the source when a date is estimated or locally variable.