This one comes from heart.
Do you know those moments when you see the excitement in the eyes of someone when they tell you about a passion, interest or story that may be important to them? It doesn’t matter whether you have the same interest or not, but seeing their passion and true happiness makes you follow what one has to say. That’s what I show when I’m talking about my time in Taiwan. Being there, I created myself a life with everything I needed. Friends, roommates, colleagues, a sports team. I was deeply happy living in Taiwan.
Today, it’s been almost exactly one year since I left Taiwan and after 8 months full of joy, experiences and struggles with Chinese returned to Europe. I first arrived in Taiwan as an exchange student but I knew right away that I would at least extend my stay.
School & Work
At school, I mostly enjoyed a class by Professor Tang who was supposed to teach about marketing, but never mentioned a single word from the syllabus. Instead, he decided to teach about things way deeper than that and questioned us in what life is really about, often from a Buddhist perspective. I think most people misunderstood his way of teaching, but I understood every word he said. Later, I started an internship at a Marketing Analytics startup. The co-founders who hired me didn’t know much about me when I started, I did not go through any formal application process and had no prior working experience. But I voluntarily attended a class one of them taught at the National Taiwan University (taught in Chinese!) and she must have seen something in me that she thought I could be a good fit for the team. This internship and the skills I developed later allowed me to land my current job in Copenhagen and I’ll be forever grateful for the trust I received from Nicky and Jay.
How did I end up in Taiwan?
Often, I am being asked why I decided to come to Taiwan in the first place. Frankly, I still don’t have the perfect answer. I felt attracted to Asia from early on when I lived in Vietnam for a while, volunteering in a school in Ho Chi Minh City. A year later, I went back to Vietnam to see my friends and also traveled to Thailand, Hong Kong and briefly Mainland China. At that point, I promised myself that I would at least try out how it feels to have an everyday life somewhere in an Asian country. I remember looking at the partner schools of my prior German university. Next to countries like Japan and Singapore which we all seem to be quite familiar with, I saw Taiwan – not even knowing where Taiwan was located. Now, this might have been demotivating for some but I always liked doing things a bit differently than the norm. I like trying something new, risking the uncertainty. In the end, I don’t know if there is a rational reason why I ended up in Taiwan, but all I know is that one day I found myself in a plane to Taipei, not knowing when I’ll come back. I do believe that sometimes we have an inner feeling guiding has, as if the plan was already there. Looking back, going to Taiwan was one of those days and it made me feel like nothing could possibly go wrong.
What do I miss from Taiwan?
The second question I often get is what I miss from Taiwan today – and I do miss it. But again, there’s no such easy answer. Surely, I miss the food – Beef noodles, dumplings, mango shaved ice, bubble tea, the local breakfast store. Copenhagen’s winter also made me miss the Taiwanese weather. But that’s not what this is really about. In the end, it’s always about the feeling, the atmosphere you live in. Ordering food (or rather pointing at a picture saying 我要这个) without knowing what exactly you’ll get – because does it really matter? Practicing my little knowledge of Chinese over and over because it’s fun (你要吃什么?). Connecting with the people that seem so different but that are actually so similar. It’s a feeling of freedom, of fully being able to express myself and that’s what Taiwan gave to me.
Shilin Night Market, Taipei
Taiwan can help
Lastly, and this is the most important point, I want to share my perspective on what’s going on in Taiwan today. Taiwan is more or less excluded from international partnerships like the UN or the WHO. Isn’t it absurd that the country that handled the Coronavirus the best way, outcompeting not only Mainland China but also the Europeans, as well as other Asian countries, is still banned from the WHO? When Taiwan requested information from the WHO early on about the potential spread of the virus between humans, it did not even get a real answer. Taiwan took action anyway. So again: There is an island nation around 180 km from the southeastern coast of China where public health officials saw the pandemic coming and reacted fast. It was one of the earliest countries to be hit and has one of the lowest infection rates. Today, this country has only reported 388 positive diagnoses and six deaths – without even getting full information. But you wouldn’t know any of this if you got your information from the World Health Organization. The country is Taiwan, which is banned from the WHO. Why you may ask? Yeah, that’s what I’m asking too. I’m a friend of hearing the Chinese out about why they do what they do, but honestly, at the moment the world pays the price for this dilemma – Taiwan can help.
Most countries would react to this isolation in an aggressive way, playing out all the political strengths they may have and insult everyone else who doesn’t give them what they want. But Taiwan is different. Today, Taiwan sends millions of masks to the exact same countries that exclude it from the WHO. Taiwan doesn’t push on its independence to upset China, it doesn’t talk bad about other countries in public. No, Taiwan reacts by declaring its love for the people around the world.
#taiwancanhelp and #taiwanishelping
Jacob Nilius