Week 3 (The Final Days)

The last week of my Taiwan study abroad is coming to a close and I can't help but feel like I have so much more to see and experience. These 3 weeks were like a whirlwind with so much happening in such a short span of time, and yet that first week seems like it happened ages ago. Even in such a short time, I feel like I quickly adjusted to many aspects of Taiwanese culture and life. One specific aspect of Taiwanese culture was the politeness of the people around me. It seemed like the Taiwanese were always saying 不好意思 or "I'm sorry," or "Pardon me." If a waiter was setting down food or if a cashier took a while to get your change they would undoubtedly say “不好意思！” After about the first week, whenever I was walking around I would also start to say “不好意思！” for small things, like moving out of someone's way or if I was taking a bit to get money out to pay. In America, I would never have apologized for these small things, but after being in Taiwan for 1 week, I already adopted some of their mannerisms.

Throughout this trip, I was also surprised by how different Taiwan was from China. Before going on this trip, I didn't really know what to expect from Taiwan and just assumed it would be similar to China. However, I quickly learned that Taiwan is very different in almost all aspects. One of the main differences that surprised me the most was how much the Taiwanese seemed to like Japan. Walking around Taiwan I would constantly see Japanese restaurants and imports from Japan such as make up, toys and clothes. When we went to Taipei 101 and had our opening ceremony at Tamkang University, we watched to videos made by the Taiwan's tourism government agency. In these videos, they would show foreigners coming to Taiwan from all parts of the world including America, Europe and most surprisingly, Japan. When I was in China, I would rarely see anything from Japan or at least, no store would openly advertise that they were something from Japan. Even the government and many of the older generation did not seem to like Japan. However, in Taiwan, I would constantly see huge advertisements for Japanese products and ads that featured Japanese models. People also seemed to want to buy things specifically because those products were originally from Japan. For example, when we went to 西门 (Ximen), a popular shopping district in Taipei, there were huge banners for advertising Japanese products outside almost every store.

The Taiwanese people are also much more polite than Chinese people. Although I talked about this in the briefly in the beginning, the Taiwanese do many more polite things than just say “不好意思." For example, when I buy something in a store in Taiwan, they always wait for me to put my change away and get all my belongings before moving on to the next person. However, in China, as soon as they gave me my change, if I didn't leave fast enough, they would say, "快点儿！" When we went to the National Palace Museum, there were a lot of mainlanders walking around in tour groups. The museum was very crowded and there were certain display cases, which housed very popular artifacts such as the jade cabbage and ivory carvings. The mainlanders were very aggressive and would often bump into me or try to push me aside in order to see these display cases even though there wasn't really any room and I was in front me. This is very different from the Taiwanese people because even when it was really crowded, people would either apologize for bumping into me or at least try not to push and shove too much. For example, when we were coming back from Taipei 101 and tried to get on the subway, there were masses and masses of people. However, it was still very orderly and there was no pushing and shoving to get onto the subway.

Another interesting cultural point I noticed was that it seems like people in Taiwan really trust their fellow Taiwanese. Outside lots of stores and restaurants there would be a rack where people can leave their umbrellas when its raining. Most of the Taiwanese would put their umbrellas in this rack before going to the store even though there was no lock and someone could easily just steal their umbrella. I was very surprised by this because in America, people are always afraid of leaving their stuff out in public without anyone watching them. If we had this system in America, many people's umbrellas would probably be stolen. 

It was also very interesting to see the different types of innovations Taiwanese people came up with to suit their needs. For example, I went to Hi-Life and bought a take-out meal there to go. Instead of just putting it in one of their regular plastic bags, they used the bag shown below.

I thought this was an incredibly useful and practical invention for a plastic bag. By putting my take-out box in this bag, the whole box was very secure because the bag conformed to the shape and length of the box. This would prevent any the food from moving around, and any of the sauce from accidentally leaking out of the box. Many times when I go to restaurants, I have to purposely hold the bag with my leftover steady and often don't even use the handles of the bag because if I do I know the box will shift and my food might spill. This bag solves all these problems and is also environmentally friendly because it uses less material than a plastic bag.

On Tuesday we went to a vegetarian buffet in Taipei. I was really surprised by how expensive it was. The cost for each person was NT$600. Apparently most vegetarian buffets in Taiwan are quite expensive and are usually display the food in very unique ways. Although I was skeptical at first, the food was actually very tasty and I really enjoyed going there. There were some very unique food like this vegetable that looked very small tree branches, as well as fake sashimi. I also got to witness another instance of Taiwanese hospitality because Dr. Liu's older sister not only payed half the cost of the meal but also gave each of us a 红包 (red envelope) and a very nice pen. In America culture, unless that person is very close to you, they probably would not be so generous. However, even though Dr. Liu's sister barely knew us, she was still very generous and treated us like we were close family friends.

For our last culture class, we painted Chinese masks. I learned that the different colors on the mask mean different things. For example, red, black and purple all represented good people while white, yellow, green and blue represented bad people. The way they assigned meanings to the colors was interesting because in American culture we usually associate black with evil and white with good. Also, blue usually isn't considered an evil color in American culture, but usually used to represent something calming.

I will really miss being in Taiwan and hope that I will have another opportunity to return. On our last day, we will be attending a Farewell Ceremony from Tamkang University and then visit Dr. Liu's mother at her house and attend her elder brother's company party.