Day 19: Back in Hsinchu

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    After an exciting weekend in Yilan, today was our first full day back in Hsinchu. In the morning, we all got to enjoy a nice 10-minute walk to the Tsinghua campus from our new temporary home: The Royal Hotel. I enjoyed a breakfast from 7/11 of onigiri, cereal, and black tea. Then, the other students and I made our way to class.

    In Chinese class today, we continued working on activities related to the hospital unit that we began focusing on at the end of last week. We listened to a dialogue between friends where one of them had been in a recent accident where he had been hit by a car, broken his wrist, and therefore went to the hospital and needed surgery. While discussing this, we learned a lot of new vocabulary related to different types of medical specialists. In pairs, we wrote dialogues related to going to the hospital, and then performed them for the rest of the class. Sienna and I wrote a dialogue where she was the patient who came in with a broken hand, and I, as the doctor, gave her an X ray and told her she needed surgery.

Derrick, Ryan, and Kevin performing their skit


    Sam, Savannah, and I went to 7/11 for lunch and got pork dumplings that the employees heated up for us. They were surprisingly yummy considering they were just a microwave meal. Then, we went back to our Chinese classroom to spend time with our language partners. My Chinese teacher had told the class that we were supposed to go with our language partners to the campus clinic, take a picture, find out how much it costs to go, and figure out which ailments they treat. I brought up the idea that we should go to a drinks shop because last week during our language partner time we learned how to order drinks and change the amount of ice they put in it, as well as the amount of sugar. Luckily, the partners and their leader were totally up for the idea, so we were able to go after we went and visited the clinic.

    At the clinic, we had the privilege of getting a tour from one of the doctors that worked there. She spoke to us in Chinese, and about 2 minutes into the tour she says “外国人能听懂吗？” (do the foreigners understand?) gesturing to me and Anya (the only white people in our class). It was funny how she referred to me and Anya as 外国人 even though the entire class are technically foreigners as well. And for the record, I understood her perfectly. Then we went and grabbed some cold teas from the drink shop; very refreshing during a super hot and humid day.

Grabbing teas with language partners


    We ended the day with a group discussion going over dialogues that we did over the past week. We discussed overarching themes of urban vs rural, duality of identity, immigration, and connection to nature. I really enjoyed this discussion, especially on the theme of environmentalism, as it’s something I’m super passionate about. We discussed origins of food, relating to working on the farm this weekend, and where we source our food from. I brought up the point that I would love to buy more organic foods, and understand where my food is sourced, but as a college student it’s really hard to afford the luxury of organic food, and food that has a clear origin.


~ Fiona Collier

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