Day 6: First Day at Tsinghua

 

    Star Hostel’s lobby was bustling with suitcases and duffel bags as we checked out of the lobby and shuffled into vans to make the trip from Taipei to our next destination, Hsinchu. After a peaceful one-hour ride, we arrived at National Tsinghua University and drop off our luggage at the dorm. I also checked out the food court with Anya, Caitlin, and Karyna and got to work on our weekly reflection. 

    At three pm, we headed over to the Chinese Language Center to meet with our language partners and get our footing around the campus. We even got to win some highly sought-after toilet paper as a prize! I enjoyed speaking with the language partner next to me; she’s a first-year accounting student who joined the language exchange program to meet more people and practice her English. She also enjoys playing badminton, highly recommends the waffle restaurant on campus, and entertained all my questions about campus life. I even asked her if there were any ghost stories or superstitions on campus, to which she said, “Don’t go to the Dr. Mei Memorial Garden (梅園) at night, or else you’ll disappear!”

    Afterward, we went on a walking tour of the campus and we got to check out places like the library and the bookstore. For a late lunch, Caitlin and I got a taste of home and ordered some McDonald’s from the campus food court, before finishing up our reflections for the group discussion at six pm.

    For the group discussion, we met up in our classroom in the Chinese Language Center building and our discussion leaders Annie, David, Maria, and Savannah led a productive session on a variety of topics that were covered in the past week, including the impact of recent historical events on Taiwanese democracy, Taiwanese identity, the meaning of design to Taiwan, and Taiwan’s past, present and future. For me, it was helpful to hear the different perspectives of my classmates—for instance, Derrick’s business background really impacted the way he approached and synthesized topics such as the rise of design in Taiwan and was really eye-opening for someone like me, who’s not involved in the business field at all, to understand the topic in a different light.

    It was also helpful to hear the different stories others got to hear that were not from the group dialogues. Sam spoke up in the discussion about how they asked their taxi driver about Taiwan and the driver said, “Taiwan has stayed the same, but the people have changed.” The driver spoke about how Taiwanese people used to be kinder and caring towards one another, but that spirit is now gone as people cared more for things such as money. These kinds of conversations with day-to-day people, to me, are just as important in understanding Taiwanese people as our research reports and readings.

    After the ninety-minute discussion, quite a few people including me headed to eat Indian food from a restaurant nearby. To treat ourselves, Anya, Sienna, and I also grabbed some boba from Coco and then headed back to the dorms to wash up and rest up for the first day of Chinese classes tomorrow.