This semester Milan Pijnenburg, Global Project & Change Management student, will be blogging about his experiences and adventures as an exchange student at Dong Hwa University in Hualien, Taiwan.
When first stepping foot in Taiwan, I felt a little overwhelmed by all the impressions. It was like being a child in a slightly scary but fascinating wonderworld. The smell of stinky (fermented) tofu, the millions of shops, the different cultural behaviours, and all the sounds surrounding me. In this blog I will share with you the most bizarre differences I have noticed in my first days in this wonderful country.
Very crowded
First of all, Taiwan is crowded. As the entire centre of the country is covered in mountain tops, there are 25 million people living on an area one third the size of Belgium. That is comparable to building five extra cities the size of Amsterdam in every single province of the Netherlands!
And with this crowdedness come interesting scenes. For example, on the weekends you can see people bring their entire karaoke set to the streets to sing karaoke by themselves the entire day as a form of leisure. And the streets are covered with gripping machines usually filled with cute plush toys, but sometimes also toilet paper or even condoms. It sometimes makes me wonder how many plush toys an average (adult) Taiwanese person has at home.
Nintendo songs
The garbage trucks play a loud Nintendo song to alarm people to get out of their homes and dispose their trash. Some busses will even play you a Nintendo like outro song when you press the stop button. And my favourite one: every receipt you get at shops has a code which acts as a lottery ticket. Every two months the winning numbers are revealed with prices as high as 600.000 euros!
In addition, people are very respectful and obey the rules, no matter how different to ours they can be sometimes. For example, smoking on prohibited spots on campus will cost you up to 300 euros plus a mandatory visit to the local health centre. Insulting someone in public can get you a fine up to 450 euros. And in other universities, ‘dormitory social credits’ will be deducted for littering, bringing girls to your room, or leaving rice grains on the water dispenser.
Earthquakes, typhoons and landslides
At last, Taiwan is basically the safest country on earth, and you do not have to worry about anything. Most people do not even lock their bicycles, and I have even seen fatbikes without a lock. However, at the same time there are air defence shelters everywhere, and in Hualien you can sit in a 7-Eleven and watch fighter jets take off continuously from the massive airbase nextdoor. Additionally, there are multiple earthquakes per week here and lots of typhoons and landslides where I am located. So, while the inside of the country is extremely safe, external forces make studying in Taiwan slightly uncomfortable.
Thank you for reading my first Taiwan blog! Next time I will be sharing about the unique lifestyle here on campus.
