Milan Pijnenburg shares his experiences and adventures as an exchange student at Dong Hwa University in Hualien, Taiwan.
Unfortunately, a few blog posts have proven not to be sufficient to cover all the impressions, experiences, and insights of the semester abroad. There are many more things I could have shared with you, such as hitchhiking the entire East coast twice, learning a bit to play the traditional zhongruan guitar, climbing mountains, and trekking rivers. But there were also many times where I was just alone… with my thoughts. You see, there is no line between private and Uni life, and there are so many established sub-cultures on the campus which are all extremely different than what you are used to back home.
Higher ups, lower downs
You are isolated on 250 hectares in the middle of nowhere on an island on the other side of the world. And though I was very much welcomed by alle of these people, and made many friends, I never felt truly part of a group, more or less ‘free spiriting’ my way around. In the back of my mind I knew that I will not properly see my friends and family for almost a year as I will be writing my thesis from abroad straight after Taiwan. It was the first time truly experiencing the duality of higher ups, but lower downs that people experience when moving abroad. Sometimes this was accompanied by feelings of sadness or frustrations while other times with gratitude, admiration, and self-pride. In this blog I will be sharing some of the things I learned in this environment.
Extreme emphasis on politeness
First of all, upon arrival and the months following I started to notice certain things in this culture which I thought were just a bit crazy, and weird, and I couldn’t really wrap my head around them. I thought that this extreme emphasis on politeness, respect, and harmony was a bit over the top, and somewhat stupid. How can you learn from one another if feedback is very rarely given? How can you truly have fun, and laughter when most of the topics you talk about are ‘safe’? How can you be truly happy with yourself if there are particular parts that you need to suppress for group harmony? Why are most of the people introvert, when it seems like they would actually like to be more extraverts? Isn’t that stupid? Why are many people even attending classes when all they do is sit in the back with their facemask and hoodie covering their face, and not contributing or being interested at all?
A lot of respect
All these things contributed to the fact that after a while I got this tingling feeling that I might never truly be part of the culture. And realized that in my turn, I might have to suppress some little things about myself too. Later I started learning some more about the underlying reasons. In fact, I found many things here that I have gained enormous respect and admiration for. First of all, I realise that many of the nice things that they have here like leaving your bicycle unlocked, or having 24/7 convenient stores that function as a community space, could probably never happen in the Netherlands. People have a lot of respect for each other, and you always know that the people around you will always take your feelings into account. In the Netherlands some people will always take advantage of things, or be a little too stubborn.
Reading the room
In addition, our culture is mostly focused on individual success and comparison with others. And while to some extent such aspects are also present in this culture, I have started to admire wanting to be part of a collective. Here, your success is measured more by being a good friend to others or being a good family member, and I think that is beautiful. Finally, the communication is more indirect, which means that people have learned to become very attentive to non-verbal social cues. In a way you can compare this with a couple, or some very good friends that know exactly what they want or think by just one look. I think that this is somewhat of an art, whereas back home our very direct communication has lead to that, let’s say, most people are not pro’s in ‘reading the room’.
In fact, upon arrival back home I found myself several times paying my kibbeling and frikandelbroodje on the Market, with a slight bow, handing the money with two hands, and thanking in a soft voice. As someone from Brabant I could have never imaged this to ever happen to me.
Eswatini, Myanmar, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent
Finally, Taiwan’s extraordinary political situation brings the unique chance to get a glimpse of other rare exotic cultures. There are many students here from ultra exotic countries like: Mongolia, Haïti, Eswatini, Myanmar, Malawi, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent, Belize, Kyrgyzstan, and Honduras. And though I am a well-travelled person, this probably ranks as the most extraordinary cultural exchange I have ever experienced, as we all found each other stuck in the same situation in the middle of nowhere in Taiwan.
Throat singing from Mongolia
This led to two absolute highlights. One is that I was granted the golden opportunity to introduce Borat to a fellow student from Kyrgyzstan, who for some reason did not yet know about his existence. The confused facial expressions in the left-corner of my eyes, and the tears from laughter will forever be printed in my memory.
Later, a wonderful cultural evening was organised by the international office. Here we got to experience traditional clothing, dance and music from the Taiwanese Austronesian tribes, the traditional wedding ceremony from Eswatini, and the unique throat singing from Mongolia, belly dancing from India, and so on. I was moved almost to tears by this performance and especially the deep emotional connection that my fellow students have to their cultural values and traditions.
Comparing this to the Netherlands, I find it somewhat unfortunate that we have become a slightly more generic modern western society that lost some of its traditional culture.
