Day 13: July, 16, 2010; Taipei

Day 13: Friday, July, 16, 2010; Taipei

Agenda for the day:
1) Taipei Municipal Lishan High School
2) Lunch with Dr. Harry Tseng—Director General, Dept. of North American Affairs—MOFA (Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
3) Meeting with Dr. Jiann-Fa Yan—Foreign Policy Advisor of DPP (Democratic Progressive Party)
4) Meeting with Capital Group
5) Visit to Taipei 101.

I woke up earlier than usual on this 13th day of our journey most likely due to the fact that we had our very own hotel rooms for the first time (thanks to the generosity of the Taiwanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs) and I was worried that I would sleep in late since I was on my own. After having breakfast on the 2nd floor of the Howard Hotel, which served Western and Japanese cuisine, I met up with our group in the lobby and we departed for Lishan H.S. at around 8:30AM. This will be our last school visit and I was looking forward to meeting the students and learning about the school.

Aside from the teacher who came out to greet us at the front gate of Lishan, I also noticed the shiny silver block letters that decorated the entrance: “Microsoft School of the Future.” I immediately wondered what Microsoft’s involvement at this school might be aside from the usual computer donations. We walked through a smaller gate and passed what seemed to be a minor security station and entered a meeting room adjacent to the administrative building. We were first greeted by Principal Vincent Chen and were then introduced to the school by a group named “Flow-winds,” who were Student Ambassadors for the school. Amy and Gary of Flow-winds began with an animated presentation of a day in the life of a Lishan HS student. This presentation, full of hand gestures and vibrant spirit, reminded me of the cute kindergarten students who had preformed for us just a few days before. Amy also then gave a solo presentation on various special places in Taiwan. These students’ English language competency and also knowledge of their own history was impressive. After the presentations, we broke into two big groups and went on a campus tour. I went with Student Ambassador/Guide Eric, who was a junior. Some of the places we trekked to and learned about were Echo Hill, the Star of Lishan statue, the Clock Tower, library, and the Science building—which housed the observatory (or sauna that day). Eric explained that there was a remote teaching classroom under the clock tower in which students receive lectures from different professors and researchers, including those from NASA. We also got a quick glimpse of the outside of the solar powered swimming pool.

Towards the end of our campus tour, we were able to make our last classroom visit. It was an English classroom and the students seemed excited to see us there, although most of them were extremely shy when asked to speak to us. Someone finally stood up and asked about Harvard and why we were there. After responding and answering a few more questions, we walked around the classroom to share the gifts we brought and then headed back to our meeting room to break out into our smaller groups for Q&A. Clay, David, Manny, and I had the chance to speak to Ms. Yue, an English Intern teacher, and also Mr. Lon (sp?), a Physics teacher. We talked a bit about the workload of both students and teachers at Lishan and also cram schools. Mr. Lon explained that students spend at least 3-4 hours after school on average for homework. He also mentioned that there is a strong focus on internet communication at the school. Students have to post weekly diaries online and also do video conferencing with other Microsoft affiliated schools. PLEASE ADD IN ANYTHING INTERESTING YOU MIGHT HAVE LEARNED DURING YOUR SMALL GROUP DISCUSSIONS HERE since I was unable to go listen in on any other groups. THANKS!

After our school visit, we headed for lunch with Dr. Harry Tseng, Kathy’s boss and the Director General of the Dept. of North American Affairs. We arrived at around 12:30 and were taken to the 39th floor for another extremely extravagant meal. Dr. Tseng, a Princeton and UVA graduate, greeted us with a sincere and highly flattering talk of the importance of teachers, noting the respect that is given to this profession through the example of the September 28th celebration of Confucius’ birthday, or the national celebration of Teacher’s Day. We asked Dr. Tseng many questions during our lunch, which I will not completely elaborate on here, but some of the topics included how he came to the position that he currently holds, the complicated relationships between the US, Taiwan, and China that goes beyond government to government exchanges to people to people exchanges (soft power politics), the cultural differences in emphasizing the collective versus the individual, the Hakka Affairs Commission and the treatment of minority groups in Taiwan, the idea of democratization (Dr. Tseng mentioned a letter that George W. Bush wrote to President Ma on March 22, 2008 in which Bush stated that “Taiwan is a beacon of democracy for the Asian world.”), ECFA, intellectual property rights, newspapers/media portrayal of political issues, the prosecution of former President Ma, the UNFCCC, the IOC (International Olympic Committee) model, and most importantly, the sentiment that the “Taiwanese are winning the hearts of Chinese,” which Dr. Tseng described as courting—where Taiwan is the “cute girl” being chased by China.

That was definitely a great lunch, hosted by an extremely wonderful and well-versed man! Though I personally wished we would have more time with Dr. Tseng, we had to leave to go to our next meeting with Dr. Jiann-Fa Yan, a Foreign Policy Advisor of the DPP. I looked forward to finally meeting someone from the opposing party and our meeting with Dr. Yan definitely gave me the other perspective.

We arrived at the DPP office at approximately 2:40PM. Dr. Yan gave us a brief history of the Democratic Progressive Party before we asked him some questions of our own. The major difference between the DPP and the KMT is that the DPP advocates sovereign independence for Taiwan. Although they are marginalized in resources, Dr. Yan explains that they have youthful leadership. Due to the complicated position that Taiwan is in, which I personally view as a country “stuck” between China and the greater democratic world, I didn’t think it would be easy for Dr. Yan to answer our questions but he was definitely prepared. When asked about whether or not the signing of ECFA and working with China would be seen as a move that will sour relations between Taiwan and the US, Dr. Yan responded by saying that although ECFA is seen by the DPP as “a step towards China absorbing Taiwan,” he is not against ECFA but views it as wrong timing and does not like that “the process is not transparent.” When asked about the loss of the Presidential seat to the KMT, Dr. Yan explained that a major factor of losing the 2008 election was that during the DPP’s rule, Taiwan did not experience as much economic rise as its neighbors. He claimed that the mistake made while inheriting the government from the KMT was that the DPP focused too much on foreign policy, cross-strait relations, and defense. It is his personal opinion now that education, the welfare system, and environmental protection should be priorities of the nation.

Though interesting, our meeting with Dr. Yan had to end at around 4PM so that we could head to the Capital Group meeting in time. We arrived at Capital Group around 4:30PM and was given a presentation entitled “Cross-strait Opportunities and Challenges” by Cliff Fan, a USC graduate. The presentation itself was full of eye-opening data, but it was a bit rushed due to time constraints, so it was difficult to completely follow along and immediately absorb. The general idea of Mr. Fan’s presentation was that Taiwan is playing a change role in the economy from being labor/export driven to service/consumption based. He explained that the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) from Taiwan to China drives China’s economic growth and that Taiwan contributes a great amount of human capital and technical know-how to China. This is noted by the fact that 4% of the Taiwanese population stays in China more than 180 days of the year. Mr. Fan described the relationship between Taiwan and China as one of “Coopetition.” The risks and challenges that they currently face include the aging population and labor shortage, poor regulatory policies on safety, inflation, environmental and conservation issues, and the violation of intellectual property rights.

CLAY: Do you think you can contact Cliff Fan and ask him if he can send us a copy of his powerpoint? I personally might want to use his powerpoint as a starting point for creating a lesson on Taiwan and China’s economy.

I apologize for this blog being so long already, but you might be glad to know that this is almost the end! I just wanted to make sure I throw in all of the interesting facts and discussions we had throughout this action-packed day. After our meeting at the Capital Group and receiving the wonderful gifts (especially the very useful little red back pack!), we headed to Taipei 101 and enjoyed the amazing views of Taipei from the second tallest building in the world. We got to the top of the building just as day was turning into night, which allowed us to see, well, both the day view and the night view of Taipei. We all met up to see the Damper Ball, took silly pictures, and finally left at 7:30PM to head to dinner. We ended up at KiKi Restaurant at around 8PM, which served Sichuan cuisine, after our longer than usual day (well, it wasn’t actually longer than usual in time, but it seemed as though we had a lot more different activities today). I think we stayed at the restaurant for a little longer than we expected also because there was some requirement about meeting a minimum payment for reserving the special room. We got back to our hotel at around 10:20PM? I believe most of us crashed and went to bed since we had to wake up very early the next day for our train ride to Hualien!
[Edit by="jng on Jul 31, 7:44:36 PM"][/Edit]