Current trends
Chris Rowe, another visiting student, has just finished his first semester of study at the Dharma Drum Sangha University (DDSU). He came to Taiwan in 2012 with the assistance of the CIEE organization. Rowe says that his motivation to learn Mandarin came from his interest in Eastern religions at senior high school. He had a number of questions about life for which he was trying to find answers and became interested in Buddhism as a result, later studying subjects related to Buddhist thought at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
After he graduated, Rowe gained a Mandarin scholarship offered by the ROC Ministry of Education, and came to study in Taiwan. With offers from both National Taiwan University and DDSU, he had to make a difficult decision: “It wasn’t easy choosing which university to study at!” Finally, Rowe chose DDSU as he thought that NTU might be very similar to universities in the USA. “I’m sure I’ll retain lots of great memories from my time at DDSU,” he says.
Brieanna Fuentes, another overseas student, is in Taiwan for only three to four months. In a Skype interview in Mandarin, while she wasn’t quite as fluent as Chris Rowe or Nicholas Sidman, her Chinese was still very impressive. Unlike Sidman and Rowe, who came to Taiwan in order to learn Mandarin, Fuentes is studying science subjects entirely in English, so her Chinese proficiency has come entirely from her own efforts. Resident coordinator April Wang says that considering Fuentes’ shy character and the short time she’s been in Taiwan, her willingness to do the interview at all is solid proof of her progress in Mandarin.
Fuentes studied biomolecular science at Three Rivers Community College in the US. In contrast to many people’s general impression of Westerners as lively and outgoing, she’s quite shy. Perhaps as a result of her work in science and engineering, she spends a lot of time in the lab, so speaking in public is not something that she is used to.
Fuentes was worried about adapting to life abroad due to her natural shyness, but she has been surprisingly successful in her course. In fact during the school break, she didn’t go back to the US but traveled to the Penghu Islands. A special friendship that began on the Internet has flowered, and the friend from Penghu is now her boyfriend. Fuentes sometimes helps out in his family’s lunchbox shop, taking the chance to learn authentic Taiwanese.
In the late 1970s in Taiwan, there was a local saying: “Come, come, come, come to National Taiwan University; go, go, go, go to the US,” an expression reflecting the trend of the time. How times have changed. The current trend is something like: “Come, come, come, come to learn Mandarin!”—a reflection of the shifting sands of international relationships between present and past.
Students from Europe, America, Japan and South Korea visit a Taiwanese folk temple to experience the local atmosphere.
Christie Chang (left), resident director of CIEE’s Taipei Center, goes to Pingxi with students to fly sky lanterns. They inscribe wishes and blessings on the lanterns in Chinese characters.
Paper cutting artist Yang Shih-yi helps CIEE students create their own masterpieces.
Paper cutting artist Yang Shih-yi helps CIEE students create their own masterpieces.
The incredible range of courses devised by CIEE attracts many students to return again and again. Programs include a taste of farming life, along with artistic and cultural topics.