Taiwan out of the International Shadow

In Au­gust of this year, I moved to Tai­wan, a small is­land na­tion, east of main­land China and north of the Philip­pines. Tai­wan is a vastly di­verse place and con­tains mul­ti­tudes packed into 36,000 km2. Tai­wan was the first coun­try in Asia to le­galise same-sex mar­riage and is con­sis­tently ranked as the top Asian coun­try in the FI Hu­man Free­dom In­dex. I left Tai­wan when I was 8 years old hav­ing spent my early pri­mary school years here, but to get the chance to re­turn has been an op­por­tu­nity for re-discovery and learn­ing. Com­ing back 12 years later, I can see Tai­wan through a new lens to fully un­der­stand and ap­pre­ci­ate this of­ten mis­un­der­stood place.

One of the first ques­tions my friends had when I told them I was mov­ing to Tai­wan for a year was “What would hap­pen if Tai­wan was in­vaded while you are there?” - I’d leave. It is be­cause of that fact I don’t feel qual­i­fied to talk too much about life in Tai­wan in con­text with China be­cause I can pack up and re­turn to my safe home. I can­not un­der­stand what it is like to have your safety feel tem­po­rary, or maybe it doesn’t feel tem­po­rary to Tai­wanese peo­ple, I wouldn’t know be­cause I am not Tai­wanese. So, I want to hope­fully change peo­ple’s ini­tial thoughts on Tai­wan. I want to show you the Tai­wan I know.

A brief his­tory of Tai­wan: Tai­wan used to be con­nected to what is now main­land China by a nat­ural land bridge, how­ever as that dis­ap­peared the peo­ple on the is­land of For­mosa (Tai­wan) were cut off from con­ti­nen­tal Asia. They be­gan ex­plor­ing other Pa­cific is­lands and, as a re­sult, most Poly­ne­sian abo­rig­i­nal peo­ples are de­scen­dants of the Aus­trone­sian Tai­wanese pop­u­la­tion. In the early 1600s, The Dutch East In­dia Com­pany set up in south­ern For­mosa and Span­ish colo­nial mis­sions set­tled in the north. The Chi­nese Ming dy­nasty fought the Eu­ro­peans out of For­mosa be­fore be­ing re­placed by Qing dy­nasty set­tlers who claimed the is­land as a Qing province in the late 1800s. Fol­low­ing the First Sino-Japanese War, Tai­wan was then colonised by the Japan­ese Em­pire. The Re­pub­lic of China was es­tab­lished on the main­land and took over the Qing dy­nasty. By 1948, China was en­gaged in a civil war be­tween the RoC (Chi­ang Kai-Shek’s Party) and the CCP (Mao Ze­Dong’s Party) be­fore the RoC re­treated to Tai­wan. Tai­wan was run as a harsh dic­ta­tor­ship un­der Chi­ang Kai-Shek un­til mar­tial law ended in 1987.

In Au­gust I moved from Lon­don to Taipei, mak­ing the jump to live in a for­eign coun­try on my own for the first time. It was daunt­ing but never scary. I was slightly fa­mil­iar with Taipei and knew how friendly Tai­wanese peo­ple are, es­pe­cially to for­eign­ers who might look a bit lost. That cer­tainly hasn’t changed. I think when I leave, the story I will tell to con­vey how warm and wel­com­ing Tai­wanese peo­ple are will be: My friend re­cently broke his foot and is on crutches, his flimsy rain­coat does very lit­tle to pro­tect him from the trop­i­cal rain, yet he found that so many peo­ple were will­ing to share their um­brella over him as he cau­tiously crutches in the rain - he doesn’t know these strangers and they don’t make a big fuss about it, they just see some­one in need of help and jump to shel­ter him from the rain, if only for a lit­tle while. Ob­vi­ously, his ex­pe­ri­ence as a blonde-haired blue-eyed for­eigner does grant him some ben­e­fits, but we both lament that this would never hap­pen in Lon­don. An­other friend was be­ing chased down the street by a man shout­ing af­ter him - the man fol­lowed him the length of the street just to re­turn the money my friend had dropped at the ATM. On the MRT (sub­way/tube sys­tem in Taipei) no one would be caught dead sit­ting on the pri­or­ity seats, even if the train is crammed. I am al­ways think­ing ‘oh, this would never hap­pen in Lon­don’ - con­stantly heart­ened by the care peo­ple have for oth­ers.

Taipei is, by far, the most en­vi­ron­men­tally con­scious city I have ever lived in. Tai­wan’s re­cy­cling rate is an as­ton­ish­ing 55% (the high­est in the world). Pre­vi­ously Tai­wan just col­lected and burned its rub­bish, how­ever, the Home­mak­ers United group went to the EPA and brought about a mas­sive change in the Tai­wanese rub­bish sys­tem. In Taipei, 5 nights a week the rub­bish truck comes to your lo­cal des­ig­nated spot blast­ing Für Elise so that every­one in the area knows to come and take out their rub­bish. Fol­low­ing the yel­low truck is a smaller white truck for re­cy­cling with sep­a­rate days for plas­tic, pa­per, glass, and com­postable waste col­lec­tion. Tai­wan is well on its way to meet­ing its promise to ban all single-use plas­tics by 2030 - when the ban on single-use plas­tic cups was an­nounced in July this year, by the fi­nal­i­sa­tion of the pol­icy single-use plas­tic cups had al­ready been re­duced by 17%. Taipei it­self is sur­rounded on all sides by moun­tains, en­cour­ag­ing you to ex­plore and em­brace your re­la­tion­ship with na­ture from just a few MRT stops away. Taipei is an in­cred­i­bly walk­a­ble city, and just a quick wan­der around will show how con­nected peo­ple are to na­ture as every bal­cony re­sem­bles its own mini-forest.

I think the most glar­ingly ob­vi­ous dif­fer­ence be­tween Taipei and Lon­don is the care peo­ple put into pub­lic in­fra­struc­ture. The MRT is al­most 100% step-free and ac­ces­si­ble across the whole sys­tem and mu­sic plays and lights flash to alert you of the train ar­riv­ing train for bet­ter ac­ces­si­bil­ity and in­clu­siv­ity. Every­one re­spects the no food and drink signs on the MRT and its clean­li­ness has made me re­alise how truly grotty TFL can be. The streets are so clean, which seems un­likely as you’d be hard-pressed to find a bin any­where. In­stead, peo­ple take their rub­bish home with them for it to be prop­erly dis­posed of and pre­vent over­flow­ing pub­lic bins. Out­side most shops and restau­rants, there are lit­tle stands to leave your wet um­brella on. Peo­ple can do this be­cause they don’t want to dirty the shop and they trust that no one is go­ing to steal it. In cafes, peo­ple leave all their be­long­ings at their ta­ble while they go to the toi­let or for a smoke be­cause it is safe. But most im­por­tantly, I have never felt so safe walk­ing home alone at night. There is an em­pha­sis on con­sid­er­a­tion for strangers and cre­at­ing the space for oth­ers that you want for your­self.

I want to share with the rest of the world the Taipei that I know. Whilst most peo­ple might im­me­di­ately think of war or ten­sor chips when the topic of Tai­wan comes up, I think of the care every­one has for the in­fra­struc­ture, the en­vi­ron­ment, and the peo­ple around them. I hope that when I re­turn to Lon­don, I can bring back a deeper care for the com­mu­nity around me and a re­newed un­der­stand­ing of the need for en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion, in both the nat­ural world and for our shared pub­lic ser­vices.

Sources:

Fraser In­sti­tute Rapid Tran­si­tion Sus­tain­able Plas­tics Tai­wan Gov­erne­ment The Guardian Al­jazeera