Day 8 ~ Tunghai University, Central Taiwan Science Park

Tunghai University:

Tunghai University is a private Christian university that is also the alma mater of our professor Dr. Peng, and as he puts it, "the most beautiful university in the world." Founded in 1955, Tunghai University now has 7 colleges with over 17,000 students and is situated on 345 acres in central Taiwan. Today's first lecture was given by John Slufelt from the Department of Foreign Languages. This was one of the most comprehensive lectures on the history and culture of Taiwan that we have heard. Although Taiwan is officially the Republic of China, there seems to be confusion among its people as to whether they consider themselves Chinese or Taiwanese. Mandarin is spoken by 97 - 100% of the people, 40-60% speak Taiwanese, and 5-12% speak Hakka. The written form of Chinese and Taiwanese is the same but in speaking it would be like a person from Ohio speaking to someone from Louisiana. He pointed out some of the Japanese influences that exist today such as removing your shoes in the home which is apparently not practiced in mainland China.

Yi-Chia Wang, Asst. Professor for the Department of Economics followed with a lecture on economics in Taiwan.

Luce Chapel

The girl's dormitory. Do the guys have barbed wire too?

Us gals at the gate of the prison, I mean girls dormitory.

We pre-ordered our lunch from an Americanized menu

Central Taiwan Science Park (CTSP):

Note to self: Read carefully before pushing buttons in the bathroom! The alarm going off at CTSP wasn’t a fire or anything; it was just me pushing the emergency button in the bathroom. Who besides a hospital puts an emergency button in a bathroom stall?

Central Taiwan Science Park is comprised of five parks which have clusters of high businesses located on 4,090 acres in central Taiwan. The largest of Taiwan's three science parks, CTSP is focused on aviation, precision machinery, and optoelectronics. Located on former sugar crop land, the government leases land to businesses for 20 years and gives them a tax abatement for five years as an incentive to locate in Taiwan. The government hopes to accomplish its long term goal of attracting multinational businesses to CTSP through additional incentives such as imposing no commodity tax on industries that export their products or services. CTSP has created a lot of employment opportunities and employees who work hard are s rewarded with living accommodations similar to a resort. A goal for Central Taiwan Science Park is to have 26,000 employees by the end of 2011.

Central Taiwan Science Park Administration Bldg.

Bubble Tea

The students from Tunghai University treated us to Bubble Tea which is cold milk in black tea with large tapioca at the bottom served with a very large straw. It's ok (I'm not a coffee or tea drinker) but after I learned it has 700 calories I won't be drinking any more. Most people really like it and it is quite a popular treat. Apparently there is a place in Ann Arbor that sells it.

Shopping at TAISUCO:

Taisuco is like a two-story Walmart. I was glad to be able to shop at a regular store because I was running out of shampoo and hairspray but shopping in a store where you don't know the language isn't easy. I ended up buying hair wax instead of spray.

Some of the packaging looked familiar but without knowing how to read Chinese, I couldn't tell the difference between shampoo and conditioner.