This summer’s homestay was a very special experience, as I got to stay in a place that most travelers to Taiwan do not visit, a town called Puli. Puli is perhaps most famous for being the geographic center of Taiwan, and for the damage sustained during the 921 earthquake twenty years ago. In fact, my host family took me to see a large temple that had collapsed during the quake, thankfully with no fatalities. Today, a new temple has been built directly in front of the old, but the old remains as an important historical and cultural artifact.
My host father was not a Puli native. He was born and raised in a city in north Taiwan, but as a lover of nature he moved to Puli early in adulthood and has remained since. An architect, he built his house with his own hands on a mountain where he could enjoy stunning views day after day. Throughout the decades living in Puli he has grown intimately familiar with all of the local farms and mountains, and has even been known to go paragliding off the mountain neighboring their home.
I grew up in the suburbs, and frankly have had very little exposure to nature in my life—I have never even been camping! I like to joke that I would not survive the impending zombie apocalypse, but my host father definitely would. As we traveled around the region, my host father would pluck edible leaves off trees, explaining what they are and letting us sample them fresh off the trees. He also procured some fresh water bamboo which we peeled and ate. It turns out that bamboo really does not have much taste before it is cooked. At one point he even broke off some sugar cane for us to eat, though it turned out to be too bitter. He took us on tours of a farm, a mountain, the famous Sun Moon Lake, and even a paper factory. I was amazed at the type of familiarity our host father had with the environment, including the people around him. People all around the area knew and respected him.
One of the most touching moments of the weekend occurred toward the end of the trip, after my classmate and I explained to a friend of our host family why we were studying Chinese. His response shocked me. He said that the two of us had completely changed his impression of America. Before meeting us, he thought that Americans’ only concern was money, and that profit was our main motive for doing things. Discovering that we were learning a language as difficult as Chinese because of the joy it gave us to be able to communicate with people led him to change his view of Americans. Now, he believes that Americans have different reasons and motivations for making decisions.
This weekend was indeed a special experience, one I will not soon forget. It exhibited the best of people to people cultural exchange, whereby each of us gained new insights into different cultures and ways of life. I am incredibly grateful for this opportunity to glimpse a way of living that is so connected to nature and the local community, and I intend to try to incorporate some of these qualities into my own life.
Program: Taiwan Intensive Summer Language Program, Tainan, Taiwan
Term: Summer 2019