Six months after that, I left Taiwan, first for Hong Kong and then for mainland China, where I spent another three months studying still more Chinese and generally kicking around the country.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I wanted to do something far from my intellectual and physical home, so I went to live in Beijing for eight months and took Mandarin Chinese.
Once I became interested in China, I flew to Beijing in 1996 to spend half a year studying Mandarin. The city stunned me.
I lived in China for 9 years straight. I saw how my Chinese friends benefited and gained much more freedom to determine the course of their lives, their jobs, their creative works, and their identities over the course of a decade. Much of this increased freedom is thanks to economic engagement by the West.
When I was in Taiwan, I was taught in school that Taiwan is part of China.
I've been going to China every year now for more than a decade.
When I was in Taiwan, we were there for about 8 months, and I was 11 at the time, so it was definitely a culture shock. But it was a really interesting time to be there. I didn't entirely realize how different it is from the States. I just accepted it because I was there and my parents needed to be there.
I majored in Chinese. I was never really good at Chinese but I really, really benefited from having been exposed to Asian philosophy early in my life.
I am Taiwanese as well as Chinese.
I was born in Yangzhou, China, two years after World War II ended. I was 5 when my family escaped to Taiwan. Eight years later, we moved to Japan.
I was born in Shanghai and moved to Hong Kong the year I was five.